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Top 15 Favorite YouTube Channels: #5-#1
Image Credit: NWA
My Top 15 Favorite YouTube Channels: #5-#1
Before I get into the final part of this mega list, I want to thank everyone who has read the previous two segments and offered up suggestions for YouTube channels. I’ve looked at a few of them and, man, if I had known about some of them before I started this list I would have put together a longer list. My fellow 411 writer Jed Shaffer’s terrific suggestion of Wrestling with Gaming, which is exactly how he described it (“an indie documentary”), is a fine example of this. Wrestling with Gaming is awesome. And that’s the great thing and the sort of maddening thing about YouTube content. There’s so much great stuff out there just waiting to be discovered and watched, and there are likely new channels with great stuff being created every day. At the same time, with the sheer amount of content out there, who the heck has the time to watch all of it?
I guess that’s all a good problem to have?
Here are the first two parts of the list, just in case you missed them or want to read them again for some reason:
Top 15 Favorite YouTube Channels: #15-#11
Top 15 Favorite YouTube Channels #10-#6
And now, without any further what have you, my Top 15 Favorite YouTube Channels list concludes. What channel is number one?
My Top 15 Favorite YouTube Channels: #5-#1
5-Hats Off Entertainment: I found this channel while looking up channels featuring lost media and, after watching a video about the sitcom based on the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles that’s never been released despite filming multiple seasons, instantly became hooked (check out that video here). Hats Off isn’t a channel about lost media, though, although the subject does pop up from time to time (there’s a great video featuring the lost three hour cut of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and there’s a video about a deleted scene from Uncle Buck). Instead, Hats Off seems to be a channel that delves into movie comedies, from the shorts of the Three Stooges to stuff like Brain Donors and Nothing but Trouble, and TV sitcoms that didn’t quite make it (like The Michael Richards Show, Bob Patterson, and that Uncle Buck sitcom starring Kevin Meaney). Channel creator and host Joe Ramoni, who has a terrific narrator voice, has multiple series going on, like “(Almost) Cult Classics,” “Forgotten Failures,” and “Docu-Minis” and they’re all fantastic. Ramoni clearly has a love for comedy and a deep understanding of why great comedians and comedic performers are great (his love of John Candy is something I concur with wholeheartedly). I’m also a big fan of Ramoni’s documentaries on old comedies and comedians like Lauren & Hardy and, again, the Stooges (it’s always great to find someone else out there in the world that appreciates Larry Fine for the genius that he was, is, and always will be). The editing on this channel is also top notch (the effort Ramoni puts into these videos is something to behold). I can’t wait to see what Ramoni has in store next.
Hats Off Entertainment YouTube Channel
4- SNES drunk: SNES drunk videos would often pop up on the side of YouTube when I watched a Gaming Historian video or something from the Angry Video Game Nerd, but I didn’t start checking them out until recently because the name of the channel was weird (well, at least to me). Is there really a YouTube channel where a guy reviews (or maybe plays?) video games while drunk? Who the hell would want to watch something like that more than once? I ended up watching a SNES drunk video one day after being too lazy to look for something else and was pleasantly surprised that my initial assumption about the channel was dead wrong. SNES drunk is just a name. The content mainly consists of shortish (most videos seem to be about 4-5 minutes) video reviews of 16 bit era video games, mostly focusing on the Super Nintendo and Super Famicom games (the channel also looks at Sega Genesis games, Neo Geo games, and various arcade games. The channel also does the occasional 8-bit game review, too). I love these short videos because they’re a quick watch and I get to learn about SNES games I vaguely remember seeing on store shelves but never got a chance to play back in the day. There are also great list videos on the channel. There are 800 plus videos on the channel to watch, and while the channel’s content has slowed over the last few months (the channel used to put out two videos a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now it tends to be one video a week on Tuesdays), there’s always something to check out, even if it’s a few years old (the channel has been around since 2013). I’m also a fan of the way each video ends, with SNES drunk telling viewers to “have a great rest of your day.” It’s just a nice way to end things. And the “SNES drunk” opening bit is always a hoot.
3- Official Jim Cornette: Pro wrestling legend Jim Cornette’s podcast is one of the first podcasts I ever made an effort to listen to, mostly for his stories about the 1980’s pro wrestling world and his takes on politics (both were usually eye opening and hilarious). When Cornette’s podcasts (he does two of them, The Jim Cornette Experience and the Drive-Thru) stopped being an hour or so and became 2-3 hours a week a piece I stopped listening to them as podcasts and started seeking out the pieces that Cornette’s co-host The Great Brian Last put out on YouTube. Those “pieces” are much easier to listen to and absorb (it’s also easier to jump around to subjects you are more interested in). Cornette’s wrestling analysis is always spot on, especially the way he breaks down matches and explains why he thinks certain matches didn’t work and why he doesn’t like certain wrestlers (for instance, his brutal takedowns of Evil Uno are rude as hell but still weirdly entertaining). It’s also fun to just listen to Cornette talk. The man knows how to use the F word to maximum effect. Has anyone out there ever counted how many times Cornette says “Here’s the thing…” per podcast?
The Official Jim Cornette YouTube Channel
2- Thought Slime: I don’t remember what the hell I was looking for on YouTube when I discovered Thought Slime, but his video on the wretched white supremacist fantasy book The Turner Diaries popped up on the right side of my YouTube screen and I decided to watch it. As someone who has had the misfortune of reading The Turner Diaries Thought Slime’s analysis of the book, its themes, and why the book is terrible and dangerous were spot on, so I decided to see what else Thought Slime had on YouTube. What I found were oodles of videos about anarchism and other leftist ideas but they weren’t dry or academic. They were funny. Even when Thought Slime delved into what sure seemed like complicated political ideas the videos were never boring. So I kept watching and watching his videos, delving into his “back catalogue” to see how the channel started and how his presentation changed. It was fascinating to see how Thought Slime tried different backgrounds, different camera angles, etc., over time and you can see him figure out what works and what doesn’t. The channel’s editing scheme has also improved dramatically over time. It’s always fun to see what he’s going to talk about next. It’s also fun to see how he does “The Eyeball Zone” with each new video (you’ll have to watch his content to see what that is). Thought Slime videos tend to come out on Fridays, and he streams on YouTube and Twitch on Thursday nights. The streams are interesting (he sometimes puts together stream highlight videos) but the “regular” Thought Slime videos are his best content hands down (Thought Slime also does the Scaredy Cats horror channel, which I talked about in the last list).
1- 3DBotmaker: I saw my first 3DBotmaker video while looking for NASCAR content on YouTube and was immediately blown away by how goddamn ingenious the channel was. 3DBomaker is a racing channel, but instead of featuring real cars racing, it’s a channel totally devoted to diecast car racing (1/64 scale diecast car racing to be exact). Hotwheels cars, Matchbox cars, and various other brands of diecast cars, racing on scale sized “downhill” tracks where gravity propels the cars. And it’s all incredibly exciting. The more you watch, the more invested you become in the various tournaments the channel features and the cars and characters that come out of the competition (be on the lookout for Crazy Jimmy and Crazy James). The channel’s production values are insane, from the camera work, the lighting, the editing, the graphics, and the music, and it’s amazing how they’ve all improved and grown since the channel started. Multiple cars, tracks, and formats are featured on the channel, with both the King of the Mountain tournament (these races feature modified diecast cars sent from all over the world) and various stock car tournaments (these are non-modified cars, basically right out of the box. These tournaments are usually themed, like a Mustang tournament, or a Van tournament, etc. Right now, as I write this, a 3 week GT car tournament) being held on the Race Mountain track. There are also rally car tournaments on a kickass rally track, and there’s a demolition derby tournament that is brilliantly conceived (it’s basically a set up where teams of cars are pointed at one another and then launched head on into each other). This is also another channel that’s great to look back at in terms of how it’s grown since it started. The channel has come a long way. And it’s all entertaining as hell.
**
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