Germans Like Fake Meat

“He goes on about the ersatz food in Germany. He describes ‘meat made of pressed rice boiled in mutton fat (and finished off with a fake bone made of wood); tobacco made of dried roots and dried potato peel; shoes soled with wood.’ There are, he notes, ‘837 registered meat substitutes permissible in the production of sausages, 511 registered coffee substitutes.’”
 — From Dwight Garner’s review of Peter Englund’s The Beauty and the Sorrow comes an answer as to why the McRib sandwich stays on the menu all year ‘round at McDonald’s restaurants in Germany: Germans got used to fake bone shapes in their food during the first world war. The book sounds absolutely terrific, by the way, and its title has gotten me thinking about something that I was thinking about recently after reading a book by Lorrie Moore.

Which is better, The Smithereens’ “Beauty & Sadness”…

or the Replacements’ “Sadly Beautiful”?

Listening to them here now, I think the Replacements. And it’s not really a contest. I loved the Smithereens in high school. (And they’re still going strong! They’re playing York, Pennsylvania on Sunday.) They’re from New Jersey, so I suppose I might be biased. But their Especially For You album, from 1986, is just front-to-back excellent. “Beauty & Sadness” is maybe too much of a copy Beatles bite, though. And as much guff as all the songs on All Shook Down get, “Sadly Beautiful” is one the best ballads Westerberg ever wrote.