#29: Home Alone: The Is-ness of Culkin and Stern (And Trivia!)

Merry Christmas ya filthy Snob. And a happy New episode! If you, sweet listener, understand this reference, then you know the endless bowl full of jelly belly laughs you are about to hear. 

In this Christmas edition, General Snobbery has decreed that Sean and Matt delve deep into the world of Kevin McCallister, Pesci, and Stern. Home Alone is simply a Christmas classic. It has everything: a good story, wonderful music, action, laughs, and Buzz. Few films resonate as deeply in the collective Christmas psyche of the American people. And no movie has more Pesci burns as this one. 

To many, Home Alone is a Christmas tradition, and everyone has a favorite part. What's yours? Perhaps it's Stern's water fetish, maybe it's Uncle Frank's absolute content for innocent children, perhaps it is Pesci's emerging psychopathy, or even the image of Kevin growing on Buzz's ass. We all have favorite scenes that make us laugh and feel the holiday spirit with such strength, we'll think we were just hit in the face with a paint can.

Stern

In a special Christmas twist, Sean challenges Matt with Home Alone trivia and thus a tradition is born. We ask you this single piece of trivia, Listener: what podcast should you recommend to all your friends this holiday season? You know the answer, you know it the way Stern knows the feeling of a nail entering his foot. 

Praise be this classic film! And praise be you, Listener! Ho ho ho, let us Snob.

Landmarks:

7:10: Sean and Matt share their top three Home Alone moments

55:30: Home Alone trivia begins

The Electrocution of Stern

#28: #NotMyMummy: Fraser Rules, Cruise Drools

The title just about says it all on this one. Hashtag "Not My Mummy" (#NotMyMummy) began in the wake of the trailer for the new The Mummy, starring one Thomas "Tom" Cruise of Scientology, couch-jumping fame. Needless to say, some fans were not too pleased. But in truth, their anger had much less to do with any personal qualms with Mr. Cruise, and far more to do with the tragic fact that the great Brendan Fraser will not be returning in this upcoming film. 

Imhotep is mad that Fraser won't be returning

Had any of us truly recognized what impact Fraser had had on our lives? Or was it not until the moment that we saw the guy from Vanilla Sky in the trailer for a Mummy film that we realized just how impactful Fraser has been? Say all you want about his Golden Globes clap (video below) - the guy can kick some major butt. Rick O'Connell will be greatly missed in this new film, and quite likely, your hosts at General Snobbery, amidst their laughter at this inevitably terrible new Mummy, will quite likely feel surges of nostalgia at the distant memory of Fraser taking on a dozen reanimated corpses with a sword. 

We greatly miss Fraser, and we hope that #NotMyMummy will help bring him back. Regardless, we dedicate this episode to him, where, by laughing time and time again at the hilarious scream made by Cruise in the new trailer (video below), we are truly yearning for the simpler times when we could watch Fraser shoot guns at Imhotep's huge mouth. As franchise after franchise sucks Hollywood dry of its once-great energy, dumbing film after film down to silly tropes and rushed release dates, we can at least tip our top hats to a man of the greatest order, who once radiated charisma of a special blend, charisma time has proven to be of the eternal kind. Brendan Fraser, this snob's for you. 

Fraser's legendary Golden Globes clap

The Cruise Scream begins at 1:13

#27: The Boondock Saints: Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas Meet Irish Guys and Stupidity

A bartender named Troy Duffy once saw a drug dealer take money from a corpse. His response? To write a movie called The Boondock Saints. This film came out in 1999 and was in theaters for about five days. It then was released on DVD, where, over the course of the next few years, it found itself in the prized film collection of many bros throughout the United States. These bros spread the word, one set of bench press at a time, and soon enough, The Boondock Saints had become a cultural phenomenon. 

The Boondock Saints, about to kill some bad guys. 

In this episode of General Snobbery, Matt and Sean take a look back at this movie, a movie that was beloved by many dudes at their all-boys Catholic High School, including, much to their regret, themselves. Yes, Matt and Sean, those endeavoring on the path of the #TrueSnob, once loved The Boondock Saints. They loved it so much, in fact, that upon this 2016 viewing of a film that should never be watched again by anyone, they could recall what was to come, scene by scene, line by line. 

Nevertheless, as wisdom comes with age and experience, so transformations in one’s viewing of a film occur. With great thanks to the Lord Almighty, Matt and Sean discovered that this film is, in fact, incredibly bad. At times, it’s hilariously bad. The most ridiculous part about it is that it clearly thinks it’s awesome. It wants you, the viewer, to believe that it’s saying something profound about existence, making a big moral stand on evil and corruption in the contemporary world. What it’s really about is two flat Irish characters deciding to kill bad guys. 

If it weren’t for Willem Defoe… well, actually, even he couldn’t save this godawful film. Nevertheless, due to its total badness, The Boondock Saints provided one of the most laugh-filled snobs yet, one of those sacred snobs where Sean and Matt sat across from one another, in the same room, cultivating the limitless snobbery in a singular space. We hope you enjoy, listener, as they parse through their past, work through the guilt of once having liked this movie, and enter a place of calm and peace that snobbery alone may yield. 

And shepherds we shall be, for thee my Lord, for thee, against the existence of this atrocious, irredeemable movie.