1. Nikola Tesla, inventor, was as enigmatic a character as you could find. He invented the radio, created modern electricity, and fiddled with wireless communication. Two-hundred-some-odd patents and many of his inventions weren't even registered. He never really got his due.

Below The Radar: His list is extremely long, but also diverse: robotics, ozone repletion systems, superconductors, and VTOL aircraft. (Not to mention a particle beam.)

Over-Exposed: The most egregious instance is probably Tesla, the band, and the song "Edison's Medicine."

Penalty Box: He is rising back to the top a bit. David Bowie played him in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige and Jack White speaks his praise.

2. Mark Wahlberg, actor/producer, has been building a great resume while everyone else has been cracking Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch jokes. Guess who's laughing now?

BTR: Remember The Basketball Diaries? Then there was Dirk Diggler.

OE: Three Kings and The Perfect Storm were good. But Planet of the Apes was ridiculous. Hey, Hollywood, don't remake classics; it'll never be better (or comparable) to the original.

PB: He kept I Heart Huckabees afloat, made Invincible bearable (if not enjoyable), and ran with the big boys in The Departed. Oh yeah, and he's executive producer of Entourage.

3. Protest music, in the mainstream, has been conspicuously missing for a while. The bubble burst in the late Sixties and we haven't sincerely tried again since. Anti-war music was important and enjoyable back then. Now we get "Dear Mr. President" from Pink?

BTR: Folk music was being passed around and around, until it started to pick up steam.

OE: In 1965, Barry McGuire hit Number 1 with "Eve of Destruction." From Dylan to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the wave had crested and fallen by the early 70's.

PB: Efforts have been made by some notable artists to include their politics into their music, but generally labels just want to sell. And politics doesn't sell. At least not to everyone.

4. eBay, an auction website, seemed a bit quirky and unrealistic at the start. Bidding on items seemed more tedious than just buying them. But it was the platform needed to create the worldwide garage sale.

BTR: The idea hovered just below the mainstream for years. It was a punchline and a relative unknown.

OE: Stores opened up catering to eBay sellers. People started getting bid-crazed, hawking the site all hours of the day. It got too big for it's own briches.

PB: Now it is relegated to the redheaded step-child of e-commerce status. Don't worry though, it's not going anywhere.

5. Sundance, the film festival, has for years been the hidden treasure hunter of the film industry. Robert Redford had great vision when he saw the need for this independent safe haven.

BTR: Originally, it provided an alternative to the big-budget films. The Coen Brothers' Blood Simple and Steven Soderbergh's Sex, lies and videotape were just some of the early highlights.

OE: As the festival started to produce major filmmakers, like Kevin Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino, the showcase started to attract too many eyes. It became a playground for Hollywood scouting and industry mechanization.

PB: Sometimes cynics view Sundance as merely the launching pad for Hollywood success, but what makes the festival important is it's independent spirit. That spirit will be around for a while.

6. Headphones, as opposed to earbuds, were once the darling of the music listener and then, all of the sudden, weren't good enough. The Walkman popularized the personal speakers and the iPod ruined them.

BTR: The privacy of headphones allowed for a total immersion into music. The boom box was no longer necessary.

OE: The sight of headphones can range from quirky to downright overbearing. They aren't pretty sometimes, but they do their job.

PB: Earbuds allow for no better sound quality, but a generally clean look. On the other hand, regular earphones are clunky but efficient. You chose.

7. Julianne Moore, actor, may have had a career so sweeping that we didn't even realize we had been overexposed at all. A silent spring of fame.

BTR: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, The Fugitive, Boogie Nights, and The Big Lebowski. Then SNL came calling.

OE: Again I reiterate: remakes of classics are futile. And Psycho proved it once again. Hannibal was another unnecessary reach.

PB: Her withdrawal back into non-blockbusters has provided some better roles, as in The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio and Children of Men.

8. Bill Russell, basketball player/player-coach, had a habit of winning everything. College, check, Olympics, check, NBA, check.

BTR: Defense gets no publicity. Neither does a black man in a white man's town.

OE: If after winning eleven NBA championships in your 13 seasons no one is taking notice, there isn't much more you can do. Now you just wait for it to set in.

PB: It's more fun to talk about Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird, but Russell is the NBA. Even Jerry West, Mr. NBA, said in 1967, “If I had a choice of any basketball player in the league, my No.1 choice has to be Bill Russell. Bill Russell never ceases to amaze me.”

9. The Beat generation, a 1950's subculture of writers, was a small, but highly influential group. They questioned authority before it was safe to (see: the hippies) and were the original slackers and drifters.

BTR: The undercurrent of change that the Beat writers espoused was starkly contrasting to the rigid, controlling time in US history. The hedonistic urges of the Beats opened up the squares to younger, more open opinions. And unlike the Lost Generation, the Beats didn't leave for Europe when things got rough.

OE: I guess Maynard G. Krebs was the caricaturized version of the beatnik crowd. Once the mainstream got a hold of the finger-snapping, goatee-sporting Bob Denver character, there would be no furthering the Bohemian movement.

PB: The ambition to intellectualize the original counter-movement was a noble quest, but the brutal honesty of their writing was the redeeming quality that needs to be renewed.

10. Roller skates, not roller blades, were once dominant in society. Roller rinks were primetime in the disco era.

BTR: The roller skates were transportation and exercise, pastime and sport. I think I would have enjoyed waiting tables much more with eight wheels.

OE: Roller derby was as silly as it got, closely edging out roller-musicals like Starlight Express and Xanadu.

PB: Somewhere along the way, inline skates took over as the preferred method and roller skates stepped aside. But they still have a place in the roller-world for traditionalists.

Honorable Mention: Surfing, Clint Eastwood (director), Robert Johnson, Thomas Paine, musicals, Swiss Army knives, The Strokes, Georgia O'Keefe, Life (the cereal), Michael Crichton, three-party democracy, MacGyver, comedy, Bottle Rocket, toothpicks, Jon Stewart, dance halls, X Games.