The Daily Feather — Oklahoma! Oklahoma! Oklahoma!
It’s the Friday before Black Friday! That can only mean one thing: It’s open season on rewatching your favorite movies! My question to you is: What’s your favorite holiday movie? Please reply on Twitter, Substack or via email. It need not be a holiday movie. My short list: Godfather I, Godfather II, Goodfellas, Star Wars, Planes Trains & Automobiles, Sixteen Candles, Love Actually, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and The Family Stone. As a bonus, I’ll throw in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Adroit slapstick was a fine art once the sole preserve of Peter Sellers. Then came Michael Caine and Steve Martin, or if you prefer their characters -- Lawrence Jamieson and Freddy Benson, two con artists of vastly disparate sophistication levels. Raising their respective deceptive games to attain scoundrel status came easy when they tag-teamed. Though difficult to narrow it down, my favorite scene sees them join forces to swindle an Oklahoma heiress. The older, suave brother sets off his presumed asylum escapee younger sibling with news of his pending nuptials and their planned subsequent move to Oklahoma.
Freddy has the best mental break ever, running into the camera screaming “Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma!!” clanging fork against tin pan creating a crushing cacophony. CLASSIC! PERFECT!
Since February, I’ve been on Oklahoma watch, waiting for its continuing jobless claims to flip positive year-over-year (YoY), which they now have. That leaves Kentucky as the sole holdout state where the ranks of those collecting unemployment benefits have been down YoY since September 2022, when that was the case nationwide. As for the state to my north, it will go down as the second most resilient post-pandemic job market in the country.