Boxboy

"Thinking outside the box" can help you succeed in almost any profession, except miming, because seriously, no one shelled out 35-cents to see the rope-pulling routine. Thinking outside the box to make...boxes: BoxBoy.

Out of the weirdest parts of Mount Vernon, VA, BoxBoy is the evil genius of the stash-sized curio box world: a graphic arts-schooled likely clown fetishist who creates deliriously decorative "demented decoupage" under the motto "Comfort the disturbed/Disturb the comfortable". Mostly hovering under $20, designs generally range from nostalgically creepy (Charlie Brown and Tweety Bird posing next to skeletal versions of themselves), to trippy (Jimi Hendrix exhaling psychedelic waves and pointing right at you on "Touching My Soul"), to sacrilegious: a smiling Jesus revealing a Superman costume under his billowing robe, making His walking on water somewhat less impressive. Other boxes celebrate stars of stage and screen, like Joan Crawford, Dave Chapelle, the Golden Girls, Rocky, 2007 American Idol finalist Gina Glockson ("It's Gina Time!!"), and Godzilla (flanked by Perry Mason and Rodin's Thinker as he saves Buddy Holly from the airplane); the aforementioned clowns are extensively repped, most hilariously by "Evil Clowns Need Love Too", on which a joker embraces a shirtless male model, clearly trying to convince the guy to show It to him.

Because he's old-fashioned, BoxBoy handles orders via email. If your preferred design's already sold out, he'll craft you a similar one, and he can also cook you up a personalized box, counseling "Nothing is off-limits, so don't be bashful in your requests" -- to spur your imagination, simply turn to that which you will probably be storing inside the box.