The Kiss — a 10-item list.

1. After writing the last post — focusing on 2 magazine covers depicting a kiss — made me want to write a blog devoted to the kiss. It would be easy to keep a Google alert on the word "kiss" and blog every day on whatever miscellany relating to kissing happened to come up. I considered starting a new blog, but kiss.blogspot.com, kissblog.blogspot.com, and thekissblog.blogspot.com were all taken, so this post is a rough draft of what that blog would have been.

2. A Google news search on "kiss" brings up something I should already have blogged: Joe Biden, swearing in a Senator (Chris Coons) and wrangling various family members into good photo-op positions, got a little too cozy with a modest/nervous little girl and guessed wrong when he decided that a little cheek nuzzling would loosen her up. Reactions varied from "Holy Hell Would Be Unleashed On 'Handsy' Joe Biden If He Were Conservative" to "Awesome Little Girl Rejects Biden's Kiss At Senate Swearing-In." Hey, Joe, no means no... Mr. Violence Against Women Act.

3. Remember your first kiss? Kid Rock does — or is able to strain his voice Jack-and-Diane style in various assertions to that effect in this new video "First Kiss":



"And now these days when I drive through a small town/I turn my stereo up and roll my windows down/’Cause it reminds me of my first kiss/And those days that I always miss/Tom Petty on the radio." Tom Petty gets a big shout-out. Seems like John Cougar Mellencamp deserves a nod (or a peck on the cheek).

4. Kiss cam variations... including the deepest deep kiss:



5. "KISS frontman Gene Simmons... is as ubiquitous as ever with a reality-television show and a recent book on his business philosophy called 'Me Inc'" and a new restaurant in Oviedo called Rock and Brews. Quote: "You are alive, and you are supposed to keep moving... I'm 65, and, boy, do I look great."

6. "Tell me about the Root kiss. Was that a big gift for the fans?... Did you think it was a 'Goodbye forever' kiss, or a 'Shut up, I’ll be back' kiss?" Apparently, there's a TV show called "Person of Interest" and there was a kiss that made a big impression — "a much-anticipated kiss between the show’s electrifying women." What was so big about it? It can't just be that 2 women kissed on TV or even that 2 electrifying women kissed on TV. In the first nonplatonic 2-woman kiss the women were electrifying: Sharon Stone Mariel Hemingway and Rosanne Barr. "Television critic Frank Rich of The New York Times called 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' 'a small step forward for the stirring of homosexuals into the American melting pot' and a 'sophisticated half-hour [that] turned homophobia on its ear.'" The year was 1994.

7. The previous post — the post that got me started on this list — discussed a Charlie Hebdo cover showing 2 men kissing which I assumed was an intentional allusion to the famous New Yorker cover showing a Jewish man and a black woman kissing, and Meade said: "You know what else you should have included?" I said: "Brancusi's 'The Kiss'?"



No, he was thinking of the famous photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse: "V-J Day in Times Square" by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Scanning my Google image search results, I saw Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" and said: "As ubiquitous as Gene Simmons." No, I said: "How many dorm rooms have you seen this in?" And "There's also that Rodin."

8. For a less famous, less over-liked artwork called the kiss, consider Tino Sehgal's "The Kiss": "On the [Guggenheim Museum's] ground floor, a man and woman entwine in a changing, slow-motion amorous embrace.... As choreography it will hold no surprises for anyone familiar with contemporary dance. Taken as living sculpture, it has amusing moments: every so often, the performers strike erotic poses derived from Courbet, Rodin, Brancusi and Jeff Koons." I'd already thought of Rodin and Brancusi, but let's check out the Courbet and the Koons.

9. Hey, Koons (#8) and Coons (#2). It's like the stars are in alignment. Is there a constellation called The Kiss? No, but The Arctic Monkeys sang: "And her lips are like the galaxy's edge/And her kiss the color of a constellation falling into place."

10. "Kiss" is a very old word in English. The OED — giving the first meaning as "A touch or pressure given with the lips... in token of affection, greeting, or reverence; a salute or caress given with the lips" — has the oldest appearance of the word circa 1000:

Ælfric Homilies II. 32   Ic hine to minum cosse arærde.

I don't read English well enough to understand that, but the language becomes more recognizable by the 1380s, when a translated Bible had: "Kisse he me with the cos of his mowth." And here's a great poet: "Ah why refuse the blameless bliss? Can danger lurk within a kiss?"