Beware of legible clothing, J.Crew!

References to a "kiss" tee piqued my curiosity so I hopped into a store and tried it on. I found it to be  well cut and cute. You can see it on Gigi, here.  It's apparently not on the J.Crew website. And since I missed the Factory "kisses" tee, which frankly was cuter, I bought this one without thinking twice, or even once.


On the other hand, it's made by J.Crew, where the approach to spelling, grammar, rhetoric and idiomatic usage is - oh, why don't we just say it has been known to fall short of punctilious. I thought this tee would be cute for travel, which meant that deciding whether or not to keep it would depend on the work of the resident linguists at J.Crew. Talk about buyer's remorse.

Here is the list of the words on the shirt, together with some commentary. First, the easy ones (out of my head).

BISOU is French for "kiss," it's derived from the noun baiser. Variants are Bisous, bises, bzzzzz (frequently seen at the end of emails). BTW baiser as a verb means something else, so use embrasser  in company if you need a verb ....

BESO is Spanish for "kiss."

BACIO is Italian for "kiss."

BEIJO is Portuguese for "kiss." At least in Brazil. 

KISS is English for "kiss."

MUAH isn't really a word, but an onomatopoeic representation of the sound of a big smacker. Air-kissers say this while air-kissing to lend texture to the experience.

Where I didn't recognize a word, or did but thought I had to be mistaken, I turned to the internets and boy there are some real nut cases compiling dictionaries and lists of "useful" phrases out there. I didn't find anything as cute as "My postilion  has been struck by lightening," or - from my first Portuguese phrase book - "Oh, please, Mr. Barber, do not put hot oil on my head," but I did learn some sort of interesting stuff.

KISU is a relatively contemporary Japanese word, derived from English, for "kiss." There are older words of Japanese origin for "kiss," but the ipad is fighting back.

a really really badly named pub

FILI is Greek for "kiss."

HON - The word "hon" (phonetically) is part of some well-known Gaelic expressions that involve kissing but have nothing to do with romance, so I went to the computer which told me that HON is Vietnamese for "kiss," but the examples I found were unclear as to whether this is a noun or verb in Vietnamese.

PETO - well, I would not have picked these letters out of all the possible words for kiss in all the languages spoken around the world.  In Spanish and Italian, it means "fart." Or, better yet, "I fart." How romantic.  But being the fair and openminded soul that I am, I asked the computer if it meant anything (like maybe KISS) in any language at all. Well, Google claims that "PETO" means "ogre"  or carnivore in Icelandic. Munch, munch, munch.

KOSS is Icelandic for "kiss." Well, so much for the amorous ogres (see above).

Anyhow, I'm having a Bear of Very Little Brain day today, so if anyone reading this can enlighten me further about PETO, I'd appreciate it. But probably not enough to wear the tee in any Spanish- or Italian-speaking country. Including southern France, New York, New Jersey, Florida and California. Oh, also not in Iceland. Just in case. One hungry carnivore is all I can deal with.

stupid question department: yes, there will be turkey. Because it's Thanksgiving, that's why.

The first question: why is it so difficult to get people together for dinner? There have been several waves of interest in the life and works of Julia Child recently, and I thought it would be fun to cook some of the recipes from Mastering the Art Vol. I for a group of convivial souls. With lovely wines. I also thought that in keeping with the "retro" theme, I would actually telephone the prospective guests at their homes to invite them, rather than use any of the group email tools. Here are some of the responses I got:

• We're out of town every weekend, why not do it during the week?


• Mark takes his very expensive specialist wine course Monday nights, can you do it Tuesday?


• I babysit my new baby granddaughter every other Tuesday so my son and daughter-in-law can work on their marriage.  


• Stewie and I are in couples counseling, we go Wednesday nights, how about on a Thursday?


• But I've gained 5 pounds and Thursday is one of my gym nights. I'd love to come on Friday.


• Tuesday doesn't work, we have opera/ballet/avant-garde theatre subscription every other Tuesday night.


• We go to a group cultural dinner Friday nights, would you like to join us? Or we could do it Sunday night?


• Oh, you didn't know, we're closing the business and moving to the Bahamas.

I have to tell you, to my best knowledge, all of these people were happy and normal and well-mannered and sociable until I called them and asked them to come sit around my table and ingest food. For instance, I didn't know GF's husband was actually taking a course to be a wine bore, I thought he was achieving it nicely on his own. But one phone call, and people seemed annoyed that I was interfering with the well-organized small and large tragedies of their lives. And no, I don't think having pot roast without the prayers counts as a spiritual experience (unless it's my pot roast, which has been described as heavenly). And no, I don't think snoring in an expensive seat at Lincoln Center counts as a cultural epiphany.

So having been asked repeatedly to change one dinner for 10 or 12 into 8 or 9 dinners for 4, 2 of whom need to be working each dinner, I tabled the project so that I would have plenty of time to sulk. Lately, though, I've been trying to feel festive and thought cooking for a group might help so I resuscitated the project. But I wanted to avoid the phone calls, so I thought I'd send around a calendar page where people could initial the nights they were available, I'd collate, and majority would rule. Of course I couldn't do this. So back to phone calls. I forgot about office parties, extra shrink sessions, other people's families, annual galas that require a week of preparation... Do you want to learn all the boring-to-awful details of the lives of your friends? Ask them to dinner. Do you want to learn about the psychic insides of your friends? Ask them to dinner. And do you want to know about the physical innards of your friends?

Yup, ask them to dinner.

The other issue that I've been pondering lately is why the same people who are so eager to tell you and anyone else within earshot that they are vegetarian, salt-free, vegan, gluten-free, lactose intolerant, fat-free, don't eat veal, egg-free, don't eat beef, don't eat carbs, don't eat poultry, don't eat this fish, don't eat that fish, don't eat t'other fish, don't eat that cuisine because of fear of the unknown - are  offended when I explain that in my view dining out on sushi is economically inefficient because good sushi is astoundingly expensive by the time you get enough to eat, and less-than-really-good-sushi isn't worth doing.

that's what she said, right?
eat steak?

If your chicken has to have a provenance, let me eat steak. And if you're dying to see us and catch up on how we've been, let's do it around a table, not at a counter. But if you deign to come to my house, and don't want to eat what's on the table, then bring a sandwich and don't make a big deal of it. And there is no lactose in cheese, I looked it up.

I make an exception of course for religious proscriptions, and for those with truly life-threatening allergies. I don't want anyone struck dead at my dinner table, whether by lightening or by a peanut. Or by me if I've been slaving away all day and you've just had a revelation that all your troubles are caused by protein.

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