A Guest Epic 10

As the window for posting these Epic 10 of 2008 lists is fast closing, here is a guest entry, written by James Ryan.

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10. Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievences
If any new musical group of 2008 has epic potential, it is Titus Andronicus. On their debut album they adequately balance bloozy noise rock anthems with lyrics dexterous enough to reference both Bruegel the Elder and Seinfeld without sounding like a complete asshole. Basically if Chris Onstad lead a rock band from New Jersey instead of writing Achewood, his name would be Patrick Stickles.

9. Google - Translator
Me - Crap, that journal article I really needed on the Egyptian response to the Napoleonic invasion only exists on this silly sounding French online journal.
Google - No worries, cuz. I got that.

8. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
This reminded me of what an awful set of films The Mummy franchise is/was and reaffirmed for me how much of an awful poser Brendan Fraser is. Somehow, I think society needs reminders of this every year. Say what you will about this film in the canon of Epic Films or even the Indy series, but nobody knows how to make archaeologists (or scientists in general) into EPIC action stars the way Spielberg does.

7. The Dark Knight
I will probably never enjoy a superhero film as much as this. It is, as they say, the gawdfather of the genre.

6. Giants 17 Patriots 14
I hate the Giants. Everyone hates the Patriots. It takes a lot of courage to say this is the greatest football game I've watched live.

5. The Nightman Cometh
In a series of alternately crude and careful games of oneupmanship, the season finale of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia finally brought us Epic writ large on the small screen. In one episode Charlie's character went from quirky and idosyncratic to portraying the true meaning of neurotic, deep, emotional, EPIC FAIL. Really, anyone who has ever had romantic feelings has thought about doing something like this, realized how embarrasing a failure it would be and not done it. The Nightman Cometh brings all those nightmares to its awkward, stumbling, life.

4. Journals 1952-200 - Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
If I could sum up this man's life in three letters it would be FTW. He wrote history books chronicling the Kennedy white house. He was a major political figure without really ever contributing to policy. He totally had the hots for Lauren Bacall. Nixon was his backdoor neighbor. He totally had the hots for the fax machine. He was acquainted with Castro, but not Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton treated him like the Godfather. Thankfully he left us with 6000 pages of journal entries, 1000 of them his sons have published for us.

3. The Turkish Constitutional Court (Anayasa Mahkemesi)
I owe them. Had it not been for a super savvy Epic decision not to close the ruling AK Parti, I might not have made it back to the US this summer. Perhaps this is underappreciated but since when has a court of law singlehandedly stopped a coup that would have resulted in much gnashing of teeth, wailing and possibly blood?

2. Cats
It's been another big year for felines. They are all over the internets!

1. Sir Edmund Hillary
An Epic man, and Epic accomplishment, an Epic life.