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.