LupRocks Gossip

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??

'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.