’21 A To Z Challenge – Y

As I reach my second childhood, I also reach back more and more to the comforts of my first.  Helping me put back more than a little familiar frivolity, is

YOUTUBE

There was a ‘Zits’ cartoon strip, where a 16-year-old male was asked what he did during summer vacation.  His answer was that he “Watched Netflix” – the whole, entire, complete, 100%, F**king, thing!

I can’t claim to have watched that much, but I’ve watched just about all of it that I want to.  Like social interaction, politics, and religion, I don’t care for the flavor of much of what passes for modern entertainment.  Netflix keeps commissioning tons of movies, but most seem to be made in foreign countries, and sub-titled or dubbed into English with varying degrees of (lack of) success.

I recently discovered that YouTube has a ton of old movies that the copyrights have expired on.  I’m often looking for some light comedy, to get my mind off things like, Trump In ’24, pandemic mandates, gas prices, and spiralling real estate costs.

First I found that they have almost every British ‘Carry On’ farce.  I’ll watch Three Stooges, but only the ones with Shemp Howard.  I’ve viewed some clips of Laurel and Hardy, trying to decide which complete movies I’ll watch.

I remembered The Bowery Boys.  Those films always used to provide some no-brain-needed amusement.  Research showed that they began as The Dead-End Kids, changed to The East-Side Kids, and finally morphed into The Bowery Boys.  YouTube has almost 50 of them on tap.  Most of them star Leo Gorcey, until he drank himself out of a job.  I’m going to look to see if any of the old black-and-white Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers serials are available.

In between, I can dip into Charlie Chan flicks, and may begin re-watching Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes series.  My complaint about these movies is about the commercials.  I don’t object to commercials.  They’re a cost of doing business.  I used to have to endure commercials when I watched movies on network TV.

My complaint, and the difference between network and YouTube is; on network TV, commercials were inserted by a real, live human, who placed them in natural breaks in the action, or conversation.  YouTube commercials are inserted by a heartless, brainless computer, whenever the Hell its electronic brain feels like, in the middle of a scene, or a line of dialog.  “So tell us Charlie(INSERT ADVERTISMENT FOR ZEHR’S FOOD MARKETS HERE!)Chan, who is the murderer?  I am developing a lightning-fast, gamer’s thumb, clicking on that little button which reads Skip Ads!

Does anyone besides me have any guilty YouTube pleasures they wish to admit to, or any other suggestions for my viewing enjoyment?