How To Die Laughing: Thing 18

I have learned a great many things while searching through Youtube. For years, kids have sent me links to things they wanted me to see or thought had to do with what they were learning, and I always had to send the links home rather than fight through the school's filter system. Sometimes the kids were right--the videos I watched had to do with the lesson, whether in a serious or a farcical way, and sometimes they were just silly in a way that only high school students could find silly (which is kind of cute sometimes).

I set about on the scavenger hunt with The Inferno in mind. I don't teach it until next semester, but I have learned that if I want to do something new and exciting, I need to start on it pretty far away from the target date.

And I found plenty on Youtube that I could actually use, and some that I couldn't but that are still great--just a little risque--and some stuff that just made me laugh like a comment thread on the EA game "based" on the Inferno that went something like "is this based on the actual book?"--"oh yes, exactly" which is what made me laugh because Dante carried neither sword nor some kind of Klingon looking weapon when he journeyed into the underworld. Of course, Beatrice hadn't been kidnapped and drug down to the depths either, unless I missed that section, and missed it for the past 11 years (still giggling by the way).

Then I started searching for the "How to" video. There is so much to choose from, like How to make crack, make fake crack, make a pipe bomb, make a paper gun that really shoots, etc. So I tried a "How to be" search. Now I could learn how to be a ninja, gangster, gangsta (apparently those are two different things), nerd, and some word I didn't recognize but I think it was some kind of racial epithet. When I narrowed it to "How to cook" I got anything from lobster to gyoza to (again) crack. I settled for gyoza because I actually might use that video. I tagged all these videos (the Inferno and gyoza videos; not the crack or gangsta videos) so I could find them again later, then I went and washed my face because I had been laughing so hard I was crying, then I started coughing, and, well, I just had to stop at that point. But then when I was washing my face I remembered an old ad that used to play during football season that had Steve Young, John Elway, and George Seifert in it, among others, and they were doing Kareoke in Japan.

Lo and behold it was there! The whole face washing was pointless, because I cracked up (not cooked crack--absolutely no relation to that crack) again.

Teachertube wasn't nearly as fun, but I could see its use. The search feature was more difficult for me, but there was some interesting things there that I could use. Oddly however, I found the most educational Inferno video on Youtube. It is history lesson about why Boniface VIII was such a pain to Dante and why Dante made this pope figure so prominently in the Inferno. I may actually use that video with my kids this year, but I'll get it from home so I don't have to mess around with the filter.

Well, the video is here, but it doesn't seem to want to play. My Techie husband informed me that Youtube is cracking down on that kind of use, so I'll put in a link to the video that is supposed to be embedded here. Sorry about that.