April 21-27, 2005

naked city

The Whaley News

by Patrick Rapa

As soon as that poor, misguided whale first made a wrong turn into the Delaware River, you just knew somebody was gonna try to name it something stupid.

Good ol' CBS 3 jumped in early with an online poll. There's the ubiquitous "Delawhale," the lame "Baby Beluga," the lamer "Willie," the heartwarming "Wally" and "Trent," because the guy spent a lot of time up in Trenton. At press time, after about 1,600 votes, "Delawhale" was way in the lead, and why not? It's clever-ish. It was also an Inky headline. It was also also the original name of the Philly-Camden ferry, but nobody seems to point that out.

The Bella Vista Social Club, a local snark blog, suggested that replacing "Delawhale" with "Della Reese" in your mind would make the coverage more tolerable.

A day or two into Whalegate, word came around that the 12-foot male beluga already had a name, "Helis." That's what some Quebec scientists have named him, after the French word "helice," which means propeller, which might be what caused the scar on his forehead. (Well, if we got him from Quebec and he has a head injury, I say we call him "Lindros.")

Of course, we ain't gonna let some French Canuck Smartdick name our whale. Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney put out a plea for whale names (and then compared him to N.J. politicians for being fat and happy. Take that!). A couple days later she sifted through responses ("Boner, the Whale Loner," "Mighty Whitey") and delivered a winner: "The Meshuga Beluga."

Thankfully, the Daily News, which has featured guest columns by Smarty Jones and T.O.'s groin (or whatever), resisted running an article by the so-called "Duke of Whales." The Trentonian, however, could not resist printing an interview, and the whale, an apparent smoker, seemed fine with being addressed as Helis.

But I think that's crap, 'cause I just talked to the whale 20 minutes ago and he said his name was: eeeeOOOeeeEEEeeeeOOOOOO. Weird.