Faster Pussycat

Faster Pussycat 2008 CC BY 2.0 by Ted Van Pelt

Faster Pussycat is an American rock band from Los Angeles, formed in 1985 by vocalist Taime Downe, who remains the only original member.

The original lineup with guitarists Greg Steele and Brent Muscat and bassist Kelly Nickels broke up in 1993. They released four studio albums to date: Faster Pussycat (1987), Wake Me When It's Over (1989), Whipped! (1992) and with a reformed version, The Power and the Glory Hole (2006). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they sold over two million records worldwide.

Formed during the glam metal and glam punk boom of the 1980s, they took their name from the film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. The film is a 1965 American exploitation film directed by Russ Meyer. It follows three go-go dancers who embark on a spree of kidnapping and murder in the California desert. It is known for (as are most Meyers' films) its violence, provocative gender roles, and what one critic called "dialogue to shame Raymond Chandler".It was a commercial and critical failure upon its initial release, but it has since become regarded as an influential "cult" film.

scot-free

Someone on the news today was complaining that "President Trump is getting away scot-free too often." Nothing political here, but where did that word come from? It means doing something bad without suffering any consequences. 

Does “scot” have something to do with Scotland or someone named Scott? No, it seems to have come from Scandinavia and is rooted in the Old Norse language. That was the language across Scandinavia from roughly the 9th to 13th centuries. Around the 10th century, the word skot, meaning “payment,” made its way over to the British Isles, where it was anglicized as scot. 

It was used in Old English to mean the royal tax levied on locals, and this gave rise to the Old English term scotfreo, meaning “tax free.”

Moving from Old to Middle and then Modern English, the spelling changes, and so does the meaning. The OED shows several spellings from the 16th century: “scott fre” and “scotchfree” and the meaning became broader, meaning "to get away with anything.”

It would be unusual to hear it used today referring to taxes (though that might apply to Trump, too), and it is generally used in the sense of getting away with criminal or wrongful activity without punishment.

In a French Restaurant

Despite my wife being fluent in French, I have learned very little of that language in our married life. Of course, there are many French [phrases that have made their way into fairly common usage in English. For example, here are three you might use or hear in a restaurant.

"À la carte" means that each dish on the menu is priced individually, rather than being part of a set meal. It literally translates to "according to the card"—referring to the menu card. While the correct French spelling includes the accent (À la carte), it’s commonly written without it in English. (We are lazy about that stuff.) The term describes a dining style where meals are selected and paid for item by item, unlike a table d’hôte arrangement, which offers a fixed-price menu for a set combination of courses.

Though the exact date of its first use in French is unclear, à la carte entered the English language in the early 19th century.

For Americans, it means "with ice cream on top"

The phrase "à la mode" is French for "in the fashion" or "fashionable", and originally had nothing to do with dessert topped by ice cream. 

In classical French cuisine, it describes dishes prepared in a particular style, like boeuf à la mode, a pot roast cooked with wine and herbs.

The term was anglicised as a noun – alamode, which was a form of glossy black silk, and it appeared in a 1676 edition of The London Gazette:

But Americans are familiar with this phrase as meaning "with ice cream." That twist appears to have emerged in the late 19th century. One of the earliest documented uses of à la mode to mean served with ice cream was in an 1895 article from the Chicago Daily Tribune, describing a pie topped with ice cream. From there, the term caught on and became a staple of American diner lingo.

The American chicken cordon bleu

When someone says a dish is "cordon bleu", they’re not just talking about chicken stuffed with ham and cheese. They’re basically saying it’s top-tier, five-star, “kiss-the-chef” level stuff.

The phrase is French for “blue ribbon”, which back in the days of the Bourbon kings wasn’t just something you won at a school science fair—it was literally the highest rank of chivalry. By 1727, English speakers had picked it up to mean elite quality — especially when it came to chefs.

Fast forward to 1827, when a cookbook titled Le Cordon bleu ou nouvelle cuisinière bourgeoise hit Paris, dishing out top-notch recipes. Then in 1895, a newsletter called La Cuisinière Cordon-bleu began sharing pro tips from real chefs. And in 1896, Cordon Bleu cooking classes kicked off in Paris’s fancy Palais Royal, training folks to sauté like royalty.

In short: if someone says your cooking is cordon bleu, you can proudly toss your spatula in the air and take a bow.

Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead was originally called The Warlocks, until Jerry Garcia found out that another band had the same name. The band's founding members were Jerry Garcia (lead guitar and vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar and vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, and vocals), Phil Lesh (bass guitar and vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums)

The name, though sometimes mistakenly identified as coming from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a phrase that appears in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

"In the land of the night, the ship of the sun is drawn by the grateful dead."

Supposedly, Jerry was intrigued by the story of a troubled soul who is put to rest by a traveler. The spirit then repays the favor by helping the traveler with his own quest.

The Grateful Dead were a symbol of the 1960s counterculture. Though they never achieved mainstream commercial success, their legion of Deadheads followers brought them financial success.

They are forever part of the Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco scene, where they regularly played at Ken Kesey’s acid tests.

In their earliest incarnation, they were a jug band/country/blues band, which they returned to to some degree in their acoustic American Beauty/Workingman's Dead period. Over their 40-year career, they played many musical genres including rock, folk, R&B, jazz, and psychedelic.

They are best known as a live band and toured almost continually during the 60s and early 70s. (There are many more live recordings - legitimate and bootleg - than studio releases.)

 

It's strange to think of the Dead having a "greatest hits" album since they never sought out commercial success, but they did hit the charts in the late 80s with “Touch of Grey.” Still, there is a Gratest Hits compilation available.

The band essentially ended with the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, though members of the band still tour and release tracks as part of other ventures. Former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as The Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and as The Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts in Santa Clara, California, and Chicago that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company, Furthur, the Rhythm Devils, Phil Lesh and Friends, RatDog, and Billy & the Kids.

Official Site Of The Grateful Dead

Down to the Wire and Hands Down

Here are two sports idioms from horse racing that have gone beyond the sport. Both contain "down."

When something goes "down to the wire" we mean it goes to the very end or last minute. "The election went down to the wire." The term comes from the length of wire that was once stretched across a racetrack at the finish line. Now, that finish is recorded electronically. The figurative use of the phrase goes back to about 1900.

Outside of horse racing, if someone said, "Hands down, this is the best pizza I have ever eaten." In that usage, it means unconditionally. It can also be used to mean something done with great ease.

In horse racing, when a jockey wins hands down, it means that when the jockey is certain of victory, he or she drops their hands and relaxes the hold on the reins. 

The horse-racing phrase was first cited by OED in 1867, and its figurative usage was noted in 1913.