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Like many men in their thirties, I am a child. I enjoy professional wrestling, immature but socially appropriate memes, and cartoons. One of my favorite cartoons is the series Regular Show created by J.G. Quintel that ran until January 2017.

Regular Show's absurd yet snarky humor appeals to my specific taste in comedy while possessing the sincerity associated with a children's cartoon. But as intellectually charming as Regular Show is, I'm still not Mordecai and Rigby's intended demographic.

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FILM

9 Strange—but Great—Disney Channel Original Movies You Forgot About

Including mermaids, holograms, and aliens aplenty.

Movies

Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash

Disney+ is trickling its way into our daily dependence on streaming services.

This means we've unlocked a whole new world (Aladdin pun intended) of movies to watch half-attentively while we also scroll on our phones. You probably already know of all the classic Disney Originals that are at your disposal, but what about the Disney Channel Originals?

It's probably a given that big hits like High School Musical, Zenon, and Camp Rock are now available for your adult self to stream and reminisce, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Name a DCOM, and it's likely available on Disney+, including all the strange, ridiculous low-fliers you might've forgotten about. Here are just nine to kickstart your nostalgia trip.

1. Alley Cats Strike!

Anything goes in the Disney Channel universe, including a bowling match to settle a basketball championship tie between rival towns. Why are both towns so invested in high school bowling? Why do the teenage winners get to pick the name of a new school in the area? We don't know, but we're still chasing the high of that final scene.

2. Stepsister from Planet Weird

In this sci-fi comedy from 2000, a literal alien refugee is immediately welcomed into the popular crowd at her new high school on Earth, despite thinking her human form is "grotesque." Not to mention that the emperor of her home planet is defeated by hair dryers and wind blowers.

3. Can of Worms

On the other end of the spectrum of Disney Channel's alien fixation, Can of Worms centers around Mike, who lives an entirely normal life besides believing he doesn't belong on Earth at all. After he accidentally sends a message to space, he's visited by an alien lawyer who deems Earth's living standards subpar. Strangely eerie 20 years later, isn't it?

4. The Thirteenth Year

Cody's birth mother is a mermaid who left him on a random boat when he was a baby. Now, as Cody approaches his teens, his merman features are beginning to present themselves, and he nearly gets accused for cheating during his swim meet. It's just fins, not steroids!

5. Luck of the Irish

There's little to take away from this film other than a white teenage boy finally embraces that he is both Irish and from Ohio, but leprechauns and river dancing will never not be amusing.

6. Motocrossed

Five years before Amanda Bynes posed as her own twin brother in She's the Man, Disney Channel offered their own adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. After Andi's brother gets injured, she decides to fill in for him in an all-male motocross tournament, chopping her hair off and all. The sexism is abundant, but—spoiler alert—Andi can totally take on the guys.

7. The Other Me

Poor Will. His grades are slipping, his dad is threatening to send him to military camp, and he just accidentally made a clone of himself who turns out to be way cooler and smarter than him, so they switch places. Kinda like the Parent Trap, but sciencey.

8. You Wish!

The lesson this film attempts to impart is: don't wish away your little brother, because he might instead become a child TV star and make your life even more of a living hell than it was when you lived under the same roof.

9. Pixel Perfect

The perfect pop star doesn't exist, until, of course, you make a hologram of her. Loretta Modern might have been programmed to become an overnight sensation, but she just wants to be a regular human, damn it! She ends up being helpful in more ways than one, but like all modern technology, she can't last forever.

Maybe they didn't all make total sense, but there's a reason DCOMs became such an integral part of growing up in the 2000s. DCOM creators conceived some of the strangest, most fringe ideas, and served them to a market that didn't mind how nonsensical they were; pair that with Disney Channel's omnipresence in the typical middle-class American household, and these oddly lovable films serve as a timestamp for an era.

FILM

The "Hamilton" Disney Movie Will Be Truer to Its Message Than the Musical

Lin Manuel Miranda's smash hit Broadway musical is coming to the big screen.

Hamilton - Official Trailer


"Hamilton" is officially coming to theaters. For the price of a movie ticket, fans will be able to experience Lin Manuel Miranda's smash hit musical for themselves.

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CULTURE

Brenda Song on "Crazy Rich Asians" Role: When Are You "Not Asian Enough"?

It's not her fault she's played mostly Caucasian roles.

Kat Dennings, Brenda Song

Photo by Kathy Hutchins (Shutterstock)

Despite being born to a Hmong father and Thai mother, Brenda Song is a consummately American actress–so much so, that the Californian recently told Teen Vogue that she was once deemed too American to play an Asian-American role.

Known–nay, beloved–as a Disney Channel legend for her roles on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (2005-2008) and Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior (2006), not to mention (as elder millennials fondly recall) Nickelodeon's 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd (1999-2002), Song was the only actress of Asian-American descent that many of us saw on TV throughout the aughts. "I don't think people realize how ahead of the curve Disney Channel was," Song said of her Disney tenure. "They were colorblind casting way before anybody else. They were giving me TV movies since I was 15 that people would never even think about. They were just telling stories and wanting kids to be able to see themselves on TV at a young age."

Brenda Song Through the Years | Amphibia | Disney Channelyoutu.be

Yet, the 31-year-old said that she was not given the opportunity to audition for Jon M. Chu's $238 million-hit Crazy Rich Asians, despite being a fan of Kevin Kwan's book series and asking her managers if she could vie for a part. She was told "no." "Their reasoning behind that, what they said, was that my image was basically not Asian enough, in not so many words. It broke my heart," she shared. "I said, 'This character is in her late to mid-20s, an Asian American, and I can't even audition for it? I've auditioned for Caucasian roles my entire career, but this specific role, you're not going to let me do it? You're going to fault me for having worked my whole life?' I was like, 'Where do I fit?'"

In response, Chu has taken to social media to clarify that, if that was the message Song received, he certainly didn't send it. He posted, "Would these words ever come out of my mouth? Nope makes no sense. I feel horrible she thinks this is the reason. The fact is I love Brenda Song and am a fan. I didn't need her to audition because I already knew who she was!"

Regardless, operating under the belief that she was rejected for being an inadequate representation of her own race, Song came to terms with the criticism. "I got myself together and said, 'Brenda, there is only one you, and you can't change who you are. You can't change your past.' I am so grateful for every job that I've done," she said. "All I can do is continue to put good auditions out there, do the best that I can — that's all I can ask for."

Song now stars in Hulu's Dollface. She plays Madison, an effervescent young publicist whose energy sets the show's quirky tone. Kat Dennings and Shay Mitchell co-star in the female-created show, which is a characteristic Song praised: "I've always been a part of male-driven projects and it was amazing [to be] literally going to work every day and hanging out with my girlfriends."

From London Tipton (a non-Asian name) to Madison, Song's success has been predicated on an unusual mix of Asian erasure and respectability politics in American media. In a time when Asian actors still only account for 1% of Hollywood's lead roles, playing into the stereotypes promoted through TV tropes is, in cold terms, the only way for many actors of color to succeed. For instance, in 2017 Paste explored "Industry Bias, Whitewashing, and the Invisible Asian in Hollywood," quoting an unnamed casting director who actually said, "Asians are a challenge to cast because most casting directors feel as though they're not very expressive." In another casting director's words, the reason Asians haven't been featured in American media is because they (yes, all of us, apparently) are "very shut down in their emotions … If it's a look thing for business where they come in they're at a computer or if they're like a scientist or something like that, they'll do that; but if it's something were they really have to act and get some kind of performance out of, it's a challenge."

In response, #ExpressiveAsians trended on Twitter to call out the deep racial bias and false stereotypes at the core of Hollywood's shut-out of Asians and Asian-Americans. Yaoyao Liu of the Seattle Asian American Film Festival critiqued the tokenization of Asian characters, emphasizing "the importance of not simply including Asian performers in media, but of casting them in roles more meaningful than portrayals that are, at worst, perpetuations of racist assumptions or, at best, ineffectual lip service to substantive calls for diversity."

Most pointedly, Liu notes: "Even though the #ExpressiveAsians on American televisions today defy certain stereotypes, they remain within the parameters of being educated, middle class, and culturally assimilated; in other words, they capitulate to the standards set by respectability politics...Respectability politics refers to the policing of certain behaviors or values within marginalized groups in accordance with mainstream (read: white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative) codes of conduct. In the context of Asian Americans in media...prominent characters...toe the line of acknowledging their identity-based difference in a manner that is fully comprehensible and palatable to white audiences. For example: they have Asian names but they don't speak English with an accent... Nothing happens on screen that would alienate their white viewers."

Indeed, the first role to cement Song as a beloved figure in millennials' childhoods and, in many respects, an Asian American icon, was Wendy Wu. "The beginning of the end of Disney's promise of an all-inclusive cast," the film captured the cultural and cognitive dissonance that painfully characterizes the Asian-American experience. In describing "How Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior Taught Cultural Acceptance," Nyah Hardmon wrote, "Wu was this preppy Chinese-American who struggled with the grips of her culture. Like most second-generation immigrants and other culturally and ethnically diverse people of this country, Wu didn't feel connected with her home country. She turned her nose at Asian cuisine and distance[d] herself from her Chinese heritage. Eventually, Wu comes to terms with who she is and the history of her family, but it definitely wasn't an easy conclusion."

It's no wonder we still root for Brenda Song. Her continued success from child actor to comedic female force is a living manifestation of the impossible dream of all people of color: to live in a world that doesn't erase culture and racial identity and histories of oppression under the demeaning guise of being "post-racial" or "color-blind," and where no one asks us to prove we're worthy of being seen.

Ducktales

Twitter has been abuzz today about which cartoon theme song is best.

This is no doubt a ploy by Disney to get everyone nostalgic enough to sign up for Disney+, and everyone has been predictably biased to focus on the shows that they loved when they were kids. But as someone who grew up in the 1990s—the true golden age of Saturday Morning TV—I felt the need to step in and provide the objective analysis the topic required. Without further ado, here is the definitive list of the greatest cartoon theme songs of all time. Don't even try to argue.

11.Batman: The Animated Series

This one has the distinct advantage of being composed by legendary film composer Danny Elfman, and borrows heavily from his work on Tim Burton's Batman, for which he won a Grammy. The dark, orchestral intensity sets the tone for one of the most serious and intense children's cartoons of all time.

10.Ducktales

Life is like a hurricane. If you don't already have the words "here in, Duckburg" playing in your head, you are a broken soul. Hughie Dewey and Louie, along with their uncle Scrooge, were the definition of cartoon adventure in the early 1990s, but the simple, catchy lyrics of the theme song are truly what keeps this show alive in our hearts. It's the reason I can't hear the word racecars without immediately thinking of lasers and "aeroplanes."

9.Darkwing Duck

Synthesizing the previous two entries with a duck-themed slapstick parody of the Batman universe, we have Darkwing Duck. While the content of the show was less memorable than Ducktales, the driving bassline and the high-energy vocals of the extremely 90s theme song are somehow timeless. The refrain of "When there's trouble, you call DW," and Darkwing's interlude, "Let's get dangerous," will live forever in my memory.

8.Arthur

Arthur was always kind of boring compared to other cartoons, yet I watched it a lot as a kid, because it was boring in the same way a big comfy sweater is boring on a cold day. It's a show full of sweetness and optimism, and never has a theme song so perfectly captured the hopeful and positive message of a show better than Ziggy Marley's "Believe in Yourself." You know you want to sing along to this one.

7.Gravity Falls

Gravity Falls taps into the weirdness and mystery of childhood to deliver one of the best cartoons of the past decade. And the instrumental theme song somehow manages to be eerie, mysterious, and madcap all at once, in a way that only the supernatural adventures of Dipper, Mabel, and Gruncle Stan could live up to. The snappy, fast-paced percussion combine with the playful penny whistle to instantly put me in a good mood.

6.Teen Titans

Teen Titan's Go! has gotten a lot of love and a lot of hate in recent years, the latter coming mostly from fans of the show's 2003 predecessor. Whatever you think of the two shows, there's no denying that the original show's high-energy Japanese surf rock theme song by Puffy Ami Yumi absolutely slaps. It's worthy of a listen even if you don't care about the show.

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