Mundane Made Awesome/Other Media

Stand-up Comedy

 * Brian Regan has a bit about military inventions and how they all have awesome names. Then along came a device that allowed soldiers to communicate effectively over long distances. It was called the walkie-talkie.

Other Media and Real Life - Examples Need Sorting
"Toll the Great Bell Once! Pull the Lever forward to engage the Piston and Pump... Toll the Great Bell Twice! With push of Button fire the Engine And spark Turbine into life... Toll the Great Bell Thrice! Sing Praise to the God of All Machines"
 * The Pastry War -- whose name itself is a demonstration of this trope -- was a conflict between the Kingdom of France and the United Mexican States which engulfed both the Republic of Texas and the United States. The entire Mexican navy was captured by French forces and the war lead to former dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna resuming his position as President of Mexico. Santa Anna's autocratic regime caused Mexico to disintegrate and contributed to Texas becoming annexed by the USA. How did this war arise? Because the Mexican Government refused to pay compensation to a French baker whose shop had been looted by Mexican officers.
 * The Japanese tea ceremony would appear to be a simple matter: one person brews some tea and serves it to one or more guests, who accept it with gratitude. In fact the ceremony, chadō, is a staggeringly complex ritual with over a thousand variations which may require a lifetime to master.
 * You can't hurry a good cuppa.
 * The tea ceremony has degrees just as like martial arts.
 * The interface to Apple's Time Machine backup software. A backup program is one thing, but a backup program that features a series of windows receding into the background to indicate which backup you're restoring from, all over a painstakingly rendered animated star-field backdrop, that's Epic right there. At the time of this edit, Apple had neither confirmed nor denied that the next version would play Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra while in operation.
 * Does Howard Dean count?
 * BWAAAAGH!
 * Only in the way it was covered, not anything he did. As Diane Sawyer pointed out, you couldn't even hear him over the enthusiastic cheers of his supporters. It was only when the "news" people stripped out the crowd's voices that his yell seemed weird and out of place. Anybody who was there could attest to the truth of this.
 * Dog mocks Hitler, how can it not be awesome?
 * A piece of music called (depending on the variant) either "Entry of the Gladiators" or "Thunder and Blazes" must be pretty awesome, right?.
 * Performed by a full military-style band, the music itself is pretty awesome. That still makes it an example of the trope, though, because the having a big, brassy march as background music for is perhaps a bit over the top.
 * Exploding Head Syndrome is much, much less awesome than it sounds. It doesn't even involve heads exploding!
 * Apparently there is a condition where your head really can Asplode by thinking too hard and much. Supposedly mainly affects chess players and academics.
 * Actually, it only affects one particular chess player, and it doesn't bother him too much...
 * Ohhhhhhhhh, the Alcatel OmniPCX phone exchange promotional video. What do you do when your engineers fail? You call James Bond to save the day!
 * Every single word spoken by Don LaFontaine, aka the original Trailer Voice Guy, ever. The man could make ordering a burger at McDonalds sound like the ultimate battle for the fate of the world. ("In a World where burgers are grilled, one man will rise to fight...for the fate of a cheeseburger.") Witness for yourself what happens when you put Don and four other famous Voiceover Guys in a limousine and tell them to drive to an awards show. R.I.P, Don, the world is a less Awesome place without you.
 * "It's never too early... for a salad." About 3:05 in this video.
 * The Backside of Water at the Jungle Cruise in the Disney Theme Parks. Some skippers have been known to go off into a massive speech upon approaching it, declaring how incredibly amazing it is. Even the normal spiel generally involves referring to it as "The Eighth Wonder of the Natural World" and announcing "The back! Side! Of! WATER!!!"
 * The skipper will, inevitably, be disappointed to discover that it looks a lot like the front side.
 * In an essay in Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris details his aversion and hatred of computers, and among his complaints is their presence in movie scenes that fall under this trope. "Each tiresome new Thriller includes some scene in which the hero, trapped by some version of the enemy, runs for his desk in a desperate race against time. Music swells and droplets of sweat rain down onto the keyboard as he sits at his laptop, frantically pawing for answers. It might be different if he were flagging down a passing car or trying to phone for help, but typing, in and of itself, is not an inherently dramatic activity"
 * Warhammer 40,000 does this to anything worth mentioning, then paints it black, covers it in skulls, and sets it on fire.
 * Unless it paints it red, because "red wunz go fasta!"
 * And then they do.
 * And then there's this Adeptus Mechanicus quote about turning on an engine:

""Stop having a boring tuna! Stop having a boring life!""
 * Flair Bartending.
 * Billy Mays, from the various Ridiculously Loud Commercials for cleaning products he's done (RIP Beardman).
 * Also the ShamWow guy. His headset puts it over the top.

""SHOUTING LATIN / MAKES FOR DRA-MA / THAT'S WHY YOU'RE ALL STILL WATCHING""
 * On top of that -- introducing the Rap Chop (remixed, not original, sadly).
 * Thisvideo sets a flooding storm drain to Latin. From the video:

"Joel Bauer: It doesn't fit in a rolodex because it doesn't belong in a rolodex."
 * Zinedine Zidane is even more awesome with Ominous Latin Chanting.
 * The Physics Department of the University Of Wales has a "Centre for Explosion Studies". That can't really be as cool as it sounds.
 * If such a department needs to be made cooler, just see if Michael Bay is willing to lend a hand.
 * Syracuse University has (or had) the Center for Really Neat Research (which most of it really was).
 * Joel Bauer's business card.

" 'This was a close parody of Auda's epic style; and I mimicked also his wave of the hand, his round voice, and the rising and dropping tone which emphasized the points, or what he thought were points, of his pointless stories.' -- 'I told how we left the tents, with a list of the tents, and how we walked down towards the village, describing every camel and horse we saw, and all the passers-by, and the ridges, 'all bare of grazing, for by God that country was barren.' -- 'And we marched: and beyond the what-do-you-call-it there was a what-there-is as far as hereby from thence, and thereafter a ridge: and we came to that ridge, and went up that ridge: it was barren, all that land was barren: and as we came up that ridge, and were by the head of that ridge, and came to the end of the head of that ridge, by God, by my God, by very God, the sun rose upon us!' "
 * Extreme Shepherding.
 * Similarly, Extreme Ironing.
 * Dr. Seuss story-time is epic.
 * Arguably, the entire town of Columbus, Indiana. A small town in the US with several buildings designed by modernist architects, resulting in the town having more national architectural landmarks than several large cities.
 * Several manufacturers of obscure industrial equipment are prone to this. Some people, nightly, have to deal with the terror of working with a machine called the Predator SS... which shrink wraps boxes placed on a pallet. And sometimes must wear a garment called the Revolution XR 55, a simple safety harness.
 * Brian Blessed.
 * Brian Blessed is exactly that awesome. A short read about his life is like the cliff-notes version of a Norse saga or something.
 * Tim Pawlenty kicked off his presidential campaign with two ads that were just made of this trope. Stephen Colbert was quick to parody it.
 * Google has recently made a tool called Search Stories which lets you upload videos of Google searches with epic camera pans and epic music if you like.
 * Sixteen words: Betty White in a Metal Bikini Wielding a Flaming Chainsaw While Riding a John Ritter Centaur.
 * No, that is definitely awesome.
 * EXTREME RICE.
 * Apparently a GPS manufacturer created an application that turns the voice into Darth Vader's. A "making of" shows how it's a full-fledged example of this trope.
 * You can also get Norio Wakamoto to narrate your GPS for you.
 * Sadly they didn't do a "making of" video when Brian Blessed joined the ranks of Tom Tom's satnav voice actors Oh, YES, THEY DID!
 * Boris Johnson explaining the origin of Ping Pong
 * What do you mean cleaning a room isn't awesome?
 * A new sport from Germany: Sporthocking...EXTREME SITTING!
 * Indoor Cycling Gymnastic Championship
 * As a rule, music from your favorite video games can greatly enhance your life experience. Try playing some of the synth classics or rehashes by The Advantage or The Black Mages while writing a paper or simply walking around. The fact is this genre was intended to make everything you do in games (shopping, hiking, fighting, talking, breaking vases) infinitely more exciting. This effect naturally translates itself into Real Life.
 * CPR... with a toilet plunger!
 * The Breaking Dawn Part I trailer. Wedding invitations, a ceremony, scenes from a honeymoon, and Bella's Dull Surprise scored with Ominous Latin Chanting.
 * Inception Music Makes Everything Intense.
 * T.E. Lawrence wrote about how he once parodied Auda abu Tayi's way of telling stories like this.


 * The epic frog.
 * ORRE NO CHYUU﻿ DORRE DA!? Courtesy from them playing a Yu Yu Hakusho game.
 * This game of Jenga.
 * Slinky on Treadmil
 * "THE INDIVIDUAL MEMBER OF THE SOCIAL COMMUNITY OFTEN RECEIVES HIS INFORMATION VIA VISUAL, SYMBOLIC CHANNELS." It sounds like Anderton's Unusual User Interface! Verbosity is enough to make Dick and Jane sound like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Let me try. "Jane Russell - not to be confused with Jane Roberts - is the central object of this account. Of particular note is her general appearance, which has been made to conform to her many cinematic roles as a performer. Russell preserves her appearance through a comprehensive regimen of jogging. Uncertainty regarding the veracity of the previous averment is to be confirmed through visual channels. Lastly, the author would like to encourage Russell in her program of moderate physical exercise."
 * "Pilgrimage" to Real Place Backgrounds can take a previously unremarkable location and turn it into a tourist attraction that draws thousands. Hardly limited to seichi junrei for anime and manga, this can also apply to non-Japanese works, like with the "Joker Stairs" from Joker.