on tipping -- and why I still do it

I'm posting this because I have seen a bunch of social media posts (on a bunch of platforms) about the subject of tipping. I know that, the algorithm being what it is, most people aren't seeing what I'm seeing. I also realize that no one asked for my opinion. Too bad.

I don’t like the current tipping system. If I were designing things from scratch, I’d much prefer a system where tips are not expected — or better yet, not allowed at all. In that world, servers would be paid a proper, predictable wage, menu prices would be higher to reflect that reality, and everyone would know what they’re paying for upfront. No math at the table, no moral arithmetic afterward.

But that isn’t the system we have.

In the system we do have, servers rely on tips. And just as importantly, the prices I see on the menu are built around that fact. They’re lower precisely because the restaurant is not paying full wages and is instead shifting part of that responsibility onto the customer. So if I were to refuse to tip on principle, I wouldn’t be staging a protest — I’d simply be taking advantage of artificially low pricing while someone else absorbs the cost.

That doesn’t sit right with me.

I can dislike the system and still acknowledge the reality I’m participating in. Until the rules change, choosing not to tip doesn’t punish “the system”; it punishes the person who brought the food to my table. And simply saying that "it's the restaurant's job to pay them better" doesn't address the fact that I'm getting a lower menu prices because the restaurant isn't paying them better. 

That said, I do notice that expectations have shifted. When I was growing up, 15% was considered a solid tip for decent service. You tipped more for exceptional service, less if things went badly, but 15% was the baseline. Now the default seems closer to 20%, with suggested amounts sometimes climbing higher than that. Whether that reflects rising costs of living, social pressure, or tip creep driven by point-of-sale screens, I’m not entirely sure — but it has changed.

So I find myself in an uncomfortable middle ground: disliking the system, recognizing its flaws, noticing its evolution, and still tipping — because opting out unilaterally isn’t reform, it’s just imbalance.

I’d happily support a different model. I’d even pay higher menu prices for it. But until that model actually exists, I tip — not because I love the system, but because I live in it.

cinema history class: return of sabata (1971)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 3: Return of Sabata (1973)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I may have heard of it. Maybe. I dunno. I certainly didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
Master gunman Sabata comes out of hiding to expose and dismantle a powerful gold-smuggling conspiracy run by corrupt officials and bankers, outwitting rivals with gadgets, disguises, and razor-sharp strategy.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
Before getting into the movie itself, a small sidenote about something that annoyed me more than it should have: there’s a character named McIntock who is very frequently referred to as “McClintock.” I realize this is not a major sin, or even a particularly interesting one. But once I noticed it, I couldn’t not notice it, and it became one of those tiny irritations that just sat there, tapping me on the shoulder for the whole movie.

Stepping back for a moment, Sabata Returns also marks the end of the official Sabata trilogy, and Keith deserves thanks for guiding us through all three films. I found that they form a neat little case study in how quickly a character can drift into self-parody, depending on tone, direction, and how much the filmmakers trust the audience versus how much they feel the need to mug for it. I acknowledge that that wasn't Keith's intention. He (and most of the others in the room) like Sabata more than I do. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

This time out, Lee Van Cleef is back after sitting out the second film, where he was replaced by Yul Brynner. One might think this was a in for me, but I realized after the second Sabata film, I prefer Brynner's serious interpretation of the character. This movie leans hard into broad comedy—much more than the first two—and for me that’s the single biggest reason it didn’t work. I’m increasingly realizing that I prefer Van Cleef when he plays it straight: not necessarily as a villain, but as a controlled, intimidating presence. He’s terrific in For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Death Rides a Horse—all performances built on stillness, menace, and restraint. Here, he’s asked to be a comedian far too often, and it just doesn’t suit him.

The opening scene didn’t help. The whole dinner-theater-meets-circus setup felt less like a western and more like a particularly campy episode of Batman, complete with winking theatrics and exaggerated villainy. That tone more or less sets the agenda for what follows.

Once again, the film relies heavily on familiar faces in familiar roles, giving the whole thing the feel of a repertory theater company endlessly remixing the same parts. Some people seemed to enjoy that sense of continuity. I didn’t. Maybe if there had been more here that I genuinely liked, I would have found it comforting instead of repetitive.

Gimmicks also return in force: more acrobatics, and now an elaborately deployed foot-operated slingshot, just in case you were worried the movie might go five minutes without reminding you how clever it is. We also get, yet again, the slimy Mexican character and the untrustworthy associate who’s only in it for the money—familiar beats, hit once more.

Add to that a score I found actively annoying, and a runtime that felt far longer than it needed to be, and I spent a good chunk of the film thinking, Jesus Christ—when will this end?

And, of course, Joe gave it a ten -- no surprise there. But at least this time he limited his review to a movie that actually exists.

cinema history class: adios, sabata (1970)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: Adios, Sabata (1970)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I'd heard of it, but didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
An enigmatic gunslinger arrives in a corrupt frontier town where a stolen gold shipment has entangled politicians, businessmen, and outlaws alike. Playing rival factions against each other with wit, gadgets, and lethal precision, he uncovers the conspiracy behind the theft and ensures that justice—on his own terms—is served.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
One of the more interesting bits of trivia surrounding Adiós, Sabata is its casting sleight-of-hand. Lee Van Cleef—who originated the role of Sabata—was unavailable, having been contracted to star in The Magnificent Seven Ride! as Chris Adams, a role famously played by Yul Brynner in the original The Magnificent Seven. So Brynner, in a bit of cinematic role-swapping irony, stepped into Van Cleef’s boots and became Sabata.

I’ll admit I’m in the minority here, but I actually preferred Brynner’s take on the character. His Sabata has more gravitas—less of a wink, more of a stare. The humor is still present, but it’s dialed back in favor of poise and authority, with Brynner striking deliberate poses that feel almost mythic. Most of the room leaned toward Van Cleef’s version precisely because of its playful, ironic edge; I liked that this Sabata took himself (and the stakes) more seriously.

In fact, Adiós, Sabata often feels less like a sequel than a careful remake, following much of the same structural DNA as the first film. The character Ballantine is essentially a stand-in for Banjo: the same greedy, slippery ally you can’t quite trust, but who sticks around as long as the arrangement benefits him. Like Banjo before him, Ballantine ultimately tries to make off with the gold—only to be outplayed by Sabata in almost the same fashion.

Even the action escalation feels familiar. When straightforward gunplay wasn’t enough in the first film, Sabata introduced dynamite as a recurring visual flourish. Here, that role is filled by nitroglycerin, with explosions punctuating shootouts in much the same way. Likewise, the flashy physical gimmicks have simply been swapped out: the coin-tossing and acrobatics of the original are replaced by a character who can hurl a metal ball with his feet at terrifying speed and accuracy. One improbable trick retires; another clocks in.

One thing that did grate on me, though, was seeing actors from the first film reappear in very similar roles—but as entirely different characters. I know this is a common spaghetti-western practice, but it chips away at the internal logic of the world. For me, it breaks the illusion of continuity and makes the whole thing feel more like repertory theater than a shared cinematic universe.

Still, despite all the repetition, I ended up rating Adiós, Sabata higher than its predecessor. The familiar framework works better for me when it’s treated with a straighter face, and Brynner’s more solemn interpretation elevates material that might otherwise feel like a retread.

And then there’s Joe, who gave it a ten—because in this universe, Yul Brynner plays Sabata seriously, and that’s a ten—while confidently insisting that the nonexistent alternate-universe version starring Lee Van Cleef doing it more humorously would also be a ten, which is impressive given that he apparently now reviews movies that were never made.

a's or athletics -- what a trademark dispute reveals, and why it matters to me

I’ve long been interested in sports franchise movement and name changes, particularly in Major League Baseball. So when I learned that the team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics had been denied trademarks for “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics,” but approved for “Las Vegas A’s,” it immediately caught my attention.

On its face, this looks like a narrow legal story. But it touches on something much older and more fundamental: what baseball teams are actually called, who decides that, and how those decisions have changed over time.

What I called them — and what the record says

Growing up, I thought of the team simply as the A’s. I knew that was short for “Athletics,” just as I knew the Mets were short for “Metropolitans” and the Yankees for "Yankee-ee-ees." But in conversation, on uniforms, and on baseball cards, they were the A’s.

That impression was reinforced by my father. When we talked baseball, he talked about the A’s. Not the Athletics.

At some point much later, when I started doing more systematic historical work, I needed a single, consistent source of truth for team identities. For me, that source is Baseball-Reference. It’s not perfect, but it is transparent, consistent, and careful about continuity.

Baseball-Reference lists the franchise’s nickname as “Athletics” continuously from 1901 to the present. No alternation. No official back-and-forth. Just Athletics.

That surprised me at first — but I accepted it, because when you decide on a source of truth, you have to live with it.

A childhood lesson in “correctness”

The distinction mattered to me even as a kid.

I remember wanting to show off for my grandpa Ed by reciting all the major league teams in alphabetical order. There were only twenty-four teams then — sometime between 1969 and 1976 — but that detail matters only because I had memorized the list by sorting my baseball cards by team.

I knew there was one potential snag. Did I say A’s or Athletics? It mattered, because it determined whether the team came before or after the Astros.

So I asked my grandfather which was right.

Without hesitation, he said, “Athletics, of course.”

That caught me off guard. I was used to saying the A’s. My father said the A’s. But my grandfather’s answer carried a different kind of authority — as though, whatever fans said informally, there was still a sense that the proper name existed underneath.

I didn’t articulate it that way at the time, but the lesson stuck.

When team names weren’t “official” yet

Part of the confusion here comes from the fact that baseball team names did not begin as formal, declared brands.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, nicknames were often:

• informal,
• media-driven,
• situational,
• and sometimes accidental.

Teams could have multiple nicknames at once, and newspapers freely experimented. The Cincinnati Kelly’s Killers, the Chicago Orphans, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms — these weren’t the result of branding exercises. They were labels that caught on because writers used them and readers understood them.

There was no trademark strategy. No naming committee. No press conference unveiling a logo.

From informal tradition to formal branding

Over time, that looseness disappeared.

As franchises became long-lived commercial entities, names hardened into official identities. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, naming (and renaming) a team became a major corporate exercise, often accompanied by fan outreach, surveys, and carefully managed rollouts.

A clear example is the Cleveland franchise’s transition to the Cleveland Guardians, a process that explicitly solicited public input and emphasized deliberateness. Expansion franchises, in particular, often lean heavily on fan suggestions when selecting names, precisely because the name is now understood as a long-term asset.

In other words, the sport moved from organic, informal naming to formal, legally protected branding — and that evolution sets the stage for the current trademark dispute.

Why the trademark office cares

Trademark law has little patience for ambiguity.

“Athletics” is an extremely old name, one that predates modern trademark norms and was used by multiple teams in different cities over the decades. It is also descriptively weak: the word does not inherently distinguish one specific commercial source.

“A’s,” by contrast, is distinctive. It is visually iconic, closely associated with a specific logo, and has decades of consistent use on uniforms and merchandise. From a trademark perspective, it cleanly identifies this franchise.

Seen that way, it is not especially surprising that “Las Vegas A’s” cleared a hurdle that “Las Vegas Athletics” did not.

Why I find this funny

Here’s where this circles back to my own work — and why the situation genuinely amuses me.

For years, in my ongoing tracking project (“Stoopidstats,” which I really should trademark), I have listed this franchise as the Athletics, even though I personally thought of them as the A’s. I did that because Baseball-Reference is my source of truth, and consistency matters.

This isn’t cosmetic. I track cumulative wins — and games over .500 — by nickname.

A friend recently noticed this and thought it odd. He was sure that the team’s official name must have alternated over time between A’s and Athletics, and was surprised to learn that, according to my source, it never did.

Which makes the current situation deliciously ironic: after decades of thinking of them as the A’s but listing them as the Athletics, the franchise may now be forced, by trademark reality, to become the A’s.

What this means for my stoopidstats

From a purely statistical standpoint, this makes things interesting.

Adding Las Vegas (or Vegas, or Nevada) as a location already complicates franchise tracking. Adding Nevada as a state does too. And adding “A’s” as a distinct nickname would create something entirely new.

Right now, “Athletics” ranks third all-time in wins by nickname, with 10,302, behind only “Giants” and “Reds.” Fourth place belongs to the “Pirates,” with 10,263 wins. That 39-win margin between them will, of course change over the next few years, but when the "Athletics" name goes away (if it goes away) it is likely to still be third and "Pirates" is likely to still be fourth. But from that point on, "Athletics" will sink, and "Pirates" will likely be the first to pass it. And, of course, I’ll get to watch a new entry (A's) start with zero wins and slowly climb the rankings, passing such memorable but defunct names as "Mansfields," Tip-Tops" and "Quicksteps."

That’s not a tragedy. It’s a reminder.

Names, memory, and authority

This whole episode highlights the tension between:

• how fans remember teams,
• how historians catalog them,
• and how the law insists they be defined.

I grew up saying the A’s. My father said the A’s. My grandfather insisted on Athletics. Baseball-Reference sided with my grandfather. Trademark law may ultimately side with my childhood self. And I still think "Phillies" is a lazy name, but that's a subject for a different post.

cinema history class: sabata (1969)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1: Sabata (1969)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I'd heard of it, but didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
A stylish, enigmatic gunman rides into a corrupt frontier town and uncovers a criminal conspiracy by local power brokers. Using deadly marksmanship, clever gadgets, and sharp wit, Sabata turns the conspirators against one another and dismantles their plot.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
I’ll start by admitting that Sabata just wasn’t for me. For reasons I can’t entirely pin down, I found it oddly hard to follow—specifically the web of interrelationships and shifting loyalties among the various bad guys. That confusion probably fed into my other big issue: the movie felt long. There were multiple moments where I was sure we were heading into the wrap-up, only for the plot to wind itself up again and keep going. The ongoing gunfights just got tedious -- admittedly, though, they tried to keep those interesting via dynamite. On its own, the tedium wouldn’t have bothered me much—but combined with the narrative murkiness, it wore me down.

Ironically, the character I found most engaging wasn’t Sabata himself. William Berger’s Banjo is genuinely interesting and unpredictable, bouncing between alliances and situations in a way that kept me guessing what kind of man he really was. I had a hard time deciding how I felt about him, which is usually a good thing. By comparison, Sabata felt flatter—cool, stylish, and hyper-competent, yes, but not especially complex.

Late in the film, there’s what should have been a real OMG moment: we’re led to believe Sabata has been killed, only to learn that his death was an elaborate ruse. In theory, that’s a great beat. In practice, it didn’t land for me—partly because I already knew there were sequels, which makes it hard to buy into the idea that he’s really gone. That’s not entirely fair to the film, of course; someone seeing it in a theater in 1969 wouldn’t have had that foreknowledge.

The movie also borrows very heavily from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, especially in the dynamic between Sabata and Banjo. By the time we got to the ending, the parallels were so strong that I could practically hear a writers’ room conversation along the lines of, “How do we make this feel like that ending?” followed by enthusiastic nodding.

Some of the stylistic gimmicks didn’t help. Sabata’s magical control over tossed coins struck me as more silly than impressive—less iconic gunslinger, more Wild West Fonzie. And while Keith warned us in advance that this would lean more toward humor than the classic spaghetti westerns I love, I still think it would have benefited from dialing that back a notch. It mostly avoids going full Up the MacGreggors! thankfully, but then there’s that awful “boing” sound effect whenever Sabata outsmarts someone. Everyone else seemed amused; I just cringed.

On the other hand, I absolutely loved the the theme song. That surf-music twang was unexpected, catchy, and easily my favorite part of the experience. At least Sabata left me with a tune in my head (which I then downloaded from Youtube.

cinema history class: the funhouse (1981)

The session: Work-Aways

Four Movies with horrible horrible characters who remind Keith of some of our craziest work-away stories

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: The Funhouse (1981)
Directed by Tobe Hooper

My Level of Prior Knowledge
Never heard of it.

Plot:
A group of teenagers sneak into a traveling carnival’s funhouse after hours, hoping for a night of thrills. Instead, they become trapped, and are stalked by a grotesque masked killer hiding among the carnival attractions. As the night unfolds, the funhouse turns into a deadly maze where escape becomes increasingly desperate.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
After watching The Funhouse, I’m comfortable saying this: it’s not a work of art, but it absolutely delivers on what it promises. Between the acting, the camera work, and especially the makeup, it does a terrific job of creating a deeply creepy carnival atmosphere—even before you fully register that the people running the place are inbred freaks. That mood of unease is there almost immediately, which matters, because the movie is otherwise pretty formula-driven and stuffed with familiar horror tropes (seriously, does anyone in real life ever climb down a trellis?).

What really surprised me was how much it stirred up childhood memories. Once or twice as a kid I got to see a traveling carnival roll into Honesdale, PA, and this movie brought those memories back—then smeared them with grime, menace, and dread. That’s probably the film’s biggest success: it takes something already a little uncanny and just keeps nudging it further into nightmare territory.

There are things that don’t quite sit right, though. I assume the parents are so odd-looking because it helped set the tone, but did it really have to be that on-the-nose? And the opening scene—an obvious Psycho homage—does a great job setting the tone, but it’s also genuinely unsettling in an unintended way: a kid exposing his big sister’s breasts while she barely reacts? That’s less “homage” and more “why did no one flag this?”

Still, the central idea—a traveling carnival run by inbred freaks—is actually kind of interesting, and it carries the movie a long way. Elizabeth Berridge, in particular, is really good here, which makes me wonder why she didn’t become a bigger scream-queen name. Bad timing? Market saturation? Just one of those horror-career mysteries.

The biggest problem, though, is that no one is likable. At all. Which makes it hard to care when they start getting picked off, because you’re not rooting for anyone so much as waiting for the next kill. But even with that flaw, The Funhouse succeeds where it counts: it creates unease early, sustains it effectively, and leaves you feeling like you’ve wandered into a place you definitely shouldn’t have—and stayed too long.

Joe gave it a 10, but stop me if you've heard that one before.