POP CULTURE: ASK MEN- TOP 10 STATUS GADGETS

Top 10: 2009 Status Gadgets

Think an iPhone will still impress? Pick up these 10 gadgets in order to have envious eyes looking your way.

By Adam Weinberg,

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This article is sponsored in part by Lexus (What's this?)

From the business world to your immediate group of friends, guys are always trying to one-up each other through their gadgets. In any walk of life where status is important, our personal electronic accessories have always essentially been an extension of personal success. In a market like gadgets that is always evolving, improving and upgrading, your slick and new device may have become nothing more than ordinary by the time you unbox it.

This list of the top 10 2009 status gadgets is designed as a road map to point out what will be some of the most exclusive, talked about, elite gadgets of the coming calendar year. Whether you’re looking for something to show off or just to enjoy the newest and greatest electronics, these status pieces are worth the attention.

Page 2: mypressi TWIST

Price: $129.00

What is it: A sophisticated and compact portable espresso machine that can offer up barista-level coffee anywhere, anytime.

What makes it elite: Espresso no longer has to be associated with big hulking machines and slow-moving coffee shop lines. This stylish gas-cartridge-powered gadget can deliver a flawless shot of caffeine any time you need it. The mypressi TWIST requires no batteries or wire hookups, and it works with your favorite ground blend or a ready to use E.S.E pod to give you plenty of beverage options.

Page 3: Samsung HMX-R10 HD Camcorder

Price: $500.00

What is it: This gadget takes the latest mini HD camcorder craze and supercharges it with high-end features and renowned Samsung style.

What makes it elite: Most compact HD recorders shoot in 720p and have minimal internal storage -- not the HMX-R10. This tiny powerhouse has a 5x zoom that shoots in full 1080p resolution and has a 2.7” LCD touchscreen. Besides the HD filming, the camera is also capable of capturing still photos with up to 9MP. The otherworldly design is both eye-catching and functional, giving you 25 more degrees of field vision for more natural images.

Page 4: Onkyo Bluetooth iPod Headphones

Price: $270.00

What is it: These padded headphones deliver high-quality sound minus the annoying, tangling wires of your standard iPod earbuds.

What makes it elite: Being able to ditch those restrictive white cords isn't the only benefit of using Onkyo Bluetooth iPod Headphones. Specifically, they were designed with a recording-studio-level frequency response time of 50Hz to 20Hz for superior clarity. The whole gadget is encased in a stylish metallic shell, which is a serious upgrade from the clunky plastic you are used to shoving in your ears. The battery life on the Onkyo headphones is an impressive eight hours, allowing you to listen to wireless audio for the duration of a long cross-Atlantic flight.

Page 5: Jawbone PRIME

Price: $130.00

What is it: Aliph’s coveted Bluetooth headsets get a boost in both function and form with the technologically impressive Jawbone PRIME.

What makes it elite: With unique features like the Noise Assassin, no single Bluetooth device is better at canceling out environmental interference and supplying top-notch audio quality. For on-the-go users, Aliph has introduced digital wind reduction for the Jawbone PRIME, making it easy to hold a clear conversation while outside walking or driving on a crowded freeway. For the color-minded status-conscious, this gadget is also offered in a bold array of hues, such as red, yellow and purple.

Page 6: Livio Radio

Price: $150.00

What is it: A poshly designed radio that can stream unlimited music from websites such as Pandora to anywhere you have access to the internet.

What makes it elite: This is the most stylish innovation in internet music services. With built-in Wi-Fi and ethernet capabilities, the Livio Radio gives you easy access to over 11,000 sites and lets you customize your musical preferences by rating each song as it plays. With additional audio inputs for digital music players like the iPod or Zune, the Livio Radio offers endless personal music options with next-generation sensibilities.

Page 7: Dell Latitude E6400 XFR

Price: $4,300.00

What is it: A powerhouse laptop that was engineered from the bottom up to withstand the toughest environments you can throw at it. The rugged and rough exterior gives way to a proficient beast of a computer within.

What makes it elite: There aren't many laptops that are made out of a Ballistic Armor Protection System, but that is exactly what the XFR is. With double the strength of the strongest magnesium alloy models, and a higher drop rating than any other laptop available today, the Latitude is damn near indestructible. The PrimoSeal technology makes the computer virtually invincible to dust, wind and liquid, while protecting the Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 14.1” impact-resistant LCD screen inside.

Page 8: HTC S743

Price: $490.00

What is it: A multimedia-loaded compact smartphone that manages to pack in a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard while still retaining its slim form.

What makes it elite: Located beneath the sleek exterior of the HTC S743 is a Windows Mobile-running smartphone that is as adept at handling business applications as it is personal activities. The robust connectivity of the HTC S743 includes built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth support, GPS navigation, and national 3G network usage. The 3.2MP camera shoots both still and video images in bold resolution, with easy uploading and sharing.

Page 9: Omega 2009 Ploprof Diver's Watch

Price: $7,700

What is it: A modern update on the professional diver’s watch, the Omega 2009 Ploprof is the culmination of four years' worth of development and 40 years of history.

What makes it elite: The Omega 2009 Ploprof is more watertight than a military grade submarine, and features elegant and refined pieces such as a coaxial Caliber 8500, a security push lock and a stainless steel case that is ocean-resistant for up to almost 4,000 feet. In fact, the attractive band on the Ploprof is actually made entirely of shark-proof mesh.

Page 10: Nikon D5000

Price: $850.00

What is it: This digital camera bridges the divide between point-and-shoot devices and pro-level DSLRs. The Nikon D5000 is loaded with all the high-end features reserved for complex upper-echelon cameras, but without the high degree of execution

What makes it elite: When it comes to innovation, the Nikon D5000 has it in spades. Starting with the 12.3MP sensor that can shoot not only amazingly clear resolution photography but also high-definition video, this camera is packed with options and capabilities. Thankfully, Nikon has taken a page from the most successful compact digital cameras by allowing you to control the D5000 through an easy and attractive 2.7” LCD touchscreen. This interface puts things like 11-point autofocus with 3D tracking, ISO 6400 and numerous scene modes at the tip of your fingers, and is beyond simple to operate.

Page 11: BeoVision 9

Price: $19,000.00

What is it: A cutting-edge 50” plasma HDTV from the innovating minds at Bang & Olufsen.

What makes it elite: Besides being one of the most uniquely designed flat-panel sets ever created, the super luxurious BeoVision 9 features an integrated center channel speaker with an acoustic lens and an automatically calibrated picture. After every 120 hours of viewing, the BeoVision 9 uses a robotic white balance arm to optimize your TV’s picture quality. In addition to a silver and black color configuration, Bang & Olufsen will also be releasing limited quantities of frames in red and blue.

POP CULTURE: ACCIDENTAL CELEBRITY CAREERS

ACCIDENTS ARE USUALLY CONSIDERED NEGATIVE THINGS, RIGHT? RIGHT. WELL NOT IN THE CASE OF THESE SEVEN CELEBS. NO, NO, NO, THESE LUCKY BASTARDS LANDED THE BIG TIME WHILE NOT EVEN TRYING TO. GO FIGURE. LOL. ENJOY

Hollywood is filled with plenty of rags to riches stories. Jim Carey worked as a janitor, Demi Moore was a debt collector, Brad Pitt used to wear a chicken suit while handing out fliers and Sharon Stone worked (works?) at a McDonald's.

But some actors' beginnings can be attributed to not hard work, but sheer chance or accident. Such as...

Mel Gibson

Even though he's turned into a walking punchline the last few years, there's no denying Mel Gibson will go down as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history. His movies have made two billion dollars in the US alone and he's got two Oscars to go with it.

But Gibson's accidental stumble into stardom started in New York, where he was born (not Australia, as it turns out). Gibson's father, Hutton, filed a lawsuit against the city and won. After collecting his money, he moved his family to Australia. It was in this dingo-infested continent that a young Mel started to dabble in acting, and would get his big break due to a ridiculous, drunken stroke of luck.

What Happened?

Gibson went to the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. There he would perform in some stage productions, including the male lead in Romeo and Juliet, with Judy Davis as his co-star.

However, Gibson didn't consider a film career until a friend told him he needed a lift to audition for a movie. It was about a desolate, waste of a world in which gasoline is hunted by gay bikers.

Apparently, he still wasn't considering a film career, because the night before the audition, Gibson got into a drunken brawl at a bar. He dragged himself to the audition sporting a face full of fist shaped bruises. The director happened to catch sight of his sorry ass. Deciding that he already looked like he was living in a dystopian future, he asked him to come back because, as he put it, the film "needed freaks."

When Gibson did return, his wounds had healed into an unrecognizable mask of handsome manliness. The director asked Gibson to read for the only character who doesn't look like a blistered freak, and he landed the titular role in Mad Max , the franchise that would make him known around the globe.

Evangeline Lily

LOST is widely thought to have become a hit for two reasons: a twisting, confounding plot and an often-moist Evangeline Lilly.

After LOST debuted, Lilly immediately shot to the top of every list ever made to chart hotness, including Maxim's (twice) and FHM's. We guess she's a pretty good actress too, since she was nominated for a Golden Globe. Of course, all the fanfare could be short lived. Lilly announced that after LOST is over, she intends to put her career on hold and become a humanitarian.

What Happened?

Now usually when an actress claims to be a "humanitarian," it's because her agent had to explain to her that "vegetarian" is no longer socially-conscious enough, and "planetarium" is a type of building, and therefore also out of the question. But becoming a humanitarian isn't a stretch for Lilly. Before she was an actress, she was doing missionary work in the Philippines. After declining a two-year post, she became a flight attendant with Air Canada.

Things, however, changed one day when she was walking around Kelowna, British Columbia, and was spotted by a scout for the Ford modeling agency. She almost declined, but decided she needed the money to pay for school. While not actually doing any modeling for the company, she did do some acting for them

That's right: Kate, from LOST, used to star in phone sex ads in Canada. For a young ex-missionary, we'd imagine that starring in Canadian phone sex ads was as lonely and existentially terrifying as anything the LOST writers can think up to throw at her.

Marilyn Monroe

The quintessential blonde bombshell, Monroe was married to baseball great Joe DiMaggio, and romantically linked to the penises of men as famous as John F. Kennedy and Frank Sinatra (if you'd like to imagine an interlinking chain of penises here, we won't stop you). She posed nude for the first issue of some up-and-coming gentlemen's magazine called Playboy and showed up in some movies, too.

What Happened?

The original blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe was neither blonde nor named Marilyn Monroe, though her early career was closely linked to bombshells, oddly enough. Born a brunette named Norma Jeane Mortenson in LA, she spent her childhood moving between foster homes and orphanages.

When she grew up, Monroe worked at a munitions plant where she inspected parachutes and sprayed airplanes to make them fire retardant. It was at this plant that a photographer for YANK magazine (a publication intended to boost morale of troops overseas apparently through the magic of double entendres) snapped a photo of Monroe for the cover.

The photographer pointed out to her that she was smoking hot and had the kind of breasts that could change the world. So she took acting classes, cut and dyed her hair blond and became a legend.

So let that be a lesson: If some random guy shows up at your job and takes a picture of you, you should absolutely do whatever he says. He only wants what's best for you.

Rosario Dawson

If you're asking who Rosario Dawson is, then we feel sorry for you. Very sorry. But despite the misfortune of landing roles in The Adventures of Pluto Nash, The Rundown and Josie and the Pussycats, Dawson's built a pretty solid career.

Those shitty roles allowed her to later pick up parts in MIB II, Rent and she even showed us the goods in Alexander. Unfortunately she was wrestling a greased up Colin Farrell at the time, but the goods were, nevertheless, delightful. More roles in movies like Sin City, Grind House and Clerks II solidified her spot as an actress with some decent range.

What Happened?

Born in New York City to a 17-year-old mother, Dawson grew up in the Lower East Side, living by the ethos, in her own words: "If you wanted something better, you had to do it yourself." She may have picked up this ethos from her mom, as the apartment they grew up in was initially abandoned, and only became home when her mother broke into it. She may have a New York accent, a kickass body and a distinct absence of moonshine on her breath, but until the age of 17, Rosario Dawson was basically a hobo.

It should be noted, though, that when "something better" did come along, it had nothing to do with Rosario getting it herself. Rather, it had everything to do with her sitting on her extraordinarily sculpted ass in front of her (stolen) apartment.

While she was sitting on her front stoop, a photographer named Larry Clark, and a young screenwriter named Harmony Korine, walked up to her and told her that she would be perfect for one of the characters in his new screenplay. Try to keep in mind a few things about this exchange: Dawson had no acting experience whatsoever. Harmony Korine is the cracked-out mess in this Letterman interview. Larry Clark is a 66-year-old photographer whose favorite subjects are teenagers taking drugs and having sex. And guess what that screenplay she was just "perfect for" was about: One hundred odd pages jam packed with teenagers getting high and boning.

Instead of calling neighborhood watch, Dawson showed up to an audition, got the role and the movie ended up being Kids, launching her and Chloe Sevigny's careers at the same time. To any little girls reading this, we really can't stress enough how unlikely the ending to that story is. Forget a movie career, she's lucky she didn't end up in some impossibly creepy inter-generational version of Bang bus.

Pam Anderson

If Marilyn Monroe was our fathers' blonde bombshell, Pamela Anderson, no doubt, was ours. Many a young man remembers where they were when they first watched that glorious rack on a swing in Barb Wire (in their bedrooms with doors locked and shades pulled). As do they remember how many countless hours it took to download the grainy 10-second bits of her sex tape that were available online, only to witness Tommy Lee honking a boat horn with his dong.

Okay, okay, there's more to Pamela Anderson than her boobs and her questionable taste in men. She's worked with PETA on their anti-fur and vegetarian campaigns, and has participated in fundraisers to raise money in the fight against AIDS. So even if you still think she's just a big ol' pair of boobies, she at least has used said boobies for good and not evil.

What Happened?

Born somewhere in Canada, probably to a pack of Molson-drinking timber wolves, Anderson actually became famous for being Canada's Centennial Baby in 1967--the first baby born after the clock struck midnight on Canada's 100th birthday in which they celebrated banding together under one lunatic. Or something like that.

Upon graduating from high school, Anderson moved to Vancouver and became a fitness instructor. It was here that during a CFL game (that's Canadian Football League for anyone who cares) Anderson's image graced the jumbotron while she was wearing a Labatt's t-shirt. The crowd got one look at her legendary chest and freaked the hell out. She was brought down onto the field where she received a huge ovation. It's unclear if they kept playing the game at this point, or if anyone was coherent enough to notice, but we like to think that Canadian football games are called all the time for "crowd's inability to handle wicked hot girl shown on jumbotron."

Labatt's quickly signed her to a modeling contract and, soon, Hugh Hefner was knocking on her door to pose for his magazine. So, we guess there's something we can actually thank Canada for.

John Wayne

If Marilyn Monroe was the quintessential Hollywood Bombshell, John Wayne was the quintessential badass. Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Sly Stallone; all of them took lessons from The Duke.

Wayne would make himself a staple in the Western genre by starring in such films as The Searchers, The Alamo and True Grit. He also made his rounds in the War genre with films like The High and the Mighty, Island in the Sky and The Green Berets, a pro-Vietnam film. That's right; he just didn't give a shit.

By the time he was done, he would appear in 171 movies over 50 years. That's like one movie every three months.

What Happened?

Born Marion Robert Morrison (we'd go with John Wayne, too), the Duke grew up in California after his family relocated there. Having a natural athletic ability, he played football for his high school team which won the state championship in 1924. He attended USC on a football scholarship and would've continued, if not for an unfortunate injury sustained during the impressively unmanly activity that is bodysurfing. Injured and unable to pay for school (he lost his scholarship), he dropped out of USC.

To make ends meet, Wayne applied for jobs at the local film studios in the area. Not as a silver screen badass, just doing any damned thing. He wound up getting a job working with the props department at Fox.

Whenever they needed extras for movies back then, they apparently just grabbed whoever was standing around. Because Wayne had the build of a football player he got early roles like "football player in background" and "football player on sideline." In 1931's The Deceiver he played a corpse.

But then he caught his big break. And as it often happens, his big break wasn't a role, but a person. Wayne became friends with legendary director John Ford, who pulled some strings and got Wayne his first leading role, and later cast him in Stagecoach. That movie made Wayne a star and gave birth to "The Duke," the drawling caricature Wayne would play in movie after movie after movie after movie (just repeat that 150 more times).

Johnny Depp

Edward Scissorhands. Captain Jack Sparrow. Raoul Duke. Mort fucking Rainey. All legendary roles that probably wouldn't be quite as legendary had they not been played by Johnny Depp.

Initially, Depp had no intentions of being an actor. When he was younger, his mother gave him a guitar as a gift and he had his sights set on being a rock star, and even ended up performing in various garage bands. Eventually, Depp dropped out of school to dedicate more time to his music. When he tried to return, his principal actually advised him against doing so, and to follow his dreams instead.

Despite having the world's coolest principal, his hopes for a career in music began to dwindle. Depp married a make-up artist who introduced him to Nicolas Cage, who told the young hopeful to try acting (advice we continue to offer Cage to this very day). Instead, Depp divorced the make-up artist, probably because she introduced him to Nicolas Cage.

What Happened?

Just like Gibson, one day, for no discernible reason, Depp accompanied a friend named Jackie Earle Haley to an audition for a horror movie about an ugly janitor who kills children through their dreams.

It was there that Wes Craven spotted Depp and asked him to read for the part of the protagonist's boyfriend who dies in the most vomit-inducing way possible. Depp nailed the audition and went on to become an iconic movie actor, while his friend was doomed to roles as smelly hippies, smelly perverts and smelly psychopaths.

The lesson? If a friend asks you to drive him to an audition, fucking do it.