I Spent Three Years Chasing Whalers In Order to Tell Them Everything About ‘Along Came Polly.’ You Won’t Believe What Happens Next.

r.j. kushner
Published in
7 min readJul 1, 2018

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The idea seemed simple enough; I would track down a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean and tell the entire crew everything there is to know about the 2004 romantic comedy Along Came Polly

Little did I know I would be embarking on the journey of a lifetime.

Part 1: Assembling a Team

As readers of my CVS Pharmacy Seasonal Aisle Updates blog are well aware, I have no experience with bodies of water outside the occasional bubble bath. Thus, I was charged with finding a team to traverse me through the vast and wonderous Southern Ocean, where I would learn numerous life lessons, all of them cruel.

But like Reuben Feffer’s primal determination to win the heart of Polly Prince (albeit deceitfully at first), I was determined to find a ship and diligently track down Japanese whalers in order to tell them absolutely everything about Along Came Polly. NOTHING would be left out of my detailed report, and nothing would stop me from giving it.

With my last remaining dollars (I’d recently been cleaned out by some very unfair court decisions), I placed an ad in a small weekly near the Port of Benicia:

Seeking crew to scour the Ocean in search of Japanese whalers in order to provide them an account of ‘Along Came Polly’ (2004). Have no money and will NOT work to earn keep (flat footed).

Not exactly Dickens, but I was happy with it. However, I immediately received letters discouraging my mission.

“You’re wasting your time,” they read. “No one cares about the premise of Along Came Polly, or the on-screen chemistry between Stiller and Seymour-Hoffman — leave those Japanese whalers alone.”

It seemed every other letter carried another demoralization of my quest.

I must admit, I was growing chopfallen. But just when all hope seemed lost, the landline rang its sharp, metallic twang. I spit the cyanide capsule out of my mouth and answered in a panic. “Hello? Hello?”

“We leave at 3 a.m.” a murky voice said from the other end. “Bubye.”

“Wait!” I said. “Can I at least know the name of my rescuer?”

“My name is Twinky,” he said.

“Twinky,” I repeated, carefully jotting it down on a sticky note so I wouldn’t forget. “OK Twinky, thanks for the call. I’ll meet you at the port at 3 a.m. sharp! I may even come a little early.”

“Bubye.”

“Bubye.”

I hung up. I would have leapt for joy, but I saw that my hamster, Turnip, had eaten the cyanide capsule I’d spat on the carpet and was laying there like a lump. Perhaps it was as good a goodbye as any.

I met Twinky at the harbor and immediately noticed he was wearing oven mitts on both his hands and feet. We boarded his rusty vessel, “The Large-Breasted Woman,” and set sail toward Antarctica. It was the happiest moment of my entire life — or so I thought at the time.

Part 2: The Voyage

It turns out that life upon the sea is not like Reuben and Polly’s brief and unfortunate sailing expedition with Leland Van Lew. In fact, it is much scarier.

Gradually I began to realize that Twinky had a terrible temper and a drinking problem, as he would often hold a knife to my throat and say, “I have a terrible temper and a drinking problem.”

His crew consisted of 15 men, none of whom had ever seen Along Came Polly, (except for Cecil, who claimed to have “parts of it” on TBS one time).

At night, when Twinky had gone to bed after a long day of being rude, the crew would gather around and listen to me explain that though Reuben and Polly have very different personalities and goals, they were still able to make a connection, with no shortage of laughs along the way (one time we giggled so hard Twinky woke up and we all had to pretend to be asleep!).

The storms were violent and I screamed so loud and so often that my blood began to trickle from my eyes. The nutrition was also poor; all of my teeth turned to rubber.

But never once did I waver from my mission; never once did I order Twinky to turn that ship of horrors around. I distracted myself from the sharpening pains in my spleen by preparing for the day I would meet the whalers.

I rehearsed and rehearsed. I learned to recite the entire film backward and forward and even practiced keeping my eyes open.

Before I knew it, three years had gone by. Time flies when you’re thinking about Along Came Polly a lot.

I got the call from Cecil in the evening hours (we’d lost track of days years prior).

“We found them,” he said from above. “Dear God, we’ve found them! Japanese whalers approaching starboard!”

I stood up and cleared my throat. Fate was knocking on my watery doorstep. It was the single happiest moment of my life — or so I thought at the time.

Part 3: The Chase

For whatever reason, the particular whaling vessel we’d harkened upon did not seem keen on us throwing ropes over and boarding it.

The chase was on to get up next to it, and Twinky was in rare form. In the three years at sea, he’d lost his legs, arms, nose, ears, lips and chest; but his vitriol never fizzled.

Never had I witnessed a man so determined to get along side a whaling boat so that one of his passengers could jump aboard it and spend several hours shedding insight on a romantic comedy. My eyes welled with salty tears of gratitude as I watched him beat his men mercilessly in order to keep up with the whalers.

Oddly, in our three-year voyage, we’d never discussed exactly how I would get onto the Japanese whaling ship once we’d found it. It was Crazy Fudge who suggested a “giant slingshot” approach in the nick of time.

As I soared through the space between the two fast-moving watercrafts, I knew my life would never be the same. After today, I thought, I will have told 20–30 Japanese whalers everything there possibly is to know about Along Came Polly.

I hit the whaling deck hard, breaking every single one of my ribs. What must these seamen have thought upon seeing my gnarled, bloody, unshaven body slumped there in front of them? Could they have suspected the message I had to share?

Part 4: Contact

When I regained consciousness, I opened my swollen eyes to see what appeared to be an entire whaling crew standing before me. Only it wasn’t a mere 20­-30 Japanese whalers, but 300 of them! All of them seemingly fixated on ME. Sometimes life works out just the way we’ve always wanted it to, I thought warmly to myself.

Relieved, I opened my broken jaw to speak, and that’s when I heard the click. I looked over to see a grungy revolver pointed at my temple, wielded by a young, frightened-looking man. I was tied to a pole, but wasn’t about to just let it end here.

“Wait!” I shouted hoarsely, startling my captors. “It opened at #1 at the U.S. Box Office, earning $27,721,185 in its first weekend.”

My audience gave one anther confused glances. They looked back at my would-be executioner searchingly.

“It begins with a wedding,” I continued, convulsing with nerves and glee, blood trickling down my chin. “The wedding of Reuben Feffer and Lisa Kramer, played by Ben Stiller and Debra Messing, respectively.”

For the next two hours, information about the film gushed out of me, from the actor bios to the production budget, to the critical reception. Everything about Along Came Polly poured out of me like lava and I felt my spirit leave my body and return with popcorn.

Gradually, I fell into a rhythm; I was calm, collected, and kept their attention with the wit and wisdom surrounding Along Came Polly. I could tell they were learning. They cried with laughter, howling as I described with relish Reuben’s ill-fated decision to use Polly’s grandmother’s towel to wipe his anus; they sighed with dreamy remorse when Polly discovered careful Reuben’s pro-con list of continuing to woo her.

They stood on their feet and cheered; they tilted their heads in awe. My would-be executioner had fallen prostrate upon the floor, unmoving.

Many would die the next day after the mutiny and the iceberg, but for now, in this moment, surrounded by these Japanese whalers and with information about Along Came Polly fresh on my lips, it was the absolute happiest I’d ever been in my entire life.

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r.j. kushner
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