Expectation Shmexpectation

Flanking Apple, acoustic adventures, fashion you can see from space, ditchmail, temporal liberation, what a stranger, a grocery store and art have in common, and why Conversationality really is where the money’s at. Welcome to the Expectation Shmexpectation issue.

WHILE THE GIANT’S SLEEPING

Say what you will about the iPhone, but the sleek little bastard is a technology driver in and of itself — and, most importantly, beyond. Various competitors were already playing catch-up before the iPhone even launched. (Hello, Verizon’s LG Prada.)

But while Apple is drunk on its own brilliance, one serious competitor is silently building its digital war-chest to take on iTunes, the iPhone, AT&T, MySpace and Google all at once. Nokia, the global headsets leader with 35% market share, is adding products and services to its portfolio like there’s no tomorrow: it only makes sense that the company whose tagline is “Connecting People” gets in the business of doing just that — and doing it better than anyone.

Let’s take a peek at what they’ve got and why it matters:

• Nokia N95: multimedia phone featuring 2.8-inch display, 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, GPS, microSD, and more
• S60 Touch UI: direct competitor to the iPhone; one-ups the Apple gadget by offering video recording and sharing straight from the device, a Flash-capable browser, and richer sensor use (like flipping the phone over to silence an alarm)
• Ovi: mobile content and Internet service portal; Finnish for “door”
• intros: digital music platform that allows for wireless download to headset and two-way synchronization to host computer; comes after last year’s acquisition of Loudeye, a digital music platform and distribution company, for $60 million
• MOSH: social network that allows sharing of media online or from a phone
• N-Gage: gaming platform
• Enpocket: recently acquired Boston-based mobile marketing company
• Navteq: recently acquired (for $8.1 million) digital map supplier
• Video Center: deal with News Corp., Sony Pictures, CNN and others to distribute content straight to headsets

So while everyone’s gushing about the oh-so-wonderful iPhone, shortcomings properly blurred by those Apple juice goggles, Nokia is building a powerful army of tools to take on the digital business. And when the flanking does happen, just don’t say you never saw it coming.

TALENT KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES

Petty concerns like budget, production and media are no barrier for serious talent. Which is why we dig Fionn Regan‘s latest DIY video, “Be Good or Be Gone.”

And while the clamour of life drowns out the Irish singer-songwriter’s folksy vocals, it does so beautifully, enticing us into an extraordinary journey through the quiet charm of the ordinary.

As artists are starting to dump the record industry like week-old pizza leftovers, are video production studios next?

OH, THE POSSIBILITIES

We hate nothing more than pre-canned, standard voicemail greetings. (Okay, maybe there’s some stuff we hate more.) So we have to love YouMail, a nifty new service that lets you have custom voicemail greetings for each of your contacts. (Or however many you actually care enough about to custom-greet.) It also allows you to keep messages forever and have them sent as text to your email. Did we mention it’s all free?

You can choose ready-made greetings from a number of categories (business, humor, entertainment, sexy, politics, commercials, games, music, sports, even “ditchmail”) or record your very own.

For a sampling of the hilarious variety, listen to the “mental health hotline”, the postal service, God, or this casually homicidal caller repellent.

UNTRIVIA

Volumes have been written about the people who drive the word-of-mouth machine. They’ve been called anything from “influencers” to “mavens” to “brand advocates” to “conversation catalysts.” The latest term: “Passionistas.” MediaVest and Yahoo help shed some light over who these folks are and what earns them those labels. They:

• Spend 6 minutes online for every 1 minute the average Interneter does
• Dig brands related to their interests and passions, and are more likely than typical consumers to try such brands
• Are twice as likely as the average person to post on consumer-generated content sites, message boards and online content comment fields
• Do 184% more than average Internet search on stuff they’re interested in
• Are growing in numbers: 34.4 million such influentials are projected to populate the US Internet by 2011, up from 26.8 million in 2007

And influence they will. Turns out, 78% of people trust the opinions of other consumers more than any marketing and advertising messaging. (Hey, we’re on that boat, too: gotta love Amazon Askville.) Here’s how trust in other media compares, according to Nielsen:

• Newspaper ads: 63%
• Blogs: 61%
• Brand websites: 60%
• TV: 56%
• Magazines: 56%
• Radio: 54%
• Brand sponsorships: 49%
• Search engines: 34%
• Banners: 26%

Mobile text messaging tanks at the very bottom. Which explains why so many mobile marketer hopefuls’ hearts were crushed at the CTIA conference when Neilsen announced the finding that over 80% of cell phone users don’t even look at the ads, let alone respond.

LONG IS IN

Fendi went to great lengths with their new luxe collection. Finally, after months of paperwork and jumping through bureaucracy hoops, the LMVH Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton luxury arm has pulled off what seemed like quite a stretch: an elaborate Fall/Winter fashion show that used the Great Wall of China as the actual runway — a first for both Fendi and the Wall.

While the footage is kinda boring (that’s 1,500 miles worth of still-faced runway strutting), the show was nonetheless impressive, a majestic red-and-black affair masterminded by legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld.

As the fashion industry if finally starting to drool over China’s 1.3 billion consumers, it’s only fitting that such an enormous market would warrant such an enormous publicity stunt: $10-million-enormous, to be exact. (That’s 4 30-second Super Bowl spots.)

And on another note from the ridiculously unnecessary expenditures department, we sure hope all those light bulbs were CFL’s.

MINIMALISM FOR THE TIME-INSENSITIVE

Time. It’s all kinds of evil: it turns relatively fresh thinking into old news, it flies when we want it to limp, and it makes concepts like “late for work” exist in the first place. And for those of us who choose to take it more lightly, more loosely, or just outright ignore it, this week’s product pick is for you: the temporally liberated aesthetes.

The 900 ABACUS watch is a keeper. Not of time, necessarily, but of all kinds of cool. The ball, just like you, is completely free to do whatever it likes. But as soon as the watch gets in the horizontal position, magnets draw it to the actual time reading.

At just $153.47, it has all the makings of a watchy watch: made in Germany with premium quartz, sapphire glass face, luxury leather strap and stainless steel case. It’s also sweat- and water-resistant up to 30 meters (that’s 98 feet for the metrically challenged) — although, unlike Lance Armstrong, this one-ball wonder doesn’t seem quite like a winner in any athletic or aquatic pursuit.

AS SEEN IN PHILLY

Spotted in the lobby of The Fresh Grocer up on 40th & Walnut: a curious poster by the Slought Foundation urging people, just like we did last week, to look up: a gigantic portrait was plastered on the facade of the building’s 5-story parking lot. (It wasn’t there when we look, must’ve mistimed it.)

Turns out, it’s promoting the Slought Foundation’s October 11 event “Conversations with Braco Dimitrijevic’s ‘The Casual Passer-By I Met…’”

Artist Braco Dimitrijevic started a series of installations titled “Casual Passer-By” in 1971 and went global with it. He uses advertising media like billboards, banners and public transportation vehicles as a cultural gallery for his iconic portraits of random strangers he encounters and photographs in the street.

Interesting stuff.

Things To Look At, Things To See

Snobby sorbet, bands in town, circus in Brooklyn, the looked-at unseen, global warming in aisle 9, an imaginary nail in the record industry’s coffin, and how Google is saving the world while, you know, taking over it. Welcome to the Things To Look At, Things To See issue.

BETA WAY TO GET AROUND

Okay, most of us geek types can already recite Google Labs’ project list in their sleep and madly worship the Labs graduates (say, Docs & Spreadsheets, GOOG-411, Scholar and, of course, Google Earth.) But we’re particularly goo-ga over the latest one.

Google Transit, naturally in Beta (as, by the way, good ol’ Gmail still is), helps you get around town without using a car. Just plug in your starting point and your destination, and you’re on your way. (How does it feel to walk in those shrunken-carbon-footprint feet?) The neat service uses Google Maps to get bike/walk route ideas and directions using public transporation down to the specific bus route number, the cost of the trip and the estimated travel time.

Alas, this transportation genius is only available in 19 US cities — and Japan (?!) But we know how fast the Google folks can churn out their magic (yep, if you haven’t gathered by now, we’ve been drinking the Goolaid), so no doubt Philly will make the cut at some point. (Especially given our very own Septa already has a similar but much more low-tech service on their website that can only benefit from being picked up by high-traffic, high-buzz Google.)

We only have one question — given the brilliance of the serivce itself, how come no one in Mountain View had the same “d’oh” moment we did and thought of the oh-so-obvious bike-tires-over-two-O’s logo? Do we have to come up with everything? Come on now.

OFF-ISLAND FASHION

Trailing behind the buzzing publicity beehive that was New York Fashion Week, Brooklyn Fashion Weekend kicks off today at Empire-Fulton State Ferry Park. It’s a showcase for emerging design talent (including unforgettable character Malan Breton from Project Runway 3) and a chance for fashionistas to get the goods before they get hit the way-out-of-95-percent-of-the-population’s-budget price range.

This year’s event, themed Circus Couture, is part theatrical magic, part runway (and part major Target sponsorship).

Behind the show is the BK Style Foundation, a non-profit inspired by the recognition that Brooklyn is brimming with artists and underexposed talent. The org aims to assist young desingers in building and bettering their lines, while also providing a professional backdrop for business. And because they’re a non-profit, proceeds from the show end up in various charity causes.

That should make you feel a little better about shelling out a year’s lunch money on one of Malan’s creations.

FRASIER’S FAVORITE DESSERT

Although it may not feel like it around here these days (yes, it is always sunny — and warm — in Philadelphia and Al Gore was probably right that we’re on our way to bathing in a soup of melted glaciers and our own sweat), summer’s winding down. Time to trade in the sherbet for that alluring glass of oh-so-autumny cabernet sauvignon.

Wait, wait. Now you can do both, thanks to Wine Cellar Sorbets: “The adult desert for sophisticated palates.”

The concept is the brainchild of wine-head-meets-culinary-artist David Zablocki and scientist-with-an-MBA Bret Birnbaum, a couple of childhood friends from Queens. Today, the two vinopreneurs have various stores in New York, New Jersey and Florida already carrying their creation, their sorbets are served in a bunch of upscale restaurants, they’ve been covered by a number of top-tier magazines, and they cater private A-list events.

All sorbets are seasonal and come from vintages, varietals and viticulture regions from where the wines were produced. On top of all the flavors already available, the sorbet sommelier is planning to make Tuscan Sangiovese and Port Wine Sorbet paired with a dark chocolate top hat.

Mouth watering, drool may drip on keyboard. Must step away.

UNTRIVIA

You may remember last year when a non-profit called RenewUS set out to mobilize people to get their energy from alternative sources and pressure their utilities providers to make those available. A pretty hefty task, you may say. RenewUS made quite a bit of buzz in the eco-blogging community with their envirol video.

And then they disappeared.

Well, turns out, they didn’t. They just rebranded as ClimateCounts, “a collaborative effort to bring consumers and companies together in the fight against global climate change,” and set out to fight global warming from the bottom up. Maybe they realized people need easy, actionable everyday changes to start making a difference, and the whole face-off with utilities companies may have been just a bit much.

So ClimateCounts started simple: they measured the carbon footprints of common household brands so consumers can start making a difference right at the store. So far, they’ve got 56 companies — they started with the most popular ones — but the list is growing. They ranked them using a 22-criteria scoring system, assessing 4 key benchmakrs: how the company measures its carbon footprint (22 posible points), how much they do to reduce it (56 points), how they support (or whether they try to block) progressive climate legislation (10 points), and how publicly transparent they are about all that (12 points). As a result, brands scored red (“Stuck”), yellow (“Starting”), or green (“Striding”) based on their overall score out of the possible 100 points. Here’s a topline of the scorecard‘s best and worst performers:

Top Striders: Cannon (77/100), Nike (73/100), Unilever (71/100), IBM (70), Toshiba (66), Stonyfield Farms (63)

Top Stuckers: Wendy’s, Jones Apparel Group, Darden Restaurants, CBS, Burger King, Amazon (all zilch)

On each company’s profile, there’s even an easy-email button to let the company CEO climate efforts are important. And just so you’re in the know when you’re in the store, you can download the ranking pocketpiece or the full-blown scorecard.

Worth mentioning: the entire non-profit is funded by Stonyfield Farms and Clean Air – Cool Planet. But despite the company affiliation, this sounds like the real thing: Stonyfield Farms has been donating 10% of their profits to, well, non-profits since their very inception, and they were also the ones who produced, quietly and publicitly-stunt-free, the aforementioned RenewUS A Crisis Averted film last year. (Not to mention the objectivity oozing from the fact they were ranked number 6, not 1.) We can help but get a bit warm and fuzzy when we see such a rare, genuine just-get-out-and-do-it approach.

IMAGINE

With the record industry ashambles these days, bands , artists and musicologists alike are looking for new ways to publish and relate to talent. There’s podcasting, free-market album sales, open-source remixing for legal sharing, and more.

But one music dream machine is taking things to a whole new level. Imaginary Albums is an “imaginary place dedicated to the imaginary dissemination of excellent music: full albums encoded at high quality, and available for free download.”

And by “excellent” they mean really, really what-are-the-major-labels-thinking-not-signing-this-band good. Like The Harvey Girls, whose eponymous album is a deep dive into melodic melancholy with a tint of snarky liveliness, all brilliantly harmonized. Or Laura Palmer‘s curious instrumental interpretation of still life. (Who knew acoustic guitar and an alarm clock could make sweet inanimate love together.) Or Tiny Creatures‘ bizarre-yet-brilliant foray into sonic electro-lounge.

As you’ll notice, a lot of this music is very experimental. And a lot of it you may hate. But here’s the thing with mainstream record labels (and perhaps the reason they’re no longer king in music culture): a long, long time ago they’ve stopped caring about the progressive, left-of-center players and have instead eaten themselves into blobs of Top-40-sales fat, sitting idly in a comfort zone of mainstream taste and lowest-common- denominator demand.

Sure, it’s the mainstream’s taste that drives a lot of music culture, but if “the mainstream” never gets exposed to novelty, controversy and a level of discomfort, that taste never gets the chance to grow. It’s a vicious cycle. An open-exchange market free of corporate constraints may just be the only way to put compelling conversation back into music culture.

Imagine that.

GIGS TO GO

While we’re on the music note, every once in a while we come across an underrated but super-utilitarian new service. Like Bands In Town — a social media outlet for the music-obsessed. Despite the leaves-something-to-be-desired interface, the actual service is pretty nifty (and rather similar to iConcertCal, which you may recall from way back in the Brain Pickings 1.0 days) and simple: just fill in a bunch of your favorite bands and artists (the little wiz already knows your location from the IP address) and you’re good to go. (Or, if you have Last.fm — which you may also remember from the extensive praises we sang it back in the day — BandsInTown lets you automatically synch with your existing music profile.)

You get a tag cloud of upcoming shows near you, then you can narrow it down by when you wanna see a concert (tonight only or not), distance from the city, max price range, and label type (unsigned, indie or major). You can also filter results by genre or tag. Needless to say, all the goodness is free. (Sign of the times, no? Social connectivity services could never live on a paid-subscription model now, great news for advertisers, especially the behavioral-targeting-smart ones.)

Okay, we just found out Madeleine Peyroux (oh, only the best neo-French jazz vocal to come by in decades) is coming to South Orange, NJ next month, so we’re off to plotting that getaway. Who’s in?

AS SEEN IN PHILLY

It’s frightening how, buried in our daily grind, we hardly ever look up and really see things. Just this week, we biked by something we’d passed a thousands times before but never noticed.

An unexpected gem tucked between Chinatown and crack row, this building stands proud right on high-traffic Callowhill as a delightful hallmark of the looked-at unseen.

Tomorrow, look up.

Flying with the Future while Mooning the Past

Air-fueled taxicabs, conspiracy theories, a very special fly, Ryan Seacrest, what L.L. Bean has on Budweiser, the world’s most expensive Phil Collins record, hypersonic travel, and butts. Welcome to The Flying-with-the-Future-while-Mooning-the-Past Issue.

DRIVING ON AIR

Brace yourselves, people, for this may be the best thing to happen to the planet since Al Gore.

A rather Jetsonian new car that runs on nothing but air was first conceived in 1993. Inventor Guy Nègre, who previously designed F1 engines, at French R&D company Moteur Developpement International spent the next decade on research, development, and funding hunts for the yet-to-be-produced miracle machine. But without factories built, the project couldn’t even take off. After some press buzz in 2000, things took a turn for the worse: in 2001, a Swedish investigative journalist called the whole thing a scam and, in 2003, MDI was practically bankrupt.

But persistence, like buying Google stock circa 2004, always pays off in the end. MDI has just signed a 5.5-billion-dollar deal with Tata Motors, India’s largest motor companies. Under its terms, 6,000 air cars are slated to hit the streets by August 2008.

Okay, time for Oz to come out. How does this whole shebang really work?

It’s true, it does run on air. Compressed Air Technology is the name of the game, the same stuff power tools have been running on for decades. The engine has 4 cylinders, like a regular car engine, but because there’s no combustion at all, 90% of it is made out of lightweight aluminum, the lower melting point of which prevents it from being used in a normal combustion engine. The cylinders themselves are made from carbon fiber, which, unlike the metal used in regular cylinders, doesn’t shatter into shrapnel in crashes and accidents. The air car can run on one tank, which only takes 3 minutes to refill at a compressed air station, for almost 2,800 miles. That’s a trip from New York to L.A., plus a few spare miles to drive around West Hollywood gawking at the trannies.

That’s all neat and all but, really, let’s ask the most important marketplace questions: how much and how fast?

The final models are expected to max out at 69 miles per hour. Not exactly street racing fare, but perfect given they’ll be urban vehicles, mostly taxis, dwelling within city limits. And how much? They’re expected to start at $15,000. But get this: a regular gas car costs about $60 per week to fuel, a hybrid sets you back by $30, and an air car is just a few dollars. So they’re smarter than Smart Car, and don’t look nearly as ridiculous.

And speaking of, we’re tempted to spin a conspiracy theory, oh maybe something involving a Mercedes-Benz desire for US market domination maybe, as to why this clearly brilliant, pollution-reducing, cost-efficient concept is receiving hardly any press and certainly no billion-dollar deals on the oh-look-at-us-we’re-so-green US scene. But we’ll refrain.

THE PRODUCT LAUNCH THAT REALLY LAUNCHES

While we’re on the subject of Jetsonian stuff, the latest from Virgin entrepreneur (no, not in that Harvard Engineering guy way) Sir Richard Branson’s latest move on the much-hyped awhile ago project Virgin Galactic is as futuristic as they come. After signing a deal with NASA earlier this year, Virgin Galactic has finally chosen a winning design for its first 100,000-square-foot spaceport set to begin construction in 2008. Both the spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, are to be completed next year as well.

The $31-million spaceport will be built in New Mexico’s Mojave desert. Where, for those of you concerned with petty things like safety and, um, life, an SS2 prototype exploded on July 26, killing 3 people and injuring another 3. But that would too rational a concern for those willing to shell out an Ivy League education ($200,000, to be exact) on boarding the craft and aimlessly floating in ether for a bit.

Still, we’re not having too much trouble seeing the “cool” factor — imagine casually mentioning at your next dinner party that you’ve been on a hypersonic vehicle traveling five or more times the speed of sound. Which seems to us is the only real appeal anyway, given the folks at Virgin maintain that their 3-day pre-flight training program fully simulates the experience. So, um, if you can experience in 10 square feet what you can experience in a 200-grand getaway, why go?

Eh, but who are a few cheap bastards like us to stand in the way of progress and reckless spending? Make your own call.

We’ll give it this though — from a mail-order record retailer to a space travel agency, Virgin has gone a long way from selling the Dark Side of the Moon for $18.98 a pop to putting a $200,000 price sticker on it.

UNTRIVIA

With ever-growing online spending, it’s no surprise the fashion segment is sucking up some major e-dollars. Here’s a snapshot of how the top 10 big online guns in apparel and accessories are doing and (of course) why it matters:

1. eBay: $2.98 million total apparel and accessories sales in July, $35.83 average spend per shopper. Doesn’t hurt that they own some of the most powerful e-commerce tools — PayPal, Skype, shopping.com, and more.

2. Victoria’s Secret: $663,000 total, $177.74 average spend per buyer. But before you roll your eyes like we did and think it’s a bit much to spend on undies while at the same time welcoming a sign that less people are foregoing those, keep in mind there’s more to Victoria’s Secret than lingerie: after dumping Express and The Limited, the brand still includes Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, C.O. Bigelow, White Barn Candle Co. and La Senza.

3. J.C. Penney & Co.: $568,000 total, $68.65 per shopper. That’s a 17.4% growth in online sales for Q2, making a smartly entrepreneurial someone reach around his shaved-but-really-bald head, pat himself on the back, and feel the love.

4. Chadwick’s: $305,000 total, $62.15 per spender. Small wonder given they’re owned by French conglomerate PPR, the mother ship for Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta. The folks at Chadwick’s anticipate to have sold 750,000 dresses once summer wraps up. (Nope, not an inflated ego case — they were at about 500,000 end of August.) Let’s see, that’s 2 and a half dresses (kinda like two dresses and a skirt) to every 10 American women. Or a dress for every 2 1/2 out 10 American women. Kinda like a dress for every two women and Ryan Seacrest.

5. L.L.Bean: $271,00 total, $122.40 per shopper. With the exception of the underwear people, that’s an average spend per person almost double what the other top-fivers can claim, and more than triple (closer to quadruple, really) what top player eBay scores. Oh, and these folks give top online players even outside the apparel industry a run for their money — llbean.com gets over 2.3 million U.S. monthly unique visitors, half of what TV Guide’s massively promoted website boasts. (It also happens to be the exact number must’ve-been-hammered Anheuser-Busch execs anticipated for Bud.TV, only to end up with just 6% of that a mere month after its launch.)

6. Lands’ End: $263,000 total, $76.48 average spend. After being acquired by Sears in 2002, the retailer grew from the 100-products-plus-buncha-essays-and-travelogues it was in 1995 to a full-blown online shopping destination. Even so, they’ve got quite a bit to catch up with main clicks-and-mortar competitor L.L.Bean. (In 2000, actually, Lands’ End and L.L.Bean were the top two online apparel retailers, respectively, separated by less than one point in Forrester’s rankings. Way to drop the ball, Lands’ End.)

7. Coldwater Creek: $259,000 total, $182.71 per shopper. Seems like these folks (and their bottom line) were so happy with their ever-climbing online performance (how’s a 10% increase since last quarter?) that they sucked up the mind-blowing expenses of operating a store in Manhattan and just opened their first, sticking their flag on 15,000 square feet at Third Avenue and 68th Street.

8. Lane Bryant: $253,000 total, $60.50 average spend. Acquired by Charming Shoppers Inc. in 2001, the retailer’s online home seems to be doing just that. And in a plus-size category where fashion and fit must be like Starsky and Hutch, their smart new Right Fit technology seems to be, once again, just that with shoppers.

9. QVC: $204,000 total, $98.89 per spender. Named after terms out of a Marketing 101 textbook, these folks have managed to put a tangible, hefty price sticker on intangibles quality, value and convenience. And if you think of QVC as an outlet for washed-up celebs’ jewelry lines (we’re talking to you, Paula), reconsider: they carry Bradley Bayou, Pamela Dennis, Bob Mackie and Diva By Dana Buchman for apparel, and Dooney & Burke, Maxx New York, Etienne Aigner and Michael Michael Kors for accessories.

10. Kohl’s: $200,000 total, $84.26 average spend. And we’ll keep an eye on this one — unless you’ve been living under a brand rock, you know Vera Bradley signed a deal with Kohl’s awhile ago. Her Simply Vera line just kicked off to an understated but fourfold-outperforming-projections launch last week. And we’re pretty sure it’ll make competitors drop down the rankings like hemlines at this year’s Fashion Week.

Get the full scoop from the pros at Women’s Wear Daily.

But here’s why we care: turns out, some 15% of consumers are responsible for 1.5 billion brand impressions per day. Each of these 32 million “conversation catalysts” mentions a brand 184 times per week, on average. They dish out on a wide range of topics and industries, with media and entertainment getting the most tongue time at 16 mentions per week. But get this: fashion and retail get over 10 weekly mentions. And these WOM moguls are not your expected chatty herd of 20-somethings: 37% of them are boomers.

So, combined with the fact that WOM is more likely to move women to action than men, it’s starting to dawn on us that, perhaps, a large portion of the business on the above retail fat-cat websites, who in reality sell more to women than to men, is driven by a small percentage of middle-aged consumers. Kind of helps make sense of why the whole ooh-let’s-make-a-Sears-brand-island-in-Second-Life platform that’s been the trend this year is only populating the virtual world with ghost towns creepier than Harry Potter doing erotica.

BACKLESS COUTURE GOES SOUTH

And speaking of erotica, while we’re still (sort of) on the too-much-(for)-underwear note, there’s hope for those who want to reconcile their love for fine lingerie with their desire, well, not to wear any.

If expensive thongs are too much of a trip back to grade school for you (bully takes lunch money, bully gives wedgie, you end up broke and uncomfortable), there’s an alternative. Thanks to N De Samim, a lady (or Ryan Seacrest) can shake her tailfeather without the aforementioned discomfort. Yep, it’s buttless underwear.

Inspired by 16th century France, when wearing undergarments was considered indecent because of how it accentuates the anatomy, designer Nona de Samim decided to give this concept a buttlift, although we suspect indecency was not their primary concern. In their own words, it “creates a private world. One that creates a passion, to provide an experience, [sic] only few can imagine.” Eh, we’ve imagined those anatomical features before. And they go on to promise “…a whole new way of seeing…more, a way of being.” We’ll give them the seeing more part.

But at 95 Euros (or $131.85, at today’s rate) apiece, we ask the obvious question: isn’t it easier, cheaper and more cost-efficient to just go comando? Be your own judge, if you can squint through what we’re now convinced is an optometrist-sponsored sea of 32-point Edwardian Script ITC.

FLY OFF THE WALL

And on a less offensive note, let’s check out one guy who makes art out of dead pest.

Nicholas Hendrickx, a recreational macro photographer and general creativist from Belgium, takes one dead fly where no dead fly has ever been. With a little bit of photo equipment (a Canon EOS 350D plus various accessories) and a whole lot of patience, Nic has created The Adventures of Mr. Fly, an astonishing photoessay of miniature brilliance.

From Mr. Fly’s wonderfully retro portrait, to his laid-back chill-out moment, to our personal favorite, his stint as a professional bum, the project is a testament to the power of a little bit of spare time and a seriously creative mind.

Nic also does other macro stuff, some of it just as fascinating and all of it just as unexpected. Like the case of Larry, who’s hotter than Ryan Seacrest finds a shirtless Chuck Norris.