THE IT IS IN THE BAG

Last week, we talked about the coolest, most bizarre bag company website ever. This week, we're taking a step back and look at the bag -- the accessory, the utilitarian aid, the medium -- from some fresh new angles.

Freddy & Ma (founder siblings Anthony and Amy Pigliacampo's childhood partners-in-crime nicks) is a rebellion against the mass-marketed fashions of today. The concept takes customization to an extreme: you get to pick your bag style (tote, pouch, bowler, clutch and more), the leather trimmings (black, white, tan, brown, maroon) and one of the thousands of patterns (retro, geometric abstract, minimalist, flashy, you name it).

Then they make it for you. Prices are anywhere between $85 and $340, depending on the "canvas" you pick. (The clutch is the cheapest, while the bowler is, well, a bowler.) Or, you can pick up one of their charity bags designed by ArtStart and CreateNow (community- and children-centric art non-profits) so that 30% of your bag money goes towards a good cause. (Not to say that expressing your individuality through a unique bag isn't a good cause in and of itself.)

And speaking of causes, this next bag has a big one: saving the planet, one bag at a time. By the numbers: of the 1000 plastic bags the average American family brings home per year, most end up in landfills, where they take up to 1000 years to decompose. So Baggu, much more than the glorified version of a Whole Foods canvas bag it first appears to be, has the solution. Using one Baggu for a year saves anywhere between 300 and 700 plastic bags. It holds 2-3 times the groceries one of those biolethal bags do. And its handles are so niftily designed they work on your shoulder, in your hand, on your forearm, or on the handlebars. Plus, they're light (2oz) but hold up to 25lbs.

The stylish Baggus come in 8 super-rich, vibrant colors, all machine-washable. One pack (a bag and a little pouch/purse) is just $8, or you can go super-saver and get 6 packs (plus a bonus drawstring one) for $38. Baggu was conceived in (where else?) California by a woman named Joan and her daughter Emily. Read their story and some more bag trivia.

So while on the subject of reusing, here's the coolest repurposed material ever: ship sails. Inspired by the surprising functionality of the industrial world's leftovers and the shamefulness of having it all go to waste in our disposable culture, two guys in Vancouver founded design studio Red Flag Design making stylish, utilitarian stuff out of industrial materials left behind. Their AUM line of recycled sailcloth bags is absolutely amazing. Each bag is handmade and no two are alike, both design-wise and in terms of stories they tell of the lands they've sailed in past lives.

PAPER SHMAPER

If Google's involved in something, you know that something is, or is going to be, hot as balls. Right now, the Big G and the FCC are crossing light sabers over mobile airwaves. But despite all that brouhaha, few seem to be doing anything truly innovative that anyone outside the marketing/advertising microcosm gives a hoot about.

A few weeks ago, we told you about Jott, the free service that lets you speak mental notes into your phone when you're on the go, then emails them to you. This week, we're picking up the mobile gadgetry pace and bringing you a service that utilizes the phone's camera phone and MMS.

scanR lets you "turn your camera phone into a scanner, copier and fax." Basically, it lets you snap pictures of business cards, white boards and any type of documents, then emails them to you in a searchable pdf form. And it's - you guessed it - free. We know, We know. You wish you had scanR in high school so you could focus less on taking notes (snap that blackboard, baby) and more on passing them.

scanR uses proprietary image-processing technology designed specifically for a mobile platform, bringing you the most accurate image-to-text conversion possible. These guys know what they're doing - scanR's founders come from Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Internet Pictures and Kodak. And we think they're on to something.

Plus, anything that helps eliminate paper is automatically in our jolly good graces. We're particularly digging the concept of digitizing business cards into a pdf database of contacts - these pesky little glorified pieces of paper are the makings of serious desktop clutter and, seriously, Rolodex? That's the office equivalent of big hair and leotards.

SIZEABLE DIFFERENCE

Five-foot flatscreens. Morbid obesity. SUV's that can house a third-world family. In this day and age of endless supersizing, who better to counter the trend than those best known for fighting the mainstream throughout history? Artists. Namely, two of them: Jon Buonaccorsi and Shea'la Finch. In 2004, they started a modest initiative by the name of Tiny Showcase.

The idea: provide a forum where artists and art enthusiasts can meet and share their talent with the world...without inducing the typical art gallery sticker shock. They began to experiment with smaller art prints so that artists could still make money and art enthusiasts could indulge their cravings at the price of a book or a CD. They found a cool little digital reproduction arthouse in Rhode Island that uses UltraChrome ink to print the artwork on 310gsm acid-free Hahnemühle German Etching Paper, giving it a lifespan of 60 years. Each week, they pick a new piece submitted by one of their users and make 100 limited-edition prints to sell. At $20-30 a pop, these stunning pieces make it so much easier to be a struggling art snob.

In 2005, Tiny Showcase decided to help change the world in more ways than countering the mainstream: they began to donate a portion of each print's sales to a charity chosen by the artist. Artists choose anything from The Climate Project to UNICEF to the San Diego SPCA, and everything in between. So check out their prints gallery and the other goodies up for sale. Your dinner party guests are sure to gush at your unique choice, and some starving Somalian child is sure to appreciate it. Then maybe one day he'll get adopted by Madonna and tell her about your great contribution and she'll call you to personally thank you and Guy Richie will yell another "THANK YOU" across the room and offer to cast you in his next non-bad movie and you'll say "I do what I can" in a pseudo-modest voice and hope he keeps his word, which he will, and then you'll have even more things to talk about with your friends when they come to gush at your art print.

But until that day arrives, check out some of our favorites.

UNTRIVIA

All that scramble to get into the 18-to-25 set's heads, and sometimes the most revealing insights come from the most shallow of sources. In the must-have-now world of today's kids, wallets may speak louder than brains. According to the National Retail Federation, this year's back-to-school college market is slated to hit $47.3 billion. The per-student average, at $956.93, is up significantly since last year's $880.52. (Graduation-gift-card-loaded frosh will shell out the most, at $1,193.60, while sophomores are the slumpiest at $748.29.)

And where are these super-spenders living? Oddly enough, almost half (49.7%) are crashing with mom and dad. Over a quarter (28.6%) are living it up off campus, a fifth (18.7%) are staying on college grounds, and a tiny segment is going Greek in frat and sorority houses. But before you get all caught up in your dorky dorm dweller stereotypes, guess who's outspending everyone else: dorm dwellers. They'll be shelling out $1,529.45 on average to get stuff for college, which is a lot more than off-campusers (1,161.98) and almost twice as much as homebodies ($774.86).

Here's the projected spending in each of the major categories:

Clothing & accessories: $7.41 billion (up from last year's $5.78 billion)

Electronics(laptops, digital cameras, iPhones and other cell phones): $12.8 billion

Shoes: $2.96 billion

School supplies (notebooks, folders and pencils): $3.14 billion

Dorm & apartment furnishings: $5.43 billion (up from last year's $3.82 billion thanks to heavy in-store youth-focused promotions). That's also the category college kids will spend the most in, at an average of $158.61 per person.

Oddly enough, textbooks, the most quintessential college necessity (although some frat boys we know would disagree), only get a $15 billion chip of the market. Well, at least some kids are going to college to study. Unless, that is, they use their textbooks to do this.

Some hot trends this year: colored laptops (no worries, they'll upgrade to Macs as they get older, wiser and more hipstery), slick cell phones and edgy furniture. (Not so hot: big hair and leotards.)

THESE MODELS DON'T SNORT COKE

There's something incredibly whimsical, hypnotic almost, about photographer Catherine Lender's animal portraits. The highly impactful compositions have a way of contrasting the simplicity of the "model" with the complexity of the background, producing something that says "frame" rather than "farm."

We absolutely loved them all, but we found some particularly striking: a can't-decide-if-it's-playful-or-creepy cat, a shy armadillo, a very happy (or angry?) monkey, a pensive penguin, and a sad something we're not quite sure about.

Catherine also has a refreshing take on the celebrity portrait, like this bright yet very, very dark shot of Christina Richie. In fact, all of her work in the ordinary categories of business, lifestyle, kids, etc. is anything but. Take a look and decide for yourself.

Meanwhile, we're jumping on the waitlist for her forthcoming volume of animal portraits, Animal House, set to hit Amazon's cyber shelves on September 18.

DUST OFF YOUR LEATHER PANTS

Screw doctors and lawyers. (Not the way your mother would insinuate you should, the figurative way.) Could advertising folk be the new rock stars of the American workforce?

A few weeks ago, we introduced Mad Men, AMC's now-hit drama about Madison Avenue in the 1960's. Besides the glamorized characters, the exquisite accuracy of the set and the props, and the compelling writing, the show also features 30-second video interviews with living advertising legends and advertising-related trivia spliced into commercial breaks. Critics, apparently, are loving it. And audiences are tuning in at rates making AMC history, with 1.2 million watching the premiere and an avalanching audience size as the season is progressing.

Then TNT just ordered a pilot for a new series called Truth In Advertising from Nip/Tuck and The Closer executive producers Greer Shephard and Michael Robin.

Other networks are exploring advertising as entertainment in the 2.0 domain: USA is launching Didja.com, a portal for good advertising contemporary and classic, in early 2008. This follows last year's launch of Verryfunnyads.com, an ad-centric extension of TBS's "Very Funny" campaign. NBC Universal and News Corp. are also in the process of jointly launching a broadband network that will feature advertising as entertainment, among other video.

Oh and there was that Bruce Willis / Halle Berry movie earlier this year about the dark side of an ad agency. (Granted, we heard it sucked. And Halle Berry didn't even show her boobies. Which would have made it suck considerably less.)

And let's not forget Honeyshed, Dave Droga's brainchild dubbed a "celebration of advertising as culture." Who better to represent our world to the masses than those most passionate about it? And speaking of the masses, how about all that "consumer generated content" shebang? There may be more to this relatively recent phenomenon than average Joes trying to juice Kraft and Unilever for money. Perhaps people are beginning to see advertising as a form of expression, a way to project their passion for the brands they identify with and badges they use to define themselves.

Point is, there seems to be a powerful new interest in advertising that goes far beyond our tiny microcosm. And it's multidimensional, too -- it's no longer just about the few chuckles at the Super Bowl. From the complex dramas to the slapstick videos to the love-inspired brand content shot with a shaky camcorder, it seems like the richer, deeper tones of everything that goes into advertising -- the creativity, the everyday fun, the business back end -- are beginning to surface in the ever-tumultuous ocean that is pop culture. Which is fine by us -- someone's gotta wear that studded leather jacked sitting in our closet.