The Daily Feather — No Disguise Here

Three hints to name (arguably) the worst film ever made:

1) “An embarrassing mess for all involved, this so-called family comedy is about as unfunny as unfunny gets,” Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter, August 2002

2) “The movie is a desperate miscalculation. It gives poor Dana Carvey nothing to do that is really funny, and then expects us to laugh because he acts so goofy all the time,” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, August 2002

3) “‘Disguise the limit’ is the film's punning promotional slogan, but ‘Rock Bottom’ is more like it,” Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, August 2002

Give up? 2002’s The Master of Disguise scored an abysmal 1% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. Critics were unanimous that this 80-minute clunker from Happy Madison Productions would only appeal to 5- to 11-year-olds. Empire Magazine’s Alan Morrison minced no words: “A film about idiots, made by idiots, for idiots.”

Watching movies (Ok, not this one) and deep-diving U.S. macroeconomics are hobbies of ours at QI. Dana Carvey’s character, Pistachio Disguisey, possessed an uncanny knack for mimicry, albeit one that was genetic and inherited from a long line of Masters of Disguise. With the proviso that the data are painfully lagged, after perusing Friday’s November State JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey), the entrenchment of trends left us thinking America’s labor market was a long-lost cousin of Pistachio.

Leading off with the lead – the percentage of states with declining Job Openings on a year-over-year (YoY) basis was a markedly elevated 76% in November (yellow line).