Who Needs Fantastical Fiction?!?!

Several years ago, I remember hearing a quote from the actor / humorist Alan Alda that went something like this, “I vastly prefer reading nonfiction over fiction because fiction always seems so fictitious.” I unsuccessfully attempted to locate Alda’s Twainian quote for the purposes of this writing (my paraphrasing will unfortunately have to do). I do believe this sentiment captures perfectly a strong bias I have espoused for as long as I can remember. Impatiently enduring coming attractions previews at movie theaters in recent years, I am always utterly stunned and bewildered by the fantastical tales of space aliens, transformers, superheroes, and the like that seem to explode off the screen in a loud cacophony of supernatural, often computer-generated, fabrication. I suppose, our often hum-drum lives demand, and in fact yearn, for the type of escapism that these films provide, a welcome respite from everyday life. I have always felt that great real stories / plausible stories, which exist in abundance, are vastly superior to the banal ridiculousness of fantastical, over the top, often gratuitously violent, make-believe. As a kid I remember reading the Lord of The Rings series (never saw any of the movies) and although I will readily admit that I did enjoy the books, the reading was farcical in a tedious way far too often; I usually found myself reverting back to nonfiction and historical fiction which seems to hold my attention much better. I do realize that I am representative of a small minority in the year 2020 and quite frankly, I find this quite disappointing. The inspiration for this writing comes from two semi-recent events. They are, quite honestly, two of the best stories I have ever heard, and though they are very different, they are also connected by the sheer audacity of the respective occurrences. No cyborgs or levitating super- humans are necessary as both stories stand on the merit of everyday possibility. Sort of…

Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, and Dave were simply five very regular twenty-something guys (all graduates of Palos Verdes High School) out on the town for their First Annual Five Dave’s reunion dinner in mid-January of 1987. I suppose I could stop there as this is pretty good already, but the story gets fabulously better from here. The five friends apparently started at the home of one of the Dave’s in the truly beautiful environs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, an absolute oasis and sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of urban Los Angeles, just a stone’s throw from the I-405 Freeway and a veritable sea of cars and people. As a college student, I traveled near, and occasionally through the area, as I periodically journeyed from college in Santa Barbara and home in San Diego. The unofficial ringleader of the group was Dave Mulligan (24), who had recently lost his father at age 55 from a tragic, sudden heart attack. Dave M had always been a little, shall we say, unpredictable. The sudden and unexpected death of his father, who had been a comedy writer for shows such as “Rowan and Martins Laugh in” and “M*A*S*H”, seems to have accelerated this tendency.

After dinner, the Five Dave’s ultimately made it to Hennessey’s Tavern, a popular bar in Redondo Beach. They were nattily attired for the occasion, replete with penny loafers and ties. Remember this was 1987 and they were wealthy kids from Southern California, this was the style for wealthy L.A. kids at that time. After an evening of drinking, Mulligan comes up with the idea of sneaking into Marineland in Palos Verdes to “pet the whales,” something they had apparently done on previous occasions while high school students. This strikes a bit of chord with me as I once snuck into the original SeaWorld in San Diego while a high school student. Our plan was to simply get in without paying, pretty pedestrian in relation to what the evening would hold for Dave Mulligan and friends. First a brief history lesson on Marineland…

Marineland or Hanna Barbera’s Marineland Park as it was known for much of the 1970’s and early 1980’s opened in 1954, which was amazingly one year BEFORE Disneyland and ten years BEFORE SeaWorld. It was designed by the same guy that master-minded Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). In its day, Marineland was a place like no other and included an exhibit in which guests could swim with fish and docile sharks. And, it had a killer whale show that predated SeaWorld’s iconic events. These days one would simply attach a device around their head and experience it through the “joys” of “virtual reality.” Call me old fashioned, but the reality-reality version sounds much better to me; it was, unsurprisingly, an enormously popular destination. SeaWorld would ultimately purchase Marineland in late 1986 and then abruptly shut down the facility in 1987 shortly after The Five Dave Encounter, though there is no apparent correlation. Interestingly, the property would remain abandoned for 20 years. Have I piqued your interest yet?

Back to the early morning hours of January 14, 1987… After hiking down the cliffs surrounding the park and scaling a fence at the southern end of the park at approximately 2:00 a.m., the Five Dave’s find their way to the killer whale tank and amphitheater with the intention of simply “petting the whales” as they had discussed at Hennessey’s. And then things got really crazy… Not content to simply be at the tank, Mulligan decides to climb down the ladder that leads to the platform used by the professional performers / whale trainers for the public shows. As if on cue, its two aquatic inhabitants breach the platform, seemingly happy about the appearance of visitors.

Fairly important to remind the reader that this tank is the home Orky and Corky. In spite of the cute, cuddly names, and apparent friendly behavior, they are highly intelligent, apex predators, easily comparable to African lions in regard to their place on the marine life food chain. In short, they know no predators, and in fact, most everything to them is potential prey. They have been known to even occasionally take on Great White Sharks and dispatch them with relative ease. Hunting in groups, these magnificent mammals have been called “the wolves of the sea.” Fully grown adult males can be 25ft long and weigh close to six tons or twelve thousand pounds!!! Orcas are the fastest of all marine mammals and have been clocked at speeds near 35 MPH! Head-butting and a powerful slap from a dorsal fin are often used hunting techniques utilized to immobilize prey before feeding… Finally, equipped with strong, sharp, interlocking teeth (four inches long and one inch wide) and powerful jaws designed to hold their prey in place, orcas are the incredibly efficient, alpha killing machines of the world’s oceans. And though there are no known human fatalities from orcas in the wild, there have been a number of fatalities attributed to captive killer whales in recent years. Wild animals do unpredictable things in even the best of settings.

I’m guessing that none of the Dave’s knew any of these details as to the habits of the oversized puppies with which they were about to commune. At this point, on the platform, three of the Five Dave’s get cold feet. Dave Mulligan soon makes a decision that not one in a million sane people would make. He decides to jump on the back of one of the orcas in the hopes that it would take off and give him a ride. Despite the fact that there are so many things that could have, and probably should have gone wrong, the whale takes off with Dave Mulligan, fully clothed (tie and loafers), hanging on to the upper dorsal fin. Inexplicably, Dave Berg, who is initially incredulous as to the events unfolding before his eyes, decides to employ the same strategy and soon both men are alternately surfing upon and swimming with the killer whales. The term “Don’t Try This At Home” was created for something exactly like this. Eventually, while having the time of their lives, they start to get quite noisy and they attract the attention of two security guards. Finally, with at least one gun drawn, they are pulled from the water, arrested and detained overnight in jail at the Lomita Sheriffs Office before being released the next day after being charged with MISDEMEANOR trespassing and a $350 fine. Running with the bulls in Pamplona is for sissies in comparison to this wacky rite of passage.

Some interesting footnotes to the events of January 14, 1987… As mentioned, Marineland which had been purchased by SeaWorld in 1986, inexplicably closed its doors about a month after the break-in. The local community was devastated as it had become a neighborhood favorite. Orky and Corky after the closure, would be clandestinely transported to SeaWorld San Diego in the middle of the night. Corky was renamed Shamu and Orky later died. As for Dave Mulligan, six months after his arrest, Mulligan left the country with little more than the shirt on his back and $600 cash to travel for a year. His adventures are chronicled in his book Mulligan’s Wake which covers the wild year after his father’s death.

Swimming and surfing on killer whales is most certainly an event that most likely cannot be topped or perhaps even matched. Well, lets give it a try. On March 15^th, 2015 something happened that to my knowledge, had never happened before, has not happened since, and is unlikely to ever happen again (just a hunch) though that might be a bit of a stretch. Never say never.

Consider the many times you have boarded a plane in your life. If I had to guess, I would say it has most certainly been hundreds of times for myself. According to statistics that date back to 2017, the estimated number of annual commercial flights worldwide would approach 37 million and this would equate to more than 100,000 flights of a day. Staggering numbers… I would suggest that air travel has become a fairly commonplace occurrence for many people. I can tell you somewhat confidently that most of my flight experiences have been uneventful for the most part. I have been on flights that have had minor medical emergencies, strong turbulence, aborted landings, drunk passengers, loudly snoring passengers, minor mechanical issues which have delayed flights, and I have even witnessed the removal of passengers for issues that seemed pretty trivial to me at the time. And, I also must add the sense of disbelief I experience each and every time a large, extremely heavy object manages to become airborne and move through the sky. So, although air flight is at this point a fairly unremarkable thing, for me at least, it still retains a base remarkableness which will most likely never fade.

On March 15, 2015 all of the things which we thought we knew about the realties of mundane air travel suddenly and abruptly changed. You see, British Airway passengers and crew, on a scheduled 7-hour flight from London’s Heathrow Airport to Dubai international Airport in the United Arab Emirates, were unsuspecting as to the anonymous passenger than lurked among them. This was certainly not any normal passenger. This was an extraordinary passenger that unknowingly possessed the ability to change the course of the flight in midair with a simple yet extraordinary trip to the lavatory. This person created the stench heard round the world, as it became international news as its foulness implored the plane’s crew to reach a decision that only mechanical problems and medical emergencies had inspired previously. They aborted the flight and headed back to Heathrow with the urgency of a true “smell emergency.”

What we know… Luckily (not for him) a local British politician happened to be on board and from him we learn several important facts. The pilot made a carefully worded announcement that they were in fact returning to Heathrow. He was careful, according to Abhishek Sachdev to make it clear to the passengers that there was no mechanical issue. Moreover, he made it clear for all (I doubt they needed any clarification at this point), that the issue was “liquid fecal excrement.” According to Sachdev these are exact words the pilot chose. Let that really sink in. Another fantastic part of the story is that British Airways later “apologized for any inconvenience this may have caused’ as the flight returned to London and was rescheduled for the following day (15 hours later). I realize the term Toxic Shock Syndrome is already taken, yet, this for me, was the ultimate TSS for these passengers and crew. Can you even begin to imagine how ghastly this smell must have been that a closed lavatory door proved to be no barrier and that it permeated the cabin to a degree that it elevated far beyond the scope of a terrible inconvenience. It became a possible health issue as articulated to the BBC by a British Airway spokesperson known only as “Sarah.” “When you’re up at that altitude the cabin has to be pressurized so the problem is that anything like that is actually a health and safety problem because only 50 percent of the air is being recycled and cleaned.” Good to know! Actually, I would rather not know this, truth be told.

What we don’t know… To this day, we still do not know the identity of the Pooper Like No Other. We also do not know whether it was a man or woman (though I can pretty confidently surmise that is was a man). People on the flight would obviously know the “who” but seemingly the name identity remains a closely kept secret. Perhaps scientists are studying this person with the hopes of developing a “nonnuclear nuclear” weapon. I can virtually guarantee that a name change, hair dye, and dark glasses are strong possibilities for this person. Be that as it may, none of this changes the fact that this unnamed person singlehandedly changed the course of a flight in midair by the “power” of an organically produced odor that is at the least generically familiar to each and every one of us. Nothing more, nothing less…That is an amazing “accomplishment” that stands alone in the history of commercial aviation as far as I know.

These two true stories are for me, really good examples of the truly amazing which often times gets lost in the rabid fascination with the fantastical and the improbable. For me, riding a killer whale with no training or knowledge as to the behavior and habits of these spectacular apex marine predators and the story behind the ability of an everyday person to have an amazing infamous place in commercial aviation history is the stuff of legend. Legends that actually happen are the kinds of legends that resonate with me. You can have your Star Wars, Spiderman, Avengers, Fast and Furious, and the like, give me The Dave Mulligan Five and the anonymous Pooper to assuage and nourish the yearnings of my imagination and the escapism that we all need from time to time.