March Poll (for April)

Little fish, little fish, swimming in the water/Come back here and eat the Watergate spotter

The “Watergate spotter” here refers to Alfred D. Baldwin, who, under G. Gordon Liddy, listened and transcribed tapped phone conversations from the DNC, and does not refer to Frank Wills, the security guard who foiled the Watergate break-in. Just to be clear!

Originally published 3/28/23 on Substack

POLL

Which film should I watch in April?

All the President’s Men (1976): 67%

Piranha (1978): 33%

55 VOTES · POLL CLOSED

Hey folks! So you know when you, like, try to move two giant files over to a hard drive at the same time, and instead of moving one, then the other, the computer does both at once, and you watch the progress bar creep ever-so-slowly to the right, so slowly you think it might actually be going backwards? And then the computer starts to heat up from trying to do two things at once? And then the fan kicks in, and it gets louder and louder, and it seems like if the heat doesn’t melt the computer, then the fans will surely explode? Do you perhaps see how this analogy applies to the two outstanding posts I still owe to you, the subscribers? And what if I told you there’s actually three outstanding posts, one I didn’t even tell you about? 

Fear not; the computer eventually finishes, and soon I will too. In the meantime, I wanted to try out Substack’s poll feature, which is new enough that it wasn’t around the last time I did a poll. What’s that? The last time I did a poll was 10 months ago? Anyway, if you haven’t already, please select a film for me to watch and write up in April. If you’re reading this via email, please know the poll will only last 24 hours, so don’t dilly-dally. Your choices are Piranha (1978, Joe Dante), one of the best, if not thebest of the Jaws rip-offs/cash-ins, and All the President’s Men (1976, Alan J. Pakula), the nigh-legendary investigative thriller that saw Pakula apply his knack for fictional paranoid landscapes (viz. Klute and The Parallax View) towards the famous real-life scandal. It’s dumb, but only subscribers can vote, so if you haven’t yet, click the button below. 

Thanks for reading and subscribing! 

EDIT: And the winner is All the President’s Men, defeating Piranha, 37-18. Look for this sometime in April¹. Thank you to everyone who voted!