"One common tipping complaint is some variation of the truffle conundrum."

"Why should we tip more on the pasta with truffles than on the one without? Call it a wealth tax. There’s also a celebrity tax. One waiter, whose diners have included Selena Gomez, Jon Hamm, and Matthew Macfadyen ('He ordered two entrées successively,' he recalled. 'I was impressed'), said that those who are rich and identifiable typically leave thirty to fifty per cent. 'Robert Plant tipped me twenty per cent, which I respected,' he said. 'There’s this paranoia of being despised by the waiter, and they overtip to compensate. I always thought that was pathetic.'"

From "Has Gratuity Culture Reached a Tipping Point? Paying extra for service has inspired rebellions, swivelling iPads, and irritation from Trotsky. Post-pandemic, the practice has entered a new stage" (The New Yorker). Lots more about tipping in that article. My excerpt isn't a summary, just something random that interested me.

"Finally, a novel about the travails of a successful White guy! What could pull the heartstrings of our afflicted nation tighter than a story of brief, emotional setback suffered by a handsome movie star?"

The first 2 sentences of "Ethan Hawke turns his acting experience — and past infidelities — into brilliant fiction" (WaPo). 

The reviewer, Ron Charles, also seems to be a white male, so his sarcasm may reflect his own anguish at elite America's languishing interest in how white men think and feel. 

... Hawke is... known as the man who cheated on Uma Thurman and offered loutish excuses about the sexual needs of great men like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and him. 

Now, some 15 years after all that cosmic embarrassment, Hawke has published a novel called “A Bright Ray of Darkness.” It’s about a young movie star who got caught cheating on his stunningly gorgeous wife. This recycled gossip is tiresome, but what’s most irritating about “A Bright Ray of Darkness” is that it’s really good. If you can ignore the author’s motive for creating such a sensitive and endearing cad, you’ll find here a novel that explores the demands of acting and the delusions of manhood with tremendous verve and insight.

That title!  "A Bright Ray of Darkness" — seems like a teenager's idea of profundity, and yet this guy gets his novel published by Knopf and praised like mad in The Washington Post. Clicking to Amazon, I see he got a blurb from Patti Smith. She called it "riveting." Riveting! This towering achievement comes in spite of the burden of being a handsome, rich, white man in America today. 

Amazon does not allow us to look inside the book, so I have no opportunity to see what kind of writing is drawing this attention. I search the review for an example of the author's prose. Here: "My life as a performer is at the absolute core of my sense of self-worth. Inside the play it felt possible that I was not a person defined by his adultery, or his unloving parents, or his lies, his failure as a father." You tell me: Is this man held back or pushed ahead by his status as a handsome white male?

"A Bright Ray of Darkness" makes me think of that old song. We were listening to this yesterday: "Darkness, Darkness"...

 

You know me. If there's one topic I've been avoiding in crazy present-day America, it's the "My Pillow Guy." But jokes were made on hearing that first line: "Darkness, Darkness/Be my pillow...."

ADDED: Speaking of Ron Charles and highly praised white male novelists...

AND: In the comments, John Henry reminds me that Amazon lets you download the first 20 pages, so I did that and came up with this extract. I'll let you judge the possible brilliance for yourself. Is this Knopf-level fiction-writing?

Federal jury decides in favor of Led Zeppelin.

In the "Stairway to Heaven" trial.

Jurors were not played the Taurus recording, which contains a section that sounds very similar to the instantly recognizable start of Stairway. Instead, they were played guitar and piano renditions by musicians on both sides of the case. Not surprisingly, the plaintiff's version on guitar sounded more like Stairway than the defense version on piano.

Experts for both sides dissected both compositions, agreeing mainly that they shared a descending chord progression that dates back three centuries as a building block in lots of songs....

Jurors never heard a note from Page or Plant live, but they were treated to lo-fi vintage recordings of the band creating the song, renditions on guitar and piano by other musicians and, finally, the full recording of one of rock's most enduring anthems.

Page, 72, bobbed his head and moved to the tune while Plant, 67, sat still. Both men wore sharp suits, white shirts and ties throughout the trial and had their hair pulled back in neat ponytails. They didn't chat with anyone in the gallery, including several fans, and were escorted by personal bodyguards to the restroom and in and out of the federal courthouse each day....

Robert Plant found a lucky charm, dressed it up with love, and crossed the Seven Seas to you.

"Will it be enough?"

"I'd like to say: I'm bewildered. In the old days, we would have called this selling out. But I think it's a good way to spend a Sunday."

Thanks, Robert Plant, for summing up the lameness of today.

"There is a difference between people who sing and those who take that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria within themselves."

Robert Plant, talking about Elvis, who ranks #3 on Rolling Stone's "Greatest Singers of All Time."

Of course, it's not really about all time. There aren't even any opera singers on the list. And it's based on some survey that asked various experts who were their favorite singers of the rock era. Which is kind of an annoying categorization, because #1 and #2 are not rock singers, really. And then, we aren't really even talking about singing -- are we? -- if Bob Dylan is #7. But it is interesting to read what Bono has to say about him:

There is certainly iron ore in there, and the bitter cold of Hibbing, Minnesota, blowing through that voice. It's like a knotted fist....

Or -- I don't know -- I didn't need to read that.

Meanwhile, Robert Plant is only #15, and you have to slip all the way down to #32 to get to Bono.

But it's silly to argue about such things. What's nice is that if you upload the Rhapsody software, you can choose 25 full-length songs to play for free out of the list of songs for each of the 100 singers.