Macaulay Culkin Finally Shared Why He Likes "Home Alone 2" More Than The First One
We barely acknowledge the third, and any of those others do not exist!!!
For decades, people have debated which one is better.
The first gets points for being the original. There are arguably better violent acts against Harry and Marv, there's the scary (but nice) shovel guy, and that iconic house.
The second takes place in New York, which automatically elevates it. We have the gay icon Pigeon Lady, the turtle doves, and a completely implausible post-9/11 plot*.
*That would never, ever happen today!
And now we know which one Macaulay likes more.
Duh, it's the second.
Macaulay revealed on an episode of Hot Ones why: "I got paid more," he said.
"I think I own 5% of the net. I also own 15% of the merchandising. So, if you buy a Talkboy, I'm like 'Yeah, I'll take 15% of that.'"
So, there you go. He got paid more, and you know what, that's reason enough for me*.
*But also Pigeon Lady. I love Pigeon Lady.
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First unveiled in 2009, for the White House Poetry Jam, the show's connection with Obama-era feel-good, sometimes superficial progressivism was clinched from the start. Through Hamilton, hip-hop truly went mainstream, entering the playlists of NPR listeners who might have been encountering seminal rappers like Mos Def or Biggie Smalls for the first time through their onstage counterparts. When Hamilton debuted in 2015, everything about it seemed massive, from its artistic ambitions to the size of its fandom, to its ticket sales — from its cultural omnipresence to the scope of its reframing of history and the scale of debate about whether it was good or not. (It was.) You were not allowed to have mild feelings about Hamilton. Yet by the time Hamilton finally premiered on Disney+ in 2020, its influence seemed nearly over — a fall that was arguably a byproduct of its deep cultural oversaturation as well as the fact that, by 2020, the country was mired in far more consequential debates. Ultimately, the show was both a driver of Obamacore and a victim of the era's rosy poptimism — in retrospect, both hopelessly naive and deeply cringe. —Aja Romano, senior writer Get Out Horror has long been a useful vehicle for exploring our social anxieties. And yet, with the release of Get Out in 2017, it seemed like audiences were newly discovering what horror movies were capable of beyond pure entertainment. Jordan Peele's Oscar-winning directorial debut was novel in a few ways. It's one of the rare horror films to feature a Black protagonist and explicitly deal with contemporary race politics. Get Out also arrived in theaters during a particularly fraught time, a month after President Donald Trump's first inauguration. Many were trying to figure out exactly how Trump was elected after running on a stew of toxic racial resentment, even as many liberals debated the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. The film gave the culture a mainstream outlet to express their frustrations around topics like police brutality and white allyship. The villain in Get Out, notably, was not a stereotypical redneck. Rather, it was the supposedly well-meaning white liberal who, in the words of Bradley Whitford's character, would've voted for Obama a third time if they could. The film gave the culture a mainstream outlet to express their frustrations around topics like police brutality and white allyship. Get Out also caused a tangible shift in the film industry. Not only did it spark a Black horror renaissance and reignite an interest in arthouse horror films, but it seemed to change the way general audiences observe these movies. Thanks to Get Out's sly visuals like Froot Loops poured into cold white milk, horror moviegoers were primed not to just sit back and wait for jump scares. These days, they actively search for Easter eggs and subtext in every scene — no matter how silly these observations might be. For better or worse, Get Out represented what moviegoing could look like at its most engaging in the 2010s. —Kyndall Cunningham, staff reporter 'Despacito' Go to a coffee shop. Or for a walk in the park. Or get a drink at the club. At some point, you'll hear the syncopated beat of reggaetón — the undeniably danceable Caribbean, hip-hop-infused rhythm that's everywhere these days. But there's one song that catapulted the genre, and the rest of Latin music, to global superstardom. 'Despacito,' the 2017 smash hit by Puerto Rican artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, is instantly identifiable, opening with a strum of the Puerto Rican cuatro, a traditional guitar-like instrument, with a touch of reverb. It then builds into a cinematic, glossy exaltation of desire, as Fonsi describes how he wants to showcase his love slowly and passionately, and Daddy Yankee cockily raps. The music video now sits at 8.7 billion views on YouTube. Sure, Justin Bieber's feature for the remix helped bring the song to English-language audiences. But his verse remained in a breathily sung Spanish, breaking all sorts of notions that Latin music must incorporate English to successfully crossover. Before 'Despacito,' only two other Spanish songs had hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100 in US history: 'La Bamba' (1987) and 'La Macarena' (1996). Tejana icon Selena Quintanilla's 1995 posthumous crossover album, Dreaming of You, was the first predominantly Spanish-language album to debut in the Billboard 200. These previous attempts, however, featured genres of Latin music that music executives considered more palatable, and arguably less obscene, to American audiences. Boy, were they wrong. There would have been no 'Despacito' without 'Gasolina,' the 2004 Daddy Yankee song that transformed reggaetón's reputation from that of the heavily policed underground to ubiquitous party music. The difference is that 'Despacito' had gone further than anyone could have imagined for a genre born out of frustration and defiance. In some ways, 'Despacito' paved the way for the massive success of reggaetonero Bad Bunny, who sings exclusively in Spanish and is one of the biggest artists in the world. 'Despacito' proved that good music transcends dominant culture, a reflection of how streaming platforms and global, genre-blending sensibilities defined the 2010s. I'll dance to that. —Izzie Ramirez, deputy editor, Future Perfect #MeToo It was 2017, and women in Hollywood had just begun to come forward publicly with reports of sexual assault by producer Harvey Weinstein. As the conversation grew, actor Alyssa Milano wrote on Twitter (now X), 'If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet.' Replies poured in, and the #MeToo hashtag quickly became a shorthand for reports of sexual harassment and assault by powerful men, not only in Hollywood but across industries. 'Me too' wasn't a new phrase — activist Tarana Burke had started a Me Too campaign 10 years prior to offer support and empathy to survivors of sexual violence. But the combination of high-profile (and, it should be said, often white, thin, and conventionally attractive) women speaking out against a wealthy, incredibly influential man catapulted the phrase and its accompanying hashtag to new heights. The time was ripe. Stories about the behavior of Weinstein and other powerful men had been passed around for years, open secrets begging for light. President Donald Trump had recently taken office for the first time, greeted by protesters in pussy hats drawing attention to his record with women. Those hats had been criticized, but they had yet to be adopted as a symbol of cringe, ineffectual activism — both anti-Trump resistance and feminist anger still held broad cultural sway. Neither force holds such power today, and #MeToo has inspired fierce backlash. But the movement led to real change, including increased worker protections and bans on certain kinds of nondisclosure agreements. And even though the days of hashtag activism are arguably over, #MeToo forever made a mark on the way Americans talk about sexual violence, consent, and power. —Anna North, senior correspondent Beauty YouTube Dramageddon No one outside of the YouTube beauty influencer community really understood how big it was or how much money you could make on the platform — until it all fell to pieces. The details are complex, but the YouTube meltdown known as 'Dramageddon' boils down to beauty influencer personalities Tati Westbrook and James Charles publicly beefing — with a few interludes from fellow controversial makeup mogul Jeffree Starr — over both private and professional business. This meant posting (now-deleted) videos to their millions of fans (Charles had roughly 13 million subscribers at the time, Westbrook had six million) with titles like 'Bye Sister' and 'No More Lies.' The videos reveal not only that their rivals had personal flaws — like saying inappropriate things to waitstaff at nice restaurants — but that the beauty stars were allegedly making millions of dollars in deals and collaborations with cosmetic brands. Each salvo and counter-salvo sent their follower counts on a rollercoaster journey, rocketing up and down with each new chapter. Millions of views came rolling in. But even with this popularity, the flood of eyeballs on the drama began to negatively affect both their brands. Westbrook even quit YouTube at one point, but has since returned. The next year, after he admitted to sending sexually explicit messages to minors, YouTube demonetized Charles (meaning he could not make money from his videos). Neither influencer has the same kind of clout they once did, and platforms like TikTok have overtaken YouTube when it comes to buzzy beauty content. For people not deeply invested in picking a side, the biggest shock was just how much personalities like Westbrook and Charles were being paid, the millions of subscribers they had amassed, and how willing they were to risk it all, just because they didn't like each other very much. —Alex Abad-Santos, senior correspondent Avengers: Endgame There was a time when even Stan Lee, the godfather of Marvel comics, couldn't have predicted that a relatively obscure character like Thor or the even more unknown Guardians of the Galaxy would become household names and draw hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. That success is a testament to Marvel Studios's grand design, a plan that reached a cultural apex with 2019's Avengers: Endgame. Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, had a brilliant idea: What if Marvel movies were structured like Marvel comic books? Every movie would fit into a bigger story, just the way that every issue of the source material had. An individual movie might be about Iron Man or Captain America, but it would also be part of a larger arc about the biggest threats in the universe. In 2012's The Avengers and 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, we'd see those threads come together. Every hero across a half-dozen movies (and their friends) would join up to save the world, over and over and over. All this money inspired rival studios to follow suit with connected universes and interlinking solo films — think the DCU and Universal's failed 'Dark Universe' (aka the monsters cinematic universe) — but no one has been able to replicate what Marvel did. That goes for the company itself, which is still rebuilding its own cultural presence, battling through a series of middling TV shows, off-screen controversies, and lower box office hauls, in a post-Endgame world. —Alex Abad-Santos, senior correspondent Zoom Prior to March 2020, the word 'zoom' didn't invoke much — maybe the PBS Kids show from the early 2000s. After the pandemic, the word will forever be synonymous with virtual connection. Yes, even if we are on a Google Meet or Microsoft Teams call, video chatting will forever be known as 'hopping on a Zoom.' The pandemic altered life in many ways, but among the most profound was the way we connect with others. In that dark period of Covid lockdowns, we turned to our screens for work, play, and everything in between. The reason Zoom became the web conferencing platform, as opposed to Skype or Webex, is because it was the easiest to use — all you needed was a meeting link. While remote work and school were the most obvious uses, Zoom was also a platform for friends to catch up (see: Zoom happy hours and game nights), for fans to see their favorite band perform from afar, for the betrothed to tie the knot in front of a virtual audience. Zoom meetings were attracting 300 million daily meeting participants by April 2020. Zoom perhaps epitomized and tipped the scales further in favor of the kind of seamless digital connection that defines the 2020s. The decade has been laden with tech transformations (see: the stunning rise of TikTok or the current AI boom). The irony is, as useful as this tech can be — and as Zoom certainly was in extraordinary circumstances — it's also an approximation of genuine IRL connection. Just ask anyone who had to blow out their birthday candles on camera in 2020. Although many of us still use Zoom during our work days, it's hardly anyone's choice for a hangout some five years later. —Allie Volpe, correspondent A controversial exclusion While putting together this list, we kept coming back to one debate: What artifact best captured the reality-bending tech of AI, which is already exerting enormous influence on our culture and society? In the end, nothing seemed to quite capture the shift, but senior correspondent Adam Clark Estes spent some timing thinking about what the advances will mean for the next 25 years. Read his piece here. The Stew Alison Roman's fans refer to her recipes like the way some people talk about pop stars, in familiar, definitive, often mononymic shorthand: It's 'The Stew' or 'Shallot Pasta' or 'Beans.' They talk about those meals like you're already supposed to know about them. And in 2020, it seemed like everyone did. The Stew, in particular, was an enormous viral hit. A kind of pared-back riff on chana masala, The Stew embodied The Bon Appetit and New York Times alum's signature style — rustic, slightly fancy, but not outrageously difficult; a sardonic Ina Garten for millennials. While those hits garnered a cult following, Roman's recipes really took off during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, when so many people had to cook for themselves in their own kitchens. It didn't hurt that her food was also photogenic, making them perfect for social media. The secret ingredient to Roman's success was Roman's unapologetic taste — she helped popularize spicy, salty, briney, tangy flavors in today's home-cooking and food culture and didn't have much patience for contradictory opinions. If you don't like capers, she thinks you need to grow up. Skip her site entirely if you don't love short rib. Anchovies aren't gross, but the people who won't even try them are. The secret ingredient to Roman's success was Roman's unapologetic taste — she helped popularize spicy, salty, briney, tangy flavors. But Roman's lack of filter got her in trouble, too. In May 2020, her sass landed her in a controversy, as she made fun of Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen for 'selling out.' The fact that both of her chosen targets were Asian women in the lifestyle space wasn't lost on the internet, and Roman eventually started a newsletter and left her job with the Times. Roman was also accused of culturally appropriating some of her recipes, including The Stew. Roman did apologize and appeared on creator Ziwe's confrontational Instagram Live show, another pandemic-era hit, to apologize (in a more snarky way) again. Roman found her footing and started her independent YouTube show Home Movies in 2021. The show and the newsletter both still run today. —Alex Abad-Santos, senior correspondent The Eras Tour The Eras Tour, a three-and-a-half-hour retrospective on Taylor Swift's career repeated over 149 nights in 51 cities, will go down in history for a lot of things. For one, it became the bestselling tour of all time, grossing over $2 billion. It also marked a new level of celebrity for Swift, who, at the beginning of the tour, had released 10 studio albums and was in the process of rerecording them in a highly publicized attempt to reclaim her catalog. Any disputes about Swift's relevance and impact as a musician were put to rest. It capped off a decade of cultural dominance for Swift, whose shift from country to pop with the 2014 record 1989 launched her into a different stratosphere of fame and success. The Eras Tour changed how we attend concerts, specifically stadium shows helmed by big artists. For almost two years, Swifties posted nearly every moment of the show on TikTok, from their themed outfits to surprise songs to the celebrities — like Tom Cruise and, of course, her then-new boyfriend Travis Kelce, vibing out in the VIP tent. Fans never ran out of observations to post, turning every moment into a spectacle and preparing future attendees for the entirety of the experience. Inevitably, this footage, no matter how mundane, dominated the news cycle. As much as Eras was a celebration of Swift's storied career, it was a testament to the extreme level of fandom she had cultivated. Fans managed to make a tour into a two-year-long live feed, a monocultural moment that can probably only be replicated by Swift. —Kyndall Cunningham, staff reporter The Joe Rogan Experience Joe Rogan is many things — a comedian, a commentator, and a contrarian; a reality TV star and martial artist turned host of the most listened to podcast in America: The Joe Rogan Experience. His fans say he's just asking questions, calling out liberal hypocrisy, and defending free speech. His critics use other terms: a conspiracy theorist and peddler of misinformation and anti-trans rhetoric, who platforms not just off-the-wall ideas, but dangerous narratives that cause real-world harm. There's truth in all these labels. There's another way to think of Rogan that may help put him in his rightful context for this decade: 'Joe Rogan is the Walter Cronkite of Our Era,' declared British satirist Konstantin Kisin for Quillette in 2019. 'Not one established newspaper or broadcaster can now compete with a popular YouTube host conducting a conversation from his self-funded studio,' he wrote at the time, reflecting on Rogan's three-hour-long interrogation of Twitter executives. Kisin's declaration — before the global Covid-19 pandemic, before the 2020 election of Joe Biden or the 2024 reelection of Donald Trump — might have been a bit premature. But he effectively predicted what Rogan would yet become: not just one of the most influential voices in politics, popular culture, and social commentary, but also a harbinger for a new form of media, communications, trust, and truth in a post-pandemic world. There is no monoculture in 2025, but for a huge part of America, the realm Rogan pioneered and steers is as close as we might get. Read the rest from senior correspondent Christian Paz here. Ozempic Ozempic was approved as a Type 2 diabetes medication in 2017, but despite its impressive effects as a treatment for chronic illness, it didn't start to capture the cultural imagination until a few years later. After the Covid lockdowns, celebrities like Adele and Mindy Kaling emerged looking notably and mysteriously thinner (though it hasn't been confirmed that either of them used Ozempic). In 2022, Variety reported that celebrities were obsessed with getting their hands on Ozempic — or its generic name, semaglutide — for its off-label use as an appetite suppressant and weight loss drug. By 2023, the gossip magazines were openly speculating on whether Kim Kardashian was on Ozempic. 'Life After Food?' asked New York magazine in a splashy feature on how Ozempic had worked its way into the entertainment industry and was trickling down to everyone else. Our Ozempic moment raised immediate and pointed questions about the era we were living in: weren't we past our collective obsession with thinness by now? Hadn't we escaped the anti-fat '90s and 2000s to embrace body positivity and health at any size? The immense popularity of Ozempic said no, our culture hadn't evolved past the desire to be skinny. We had only gotten better at hiding it. Now that thinness was within the reach of anyone who could afford it, many people and institutions decided there was no point in pretending they didn't care about skinniness any longer. Plus-size models started to disappear from the runways, and #SkinnyTok surfaced pro-ana tips into the For You pages of young girls. Out of the context of our cultural neuroses about body shapes, Ozempic is a wonder. Early evidence suggests it can offer promising treatment not just for diabetes and health complications related to obesity, but also for depression, addiction, and perhaps even Alzheimer's and cancer. It has already made scores of lives better. But as a cultural artifact, Ozempic is the excuse that let unabashed anti-fatness come roaring back.
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Travis Kelce gets candid about Taylor Swift, retirement, and his 2025 NFL focus
Travis Kelce gets candid about Taylor Swift, retirement, and his 2025 NFL focus originally appeared on The Sporting News Travis Kelce is opening up about all the things that matters most to him. In GQ's September cover story, the Kansas City Chiefs star, 35, dishes on everything from life with Taylor Swift, and his post-NFL ambitions, to the one goal fueling his 2025 season - winning a Super Bowl. Travis Kelce opens up in GQ's September cover story Giving the outlet a rare look inside his personal life, Kelce told GQ, "It's the only goal. It's every goal." Though the NFL tight end admits that some of the side jobs he undertook last season did deter some of his focus, he is more motivated than ever. 'I think it might have slipped a little bit because I did have a little bit more focus in trying to set myself up. And opportunities came up where I was excited to venture into a new world of acting and being an entertainer,' he said. 'I don't say this as 'I shouldn't have done it.' I'm just saying that my work ethic is such that I have so much pride in how I do things that I never want the product to tail off, and I feel like these past two years haven't been to my standard.' He added, 'I just have such a motivation to show up this year for my guys.' Kelce has come a long way since he's entered the league. After being passed on by his hometown team, the Cleveland Browns, and by several others, he recalls crying in then head coach Rob Chudzinski's office when he learned he wouldn't get to put on the uniform he dreamed about one day wearing. "I literally was in tears. I said, 'I'm sorry I'm getting emotional. I grew up down the street. I would f******" do anything to play for the Cleveland Browns.' He looked at me like I was insane. I don't think he'd ever had somebody just pour out their emotions," the Chiefs star said. It's all water under the bridge now though, as Kelce has since left his mark on the NFL, earning five Super Bowl appearances and three of the coveted-rings. He's surpassed Jerry Rice as the all-time lead in postseason and Super Bowl receptions has made a strong case for being named one of the best tight ends to ever play the game. Travis Kelce on life off the field with Taylor Swift and turning her into a football fan Then there's the fact that Kelce has also landed one of the most famous singers in the business, Taylor Swift, whom he's been dating since 2023. The couple's relationship is so serious that, Swift, chose his "New Heights" podcast to announce her upcoming 12th album, "The Life of a Showgirl." "New Heights" dropped a clip of the upcoming episode, which airs on Wednesday, August 13, on Instagram on Tuesday, revealing Swift as their upcoming guest. It's unsurprising that Swift selected her boyfriend's podcast to drop the news. The couple to be solid, and Kelce says the relationship has grown very "organically." 'When I say it was so organic, we fell in love just based off the people we were sitting in a room together with. We are two fun-loving people who have the morals to appreciate everyone for who they are. We share all those values. It kind of just took the f*** off," he said. 'I hadn't experienced somebody in the same shoes as me, having a partner who understands the scrutiny, understands the ups and downs of being in front of millions," he continued. 'When there is not a camera on us, we're just two people that are in love. It can be perceived as something else because of how much it is talked about and how much we are tracked whenever we do go out, but I would say that it's as normal of." Kelce has since turned Swift into a highly educated football fan. 'I sort of made her a football fan,' the Chiefs star said. 'She is the most engulfed fan now. She knows what the injury reports look like. She understands what special situations are, third and short—all these things because she just naturally loves to hear about my job.' MORE: Travis Kelce's expensive gameday look revealed as he skips Chiefs' preseason opener Travis Kelce's future plans: Engagement rumors and NFL retirement Despite opening up about a lot during the cover story, Kelce didn't dish on any future plans for his relationship with Swift. Many fans assume that an engagement announcement will come in the near future, but that hasn't been confirmed. It's also unclear whether or not this will be Kelce's final season in the NFL. 'I know to stay away from a few things that I dabbled in early,' he said. While Chiefs fans will also have to wait on that news, the tight end did share some of his plans for his post-NFL life. He's in the process of opening a steakhouse up with his teammate, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahones, and has invested in horse racing and car washes. There's also been a few stints in acting, both in movies and on televi He's enjoyed acting, and his time working on his "New Heights" podcast alongside his brother, former Philadelphia Eagles star Jason Kelce. 'I don't necessarily know if I'll take it and run with it when I'm done playing,' he said, 'but I know that I want to stay around the football world as a profession and then dabble in other areas as well.' He continued, 'I think there is a happy medium... I do want to have free time. I do want to have the ability to be around my family. I don't want to get too busy to where I'm traveling all over the world and I'm not present at home.' MORE LIFESTYLE NEWS: Cristiano Ronaldo engaged to longtime girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez Shilo Sanders reveals why dad Deion doesn't want his first NFL jersey Chet Holmgren roasted for wearing 'Miami drug lord' outfit at Alex Caruso's wedding Travis Kelce's expensive gameday look revealed as he skips Chiefs' preseason opener Deion Sanders keeps things light ahead of Shedeur's NFL debut with jokes about grandma
