1. Squirmy and Grubs
So the first channel I'd like to talk about is called Squirmy and Grubs. It's run by an inter-abled couple, named Shane and Hannah, and it's about their lives as a couple and Shane's life as a disabled person who uses a wheelchair. They don't do anything extravagant or anything, but they're both extremely entertaining. Katie introduced me to this channel two weeks ago and I ended up subscribing after watching only one of their videos. They use the channel to educate people about the disabled community at large, because, unfortunately, there is a lot of ignorance out there. As someone who has faced that ignorance a few times in my life, remind me to tell you a particular story about that sometime, I see the merit in educating people in a fun, and funny way.
Shane has also written two books called Laughing at My Nightmare, which is also the name of his blog as well as his non-profit organization, and Strangers Assume My Girlfriend is My Nurse. Both are a collection of stories and essays detailing Shane's life with a disability. I ended up buying a copy of each book because I like the channel a lot, and judging from Shane's humour on the YouTube channel, I knew I was going to like his books. I won't be reviewing them on the blog, but I might talk about them more in another blog post when I've finished reading both them because I suspect that Shane and I had similar experiences being men who use wheelchairs even though I'm five and a half years older than he is. He's told at least one story on Squirmy and Grubs that I immediately thought to myself, "Yup, that's happened to me before!". I would definitely recommend checking out this channel.
2. Laughing at My Nightmare
This is Shane's blog. He started it back in 2011 and wrote stories about his childhood and his life, much like he would end up doing with his two books. In fact his blog was the source for much of his first book, Laughing at My Nightmare, as well as providing the title for the book. I haven't read his early posts, but nowadays he has a section where he talks about the things that makes him smile and he also shares links to his and Hannah's Squirmy and Grubs videos. It's amazing to think about this is where Shane started as a writer. Mainly because I have my blog and while we blog about different things, if I wanted to I could probably write a book. Which is something I've wanted to do since college, but have never had the courage to do so. So that's pretty cool.
3. YOU ME & YTV
The next YouTube channel that I would like to talk about is called YOU ME & YTV, hosted by Ryan Stick. The channel is exactly what the name says it is. A channel about YTV in the '90s. Ryan interviews the actors and producers of TV shows that aired on YTV between 1990 and 2000. For example he interviewed the cast of the teen sitcom Radio Active!, which is a show I loved when I was in my early teens. Ryan has also interviewed the cast of the original English dub of Sailor Moon as well as one of the cast members from the English dub of an Anime called Samurai Pizza Cats which was one of the first Animes that I ever watched when I was a kid. Watching YTV was my childhood so to be able to watch an entire YouTube channel dedicated to that TV station, and that era is awesome. Also I saw Ryan in person one time. I was with Kelly at Ottawa Comiccon last year and I was waiting in line to meet Tom Welling and Ryan came out of the cast area. I was gonna go say hi to him, but he was busy talking to someone else and I didn't want to interrupt him. I follow the Facebook page for the channel though and he's a cool dude to talk to.
4. Grundo Gazette
Of course I couldn't do this list without mentioning my friends at Grundo Gazette. I've talked about the website before as it's run by my buddy Vincent, who sent me the digitized copies of all of the Teddy Ruxpin VHS tapes for me to watch for my Teddy Ruxpin VHS reviews, but they also have a YouTube channel. Basically Vincent makes videos about things that might not be done justice in an article on the website. For example, his most recent video was on the Teddy Ruxpin Electronic Telephone. This was a toy that Worlds of Wonder put out in the '80s when Teddy was in his heyday, but it was never re-issued by any other toy company that held the Teddy Ruxpin license, so it's an artifact from Teddy's early days. What's awesome about Vincent doing a video on it is that I still have my Teddy Ruxpin phone, which sits in my bedroom along with my original Teddy Ruxpin and the Tweeg figurine that I've had since I was a small child. The phone doesn't have batteries in it, so I don't know if it still works, but it's something I've kept my whole life and have never lost it, even through several moves from one house to another. If you're a Teddy Ruxpin fan, and haven't checked it out yet, this is the channel for you.
5. Tapcaf Transmissions
Corey's Datapad: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkvuBMvwa1d2TkJki3E_B8Q
EckhartsLadder: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp6F1mQGuaXiDj5otWBmIjg
This isn't a YouTube channel per se, but is actually hosted on two different YouTube channels, so I thought I'd discuss it here anyway. Tapcaf Transmissions is a Canadian Star Wars book club style podcast where the hosts, Corey (of Corey's Datapad) and Justin (from EckhartsLadder) have discussions and review Star Wars novels. Primarily. They've done episodes on the 2003 Cartoon Network Clone Wars series, as well as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and other Star Wars related things, but they mostly talk about the novels. They started out reviewing only the Star Wars Legends novels, meaning the books that came out from 1976 to 2014, but they've recently started doing episodes on novels set in the current Disney Star Wars continuity as well. I've included the links to both Corey and Justin's channels as both channels host the podcast.
6. Schuster at the Movies
The last thing I want to talk about today is a blog called Schuster at the Movies. Again, this blog's title tells you exactly what it is. The author, Eli Schuster, writes movie reviews. Many of the movie reviews are of movies that are on VHS and DVD, though primarily VHS. But they are specifically movies that he owns on VHS or DVD. Eli doesn't post very often, but he posts once a month and does like three or four reviews at a time. Which is an interesting way to do things. The thing I like about this blog is that Eli has reviewed a lot of movies that I actually own on either DVD or VHS or at the very least have seen or heard of them. When he can he uses the VHS or DVD cover for the movie he's reviewing.
And that's it for this installment of My Favourite YouTube Channels and Blogs. I might have enough material for a third post later on down the line, but these are the ones I wanted to talk about this time because I either didn't know about them before I did the previous post or just didn't have room to include them. Hopefully I've given you some more YouTube channels to watch or blogs to read. I'll be back tomorrow with my review of Casper (1995). Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later.
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