Reasons 'Home Alone' Couldn't Happen in 2012

'Tis the season for classic holiday movies, and if your household is anything like ours, you've already cued up such greats as Elf, Christmas Vacation, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. But this afternoon, we decided to pop in another favorite: the tale of Kevin McAllister and his heroic efforts to defend his family's home from two of the worst, most beloved, criminals of all time. John Hughes' yuletide slapstick zinger Home Alone (1990).

As we watched it in all it's early 90s goodness (the film was made when I was five), I noticed a few things that would make Kevin's situation improbable, if not altogether impossible. Consider, for a moment:

1. Mobile phones - A major plot device for the movie is that the phone lines in the McAllister neighborhood are down. Thus, Kevin's parents are unable to call home from Paris to communicate with their son via landlines, the only phones available at that time. Also, Marv and Harry find out that the family is actually gone in Paris by overhearing an answering machine message left at another house they're burglaring. Throw a cell in the hands of any one of the characters and the plot would dramatically alter.
2. Burglar alarms - When Harry the thief comes by posing as a police officer to case the McAllisters' house, he finds out that they only have minimal security measures in place - as Kevin's dad says, "We have automatic timers for our lights, locks for our doors. That's about as well as anybody can do." There's no way a 21st century million-dollar home wouldn't be secured by at least a basic alarm system.
3. Amber alerts - Since 1996, law enforcement officials have taken missing children reports much more seriously. This is, in part, due to the January 1996 abduction of Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas. Nowadays, a parent calling the police about an 8-year-old child home alone would receive a much more thorough and coordinated response from a number of law enforcement agencies.
4. 90s items - Kids these days would be less likely to have access to a number of items that Kevin uses to thwart our bumbling thieves: cardboard cutouts of Michael Jordan, B-B guns, old mobster movies on VHS, firecrackers (which are now illegal in Illinois), and tree houses to zip-line to (don't they just play Nintendo DS instead of going outside?). However, they would be more likely to have computers, smartphones, wi-fi, and hundreds of satellite channels, which I'm sure would make up for the lack of early 90s household items… somehow?
5. The McAllister house - 671 Lincoln Ave, Winnetka, IL - is not owned by the McAllisters anymore (not that it technically ever was). The actual house used for the film was sold this past spring for $1.6 Million. Man, do I wish I could've put in a bid...
6. Airport security - There are a few reasons our post-9/11 world would make the scenario in Home Alone at least less likely. For one thing, the McAllisters would have been sure to notice Kevin was not with them when checking in at the airline counter, or clearing security, or boarding their plane. In fact, with an international flight, it is highly unlikely the airline or TSA would not set off some sort of alert when one member of their party didn't check in or board the flight. Also, Kevin's mother would not have been allowed to stand at the gate to bargain with passengers in procuring a stand-by ticket home, nor would she have been permitted to alter the passenger name for a ticket so close to flight time (I believe TSA pre-screens international passengers). Of course, she also wouldn't have been able to hitch a ride with John Candy's polka band from Scranton to Chicago. RIP Candy.

Now, that's not to say there aren't still a number of things in this holiday classic that certainly could happen. The good folks at America's Dumbest Criminals have been chronicling the follies of moronic crooks just like Marv and Harry for years. And kids these days are no less clever than Macaulay Culkin's portrayal of a child of the 90s. In fact, this 10-year old girl in Houston foiled the robbery of her home just over a month ago. 

Anyway, realistic or not, be sure to revisit the good ole' days with a viewing of Home Alone this Christmas. Remember: This is your house, you have to defend it.

Feeling Blue?

Good news: This album is still incredible.

About two years ago or so, I started to think that perhaps Weezer's self-titled debut - The "Blue Album" - only appealed to my 16-year old version. I feared that, as I grew older - wiser, more cultured, less apt to teen-angst, no longer taking weekly jaunts on the riding mower in my parents' backyard with my discman and huge headphones and singing my heart out - Rivers Cuomo and his gang of merry geek-rockers had grown, at worst, childish, or at best, something to be filed away under "nostalgia."

And yet, as I sit here at Payne's, taking a momentary pause during the grand production that is Research Portfolio, the simple, driving, consistent sounds of my all-time favorite band are still simple, driving, and consistent. I love it still.

I could go into more detail about why this piece of music sits atop the heap - at least in my mind - but I really do have to get back to work. For now, I will say that there is most definitely a prominent element of nostalgia/familiarity for me in this album. It's like putting on your favorite old t-shirt: the soft, worn cotton feels exactly right against your skin; the cracked and dingy screen-printing used to speak with a greater boldness and originality, and yet it's still funny; the various stains and holes a road-map of your life so far, each with its own harrowing tale of bravery, hilarity, and intrigue. You've had to save it several times from your mother as it hovered perilously above the trash can, and you've felt self-conscious more than a few times when you found yourself wearing it in a slightly more upscale place than you thought you'd be. But the fact remains: that t-shirt is still in your drawer; there are more pictures on Facebook with you wearing it than you not wearing it; and to toss it out because you had somehow outgrown it would be a violation of something deep inside of you.

After a while, every laser in every CD player I've ever owned probably didn't even need that little plastic disc to recite the refrains of classics like "Say It Ain't So" or "Only In Dreams"; it had them memorized. My speakers and headphones knew the chorus to "Holiday" by heart, and my fingers could feel themselves mimicking the opening riff of "My Name Is Jonas" involuntarily. It's as if the membranes of my eardrums were on autopilot when the guitar solo for "Undone" piped through the air, and I didn't even need to close my eyes to picture myself "In The Garage."

This afternoon, I put that old t-shirt back on and realized that, no matter how old I grow, no matter how serious I become, and no matter what new musical frontiers I explore, there will always be a 120 mm × 120 mm sized hole in my heart that can only be filled by one color...