Fandom High School

When class started, the lights turned out briefly before a spotlight started sweeping across the stage. An announcer (Yakko) announced, "It's time for that semesterly game show, LETS. TAKE. A FINAL! And here's the host of Let's Take a Final, Yakkooooooooooooooo WAAAAAAAAARNEEEEEEEEEER."

Yakko entered through the door as the spotlight caught him. Once he jogged to a podium in the front of the room, the lights turned back on and Yakko was ready to start.

"Welcome to Let's Take a Final, everyone! We have three rounds here to let you know whether or not you pass the class, so step right up!"

"Well, if you listened to radio the other day, you might have heard me promise to bring some toys back from the longest Black Friday sale line ever," Yakko said. "Buuuuuuuut that line lasted another day and at that point I had to give up. But it's okay! Because I stopped somewhere else on my way back. Somewhere that works well with a country theme. That place? IKEA. That country? Sweden."

( Long ago in times of yore, it all began with a god named Thor.... )

"Back in the early 1990s, we were ignorant about the rest of the world," Yakko said, standing in front of a curtain at the front of the room. "Sure, we knew the rest of the world existed, we'd had some wars and stuff. But what we also didn't know was that soon we would learn something through the introduction of something else."

"That something else? A video game. It was Road Brawler 2, subtitle? The World Warrior." The curtain lifted, showing a variety of arcade cabinets for the original game, the Illustrious Volume, Mega Road Brawler 2, Road Brawler 2 Accelerated, and Yet More Characters. They were all basically the same thing, but each one had more characters.

"When you chose a character, you could see what country they came from. If you wanted to know where China was, pick the girl who's been the subject of way too many creepy pieces of fan art and one terrible movie. If you wanted to know where the US was, you had two choices, both of them blond. It was a magical game that told us that we're not all that different, especially thanks to limited graphical abilities and not caring if two characters had exactly the same moves."

"Unless you're from India, in which case you're a massive stereotype with stretchable limbs. But even that was fair, because who wouldn't want to punch someone from across the room?"

"Call it 90s nostalgia, I won't blame you," Yakko said casually, "but when I think of how people learned about countries back then, I think of my own song, Yakko's World, which was very popular and was used in commercials for my show. But this video game did come in at a very distant second."

"So go ahead and fight! Use the game, just start punching each other. I'm leaving the choice up to you."

"If there's one thing I hope you take away from my class in general," Yakko said, "it's a fine understanding of current events." This despite current events being basically ignored in the class, along with common sense and - during some weeks - geography. "And that's why today we're talking about a place that has been in the news a lot over the past couple years, Egypt."

"They made a big splash last year when they overthrew long-time President Hosni Mubarak, who had won five straight elections in which voters were helped to make the right choice through a variety of creative solutions like vote-rigging, fraud, violence, and having his opponents arrested," Yakko explained, rather cheerily. "But in January 2011, Egyptian citizenzs were protesting all over, creating civil disobedience to force Mubarak out. A few weeks later, t worked and Egypt was put on the path of being a real democracy."

"The other thing you might know about Egypt is pyramids!" Yakko explained. "A pyramid is just a three dimensional triangle, but thousands of years ago, Egypt took this kind of geometry and threw their dead kings and riches in them to preserve for the afterlife, which actually meant 'archaeologists and museum curators.' We don't know how they built the pyramids since it seems impossible with today's technology, but the leading theories are 'a whole lot of slaves' and 'aliens,' so you can just make up any explanation you want."

"Plenty of interesting stuff probably happened between the pyramids and the recent revolution, but nobody you talk to will probably know about it, so this is enough to get you through any conversation you'll have about Egypt."

"So, in honor of these two distinct periods in Egypt's history, you have two activities." Yakko pushed a button on his desk, tilting the white board forward and letting a whooooooole lot of blocks of various shapes fall onto the floor. "And we're going to start with building pyramids! Have fun, kids!"

"I'm sorry, everyone," Yakko said, very somberly. "I have very bad news. We won't be having one of our normal lessons today. Instead, we're going to watch a movie. I know, I know, there's nothing students hate more than having to watch something entertaining instead of being taught something actually educational, but it's the price you pay sometimes. And even worse? The only reason we're watching it is because it has the word 'World' in the title."

"But, in order to broaden your knowledge, we won't be watching it in English. Helloooooooooo, German dubbing!"

Yakko flicked the lights off, started the movie, and started constructing a car just in case he needed to zoom off to get some treasure like in the movie. People were welcome to help with that, especially if it distracted them from their 50 year old movie with German dubbing.

After the bell rang, the lights in the classroom dimmed until two spotlights flicked on and started darting around the front of the classroom.

"Ladies and gentlemen," an announcer said. "It's time once again for YAKKO WARNER'S BELIEVE IT OR DON'T, SEE IF I CARE! Here's your host, Yakko Warner!"

Yakko opened the classroom door as the spotlights found him, walking toward the podium in the front of the room with his hands clasped together in thanks and anticipation. Once he reached the podium, the lights came back on.

"Thank you, Johnny!" Yakko said. "Longtime viewers might remember how our game is played, but for anyone who's new to Believe It Or Don't, See If I Care, I'm going to read off a bunch of facts on a subject. Once I do, you vote on whether you believe what I said, or if you don't. And then you can go ahead and see if I care whether or not you think I'd lie to you."

For the record, he would absolutely lie. And he didn't really care.

"The topic for today's show is... Australia! So let's get to it and... SEE IF I CARE!"

This was going to go well.

Right after the bell, a rolled up map hanging in front of the board unrolled, revealing Yakko. Try not to think about the physics there. The map, as it turned out, was of the United States.

"We're going to start our trip through the world right here at what a lot of us call home. The US of A! Where we make movies about superheroes starring English people and our cartoons are drawn in Korea! Where our products are made in China and tech support for those products goes to India! Where imported Mexican colas are better than our regular colas that we invented! Where most of the families who live here today came from other continents within the last few hundred years!"

"Yes, when you're talking about America, you're talking about the entire world. And that's why it's a perfect place to start," Yakko said. "And also last night I forgot today was Thursday so I had to write something up that I could just wing without doing any research!"

( Read more... )