#entertainment is good actually

[lediz-watches]

Mom Can't Cook: A DCOM Podcast

It's a podcast. You don't 'watch' a podcast. I appreciate that. I'm still going to rant about it because I just finished another listen-through and, much like the hosts themselves, simply must talk about how I have spent many hours of my life recently.

So if you have never heard of Mom Can't Cook, the short version is two grown-ass men watching and recapping Disney Channel Original Movies from the late 90s-mid 00s.

But what it really is, is this:

Friends, there will be a time in your life as a consumer of media in which you start consuming a media that you KNOW is going to be bad. Maybe you loved it when you were younger, maybe you couldn't be bothered reaching for the remote, maybe you're just that bored, maybe a friend or a family member or a child you're babysitting is making you sit through it, but the point is, you consume the media. And it's as bad as you thought it would be. It annoys you. You hate it. You want to throw things at it. But you keep sitting through it. You can't stop. You must continue to consume it until there is nothing more to consume. You are, you realise with dawning horror, a little bit in love with this thing. You have spent hundreds of hours and possibly actual money on a thing that you knew, objectively and academically, was absolutely terrible. And yet. And yet.

You enjoyed yourself.

And you must confess your sins.

That's what this podcast is about.

It's actually Luke Westaway and Andy Farrant, two British internet personalities ostensibly employed in games journalism, recapping Disney Channel Original Movies from the late 90s-mid-00s. During lockdown, they spent Friday nights watching these movies together (I suspect in lieu of going to the pub), and now they simply have to talk about them because DCOMs are the kind of insane fever dream you simply must talk about and they are slaves to the grind internet personalities who try to make content out of everything.

I love it for a number of reasons:

Luke and Andy are very fun to listen to in general. They are very good at playing off each other, building on each other's ideas, getting increasingly ridiculous and yet somehow never managing to reach the heights of a Disney Channel Original Movie from the late 90s-mid 00s. At least, they haven't yet (Ninji from Oxtra Mario Golf came close, but that was technically Mike's fault). I think they consider it a challenge.

Andy in particular has these beautiful turns of phrase that perfectly encapsulate the feeling of an adult watching the kind of insanity that seems perfectly reasonable to a kid watching a kids' movie but, twenty years later and as the wrong audience, can only be described as mildly traumatising.

Luke is wonderful at just... embodying the part of you that gets swept up in the madness, knows you're getting swept up in the madness, tries desperately to hold on to sanity, and then can only take solace in the fact that maybe it won't be so bad to go insane because hey, it's kind of fun here...

By the time the Disney Channel reached my country, I was too old (/too young) to be watching most of it, so while I may have seen ads for them, I never saw these movies. And now, I'm too infected with Cultural Studies to get through them without dissecting their context and what they're saying and why and ugh... Listening to the recaps allow me to experience them without actually having to watch them.

Regardless of how they actually feel about it, Mom Can't Cook always feels to me like a bit of a love letter to a guilty pleasure. The DCOMs are bad, and Luke and Andy will go into detail about how bad they are, but it had this thread of affection to it that I adore. Maybe it was lockdown, maybe it was just time spent with friends, who knows, but they got something very important out of these terrible movies, and they're passing that on to their listeners (Honestly we should be compensated for this trauma). But jokes aside, this podcast is actually representative of why I love fandom, and being online, despite what a terrible place I find it most of the time. It's representative of why I occasionally post to this blog. I love talking about the things I consume. Whether they're good or bad, they speak to something in me, and I want to talk back! So it's... indulgent and wonderful, and I love it. And I love this podcast for speaking to that part of me.

I intended to write short reviews on spotify, but I listen on my laptop and spotify doesn't have that functionality on PC for some reason. And by the time I was confident enough to rant like this I couldn't remember individual episodes well enough to go back and do it on my phone. So it will be a next-time thing.

But in the meantime, I must share the lines that now live rent-free in my head:

"With the unearned confidence of a Marnie". I desperately need this down the leg of some workout leggings, and yet for some reason it isn't even Tshirt merch. No one will understand why, but I need it on workout gear specifically.

"But why did they give up their hands?" I bought this shirt, and I'm going to buy it again because I bought two sizes too big for reasons that I swear made sense at the time. It makes me grin every time I look at it.

"But there was simply no time/budget." I think this is more about Luke's delivery whenever he says it, but I love it. As a person who works in projects and actually does need to live with the consequences of terrible compromises fairly often, it also speaks to my soul.

"And I hate him." Again, it's in the delivery. Mom's got a date with a vampire remains one of my favourite episodes at least partly because of this one (two? Three? I don't remember how often it got said) line.

"Because [insert noun here] is good, actually." Whether sarcastic or not. It's just a turn of phrase that now exists in my head.

I just... I don't know what the hosts intended, but what I hear is the incredible affection for this waste of their Friday nights. For stupid, terrible, insane entertainment that we watch and consume and struggle to comprehend and yet which entertains us. And I love that so much.

Because entertainment is so important, and so wonderful, even when it's objectively terrible or just plain nonsensical, because it - ack. I'm just getting way too philosophical about what entertainment is and how we respond to it, so I'm just gonna leave this one here.

Mom Can't Cook is a good podcast. I'm so happy it exists.

[egophiliac]

LET THE BOY HAVE AN EDUCATION

officially at the point where we're starting to see where it's all headed and I am just going NYEEHEEHEE in delight at it all. ahhh...next week can't come soon enough...

[nerdyfangirlingbooks]

"I can't stand by and watch him die" "Then don't look" is too raw a line to come from bbc merlin

[pinyatapix]

how i imagine Minecraft Alex's personality to be like vs how i imagine Minecraft Steve's personality. duality of minecraft

[dustykneed]

so jim got bit by a space mushroom that takes away his impulse control... welcome to daycare on the bridge with his xo and cmo

obviously the salad cat meme is still going strong in the 23rd century because these guys reenact it on a daily basis lmaoo

prompt fill for @mcspirkevents' mcspirk bingo prompt "mask off" 🩵💙💛

[b4kuch1n]

polymer broadcast signal hijack

[balis77]

Shoutout to Magic for taking "Watson equivalent who was a former assassin of some kind" and ascending it to "Watson equivalent who is still an active assassin, not even on the side, like being a detective's assistant is their side job"

Proft: "He's covered his tracks well. He's definitely our culprit, but with all the physical evidence destroyed we'll never be able to prove it to the courts." Etrata: "...So like, does that mean I'm fine to... you know..." Proft: *sighs* "...Just please tell me you're being paid by someone else to do it." Etrata: "Oh they gave me the contract like halfway through the investigation. I was just waiting to see if we could get him in custody first."

[iizuumi]

warmup narureno of the day

[cozylittleartblog]

The animation strike is looking more and more likely, please be ready to support creatives this summer and boycott Hollywood again if you care about animation or the human artists who make it happen.

+ indie animation youtube playlist

[nardpup]

Sing: Thriller - MJ’s Thriller by The Sing Cast

YASSSSS! GET INTO IT!

[mistress-of-nightmares]

"jiang cheng used wei wuxian's crippling phobia to confirm his identity!!" yeah and my older brother would stand at the edge of our balcony unseriously to make me cry when i was younger what's your point

[bergoop]

Ryan still mad about The Walkie Incident (tm) from Waverly Hills

(x)

S3 this Friday!! (Oct 11 on YT!)

[aroaceleovaldez]

i still think a lot about how technically, it's implied Anubis and Walt started dating each other before they asked out Sadie, and if Sadie had said she wasn't interested they would have gone "Entirely fair have a nice day" and proceed to just go continue to date each other.

Cause like, that was the entire thing. They decided that themselves. That things would work best if they were together (as in both physically sharing a body and also relationship-wise). The "asking Sadie about it" part was secondary. If she had said no, they would have stayed together, because among other things Walt would kind of die if they didn't. Walt and Anubis are technically the first gay couple in the Riordanverse. AND they're in a polyamorous relationship with Sadie. Why does no one talk about them ever.

[false-anomaly]

Trevor Hills being Pathetic Blorbo #1 and your enjoyment of him being said Pathetic Blorbo #1 just adding on to the games pre-existing meta commentary is,, so good. They made him as miserable as possible and god it really worked.

[camellcat]

school hard is my most rewatched episode by a mile and it always makes me forget how the fuck sprusilla could ever possibly break up. they're SO good they're perfect to me here. despite the fact dru clearly isn't doing well they still feel like equals. spike is choosing to take care of her because he loves her, he adores her, and it shows. dru loves his attentions and loves giving them right back as best she can

and hey I see the spuffy even this early on and I love the spuffy.... but without dru?? ur telling me dru leaves later??? there'll be no dru???? that's just wrong

[kagoutiss]

green beetle black beetle