LupRocks Gossip

LupRocks Father's Day Wish List

The fact that it's Father's Day this weekend nearly escaped my notice.  No, I am not a bad daughter, I just have an, um, eccentric father who never believed in commemorating mandated holidays but rather believes that we should love each other equally 365 days a year. 

But for all of those normal dads out there who like phone calls on birthdays and all that sentimental crap, I thought it would be fun to look through LupRocks.com for some truly spectacular Father's Day Gift Ideas:

If yours was one of those dads screaming enthusiastically from the sidelines at your hockey game or track meet, maybe it wasn't that he wanted bragging rights among the other dads, but that he is a Darwin enthusiast that believes in "Survival of the Fittest."  That's right, it was for your own good that he berated you for missing that pass...Why not embrace his beliefs by getting him EDUN's ethically and environmentally sustainable "Chuck D" t-shirt?  Added bonus that this company was started by Bono, and what dad doesn't like Bono???

 

Remember those lazy summers rafting down the river with your entire family, the "beer tube" attached by a string to your dad's inner tube?  Make sure dad remembers the good old days by getting him a wallet made of recycled inner tubes by English Retreads.  Not only will he be cooler than all the other dads, he'll have a story to tell his friends to prove how thoughtful his favorite child is...

While you may have felt guilty trying to pass yourself off as "under 12" until you were 17 years old, you really were saving your dad some serious bucks!  $2.45 for a kids meal at Sizzler?  $12 for a child's lift ticket?  That kind of bargain can totally be justified!  So what if your posture now suffers from trying to make yourself look shorter all of those years?  That blue eye-shadow you had to remove to pull it off really did look ridiculous.  Give your dad something that will show him you appreciate all the life lessons with Blum Lux's exquisite "Integrity" watch.  Definitely not your grandfather's watch...

My dad carried the same golf bag for at least 20 years, and he made me caddy that 100lb bad boy every chance he got!  His current "man bag" is about that old, and if I were planning on getting a gift this Father's day, I'd go with this sustainable Hollister Satchle canves tote from Ellington Leather.  It's perfect because it's cool, comfortable and hip but still has an old-school, classic style that wouldn't offend my dad's sense of frugal chic. 

So what if your dad never served in a war, he's still YOUR hero, right?  Show him he's still the one you rely on to keep you safe from the big bad world with a hip "dog tag" necklace from Black&Blue. 

Lup Libs (The Real Story)

Waaaay back in December we posted an entry about holiday greeting cards, giving our assessment of what we liked in a holiday card and what we didn't like.  Clearly, we LOVE candy as greeting but we still love the Lup Libs we sent out best.  Of course, we didn't get the response we'd hoped for; a lot of "cute card" and "I love this!" but very few people sent it back.  Of those that did, I liked the below response best.  Yeah yeah yeah, I'm slightly biased since it was a group effort that included my now 6 year old niece, but I think you'll agree, it's a riot.  Words in bold are their contribution:

Once upon a time, a Ukrainian and an Irish took a trip to "Big Love" to show some jewelry to Vera Wang. She wasn't very squirrel to them, and sent them out without a second glance; calling the jewelry they brought "ediv."  Eventually Bill from Big Love, Homer Simpson, ET and Super Nanny saw the jewelry the costume designer had rejected and fell in love.  they wore several pieces in each episode and inspired the entrepreneurs to start an Empire State Building called Lup.

The Lup girls soon learned that owning their own company was not all bike and Ferry Wings.  It was actually a lot of spatula.  But they kept things gay by meeting lots of crazy tight rope walkers (one of the girls even met her rainbow at a diamond conference!) and tons of influential Chiropractors.  They continued to place cars on "ER" and began placing jewelry on green films and stinky television shows and in the pages of magazines.  They even placed jewelry on a book cover that later turned into an extremely pouty television show called "Gossip Girls." 

After nearly two years of doing business, the girls came up with a slop that they knew was gross.  They launched a butt.  They gathered the best jewelry and accessories proctologists in the world and gave them a forum for showcasing their designs to accountants.  In doing this, they made the lives of their beloved media much much easier.  And because it was such a success, they soon decided to offer this wild resource to designers of apparel, children's wear, home wear and beauty.

Wishing you the same matzo ball soup and spaghetti in 2009 that Lup has experienced in the past 6+ years! 

February is now...Fancy

A yoga instructor-turned friend once told me that she and some of her fellow yogis had long ago decided to change the name of February to Fancy.  They reasoned that it was one of the only (if not THE only) words in the English language that was a verb (I fancy that handbag!), a noun (I took a fancy to that handbag) an adjective (that handbag is FANCY!) and a proper noun (a genre of art).  Since I've long held to the Tom Robbins version of February I wasn't sure I could start to think of it as Fancy.  Here's what Tom Robbins had to say about February in his book Jitterbug Perfume:

"They say that February is the shortest month, but you know, they could be wrong.

"Compared, calender page against calender page, it looks to be the shortest month, all right. Spread between January and March, like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either side. In its galoshes - and you'll never see February in stocking feet - it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose.

"However more abbreviated than its cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.

"February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on its page add up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed." (1984)

I'm pretty certain that Mr. Robbins' sentiment resonates with a great many people I know, so I'm going to propose that we all take advantage of the power of language and start thinking about February as Fancy.  In my mind, anything that is truly fancy can't be bad--fancy dinners, fancy parties, fancy shoes, fancy clothing, fancy jewelry--all of it is perfectly acceptable and desirable in my world, so bring on the month of Fancy!  As far as that little punk, Punxsutawney Phil, seeing his shadow this morning and predicting another six weeks of winter, I'm going to turn towards that resource of sage wisdom, someecards.com to help sooth my weary soul.  Now can somebody please order me a cheeseburger??

Welcome Year of the Ox!

Today, January 26, marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture.  I'll leave it to my six year old niece to plan a party involving pictures of dragons and fireworks, red clothing and Chinese food, because we here at Lup H.Q. are more focused on the year's significance than the festivities involved, which we find particularly relevant given the current economic environment.  This year is the year of the Ox, which is a symbol of wealth and success through hard work and resilience.  Maybe it's just a coincidence that President Obama was born in the year of the Ox?  Or maybe we can just take it as a good omen?  In either case, let's all take advantage of the excuse, today and over the next couple of weeks, to celebrate the new year by spending time with our friends and family, celebrating our existing good fortune, and looking forward to working hard and prospering in the coming year.  If nothing else, you can always consider the Chinese New Year a second chance to take a crack at keeping to those New Year's resolutions you may have already fallen short on....

   

'Tis the Season of Electronic Greetings

We've noticed a significant drop in the number of physical holiday cards we've received this year, which is fine with us since in our mind, unless it's a basket of chocolate in the vein of Pier 60's annual holiday gifts to their clients (which they neglected to send us this year, the nerve!!), it's probably a good time to go green and save postage by sending an electronic greeting card.  We're aware that not all e-cards can be as good as this one from our favorite electronic greeting card site, someecards.com,

but really, they don't need to suck.  While we've definitely gotten some really sweet e-cards, we've also gotten some really crappy ones.  Without disparaging the crappy card senders, we're going to highlight a few of the good ones and anonymously bash the bad ones. 

Obviously, at the top of our list of favorite e-cards is our very own Lup Libs that we sent out this morning.  Hopefully a few people will actually fill it out and send it back to us so we can post the most creative answers here.  I don't know when you last did Mad Libs, but we find ourselves doing it quite often around Lup HQ and it really is the world's greatest word game! 

Platinum Guild International sent us a very nice e-card--it was simple, elegant and sophisticated and totally consistent with all of PGI's marketing materials.  Kudos!   Lots of designers send e-greetings with just a picture of their designs.  This is totally fine, we understand designers taking every opportunity to showcase their work, but it is SO MUCH better when they've actually taken the time to create some sort of stylized jpeg image rather than inserting a picture of their product into an email like they're sending a pitch to an editor they are REALLY good friends with.  Our favorite though, is major film studios and major publishing houses sending us the lamest duck emails we've every received.  A dog licking the screen to uncover the words "Happy Holidays" from one of the biggest movie studios in the world??  Really?! 

I guess the long and the short of it is, if you can't take the time to put something together for the holidays, skip it.  Send out a Valentine's Day card instead.  I swear, nobody will notice the absence of your poorly executed holiday greeting in the jumble of all of the rest of the poorly executed holiday greetings that are clogging up their emails.  Of course, if you've taken the time to put something together nicely, by all means, send it out and let yourself stand out from the crowd.  Alternatively, pick out your favorite someecard and stand out by either being really offensive or really hilarious, depending on your audience.