Remeber Donato Dalrymple, the Mad Fisherman of Poughkeepsie (seriously)? Well, even he wasn't crazy enough to be out there fishing for Flipper! It must have been for the dolphin
fish. I remember being seriously confused when I saw "dolphin" on a menu in Florida many years ago. It is a food fish now more commonly known as mahi mahi or dorado.
http://www.suck.com/fish/2000/05/02/fish.html(scroll WAY down or search for 'dolphin')
Heya,
In a recent "suck" story you
wrote:
Donato Dalrymple, who won
fame as one of Elian's
fisherman/rescuers and is now
immortalized as the guy in
the closet, saw Mahi Mahi -
not dolphins - near Elian's
inner tube. Nevertheless,
when presented with a good
story opportunity, Dalrymple
proved ready to disbelieve
his own two eyes. "I would
like to believe that God used
the dolphins as an instrument
to keep him safe in the
water," he told the AP
reporter.
Just to let you know: Another
name for Mahi Mahi is
dolphin. I don't know if this
is just a regional/Florida
oddity, but it's true. Check
it out. Nice article though.
Reed Beaubouef
<jbeaubou@risd.edu>
I've been hearing that whole
dolphin fish/dolphin mammal
thing all my life, and it
still makes no sense. The
dolphinfish, or Mahi Mahi, is
a fish served in finer
restaurants. The dolphins in
the Elián mural are
mammals like Pha and Be from
The Day of the Dolphin. It's
the mammal version that
Dalrymple conceded he did not
see. Rest easy, Mr.
Beaubouef, if that is your
real name. Nobody's eating
Flipper out there, and if
they are they shouldn't be
allowed in this country!
Yr pal,
BarTel
Nice bit about the
Elian-protected-by-dolphin's
story. One complicating
detail: "Mahi Mahi" is one of
the several names for a large
game fish which was for years
called "Dolphin" (and still
is by many)-- late-20th C.
fetishization of Flipper made
a distinction necessary for
anybody in the U.S. who
wanted to sell the fish w/o
being labeled a monster. The
exotic Polynesian name of the
fish has become vogue (the
other common one is "dorado")
but "dolphin" is still in
circulation -- hence the
illustrator may have been
more actively misconstruing
than the fisherman.
Not that this makes the
symbology any less
overwritten. We're just lucky
this didn't unfold around
Christmas.
Bill Tipper
<tipperw@stjohns.edu>
I think this is pretty close
to what actually happened.
The official story is that
the fishermen were out
tracking Mahi Mahi, or
Dolphinfish. From there the
artist picked up the dolphin
business, and then Dalrymple
reverse engineered that,
believing that even if he
hadn't seen dolphins (the
mammal/Flipper variety that
is), they still could have
been there. Thus a legend is
born. There's a similar story
about the sculpture of Moses
with horns on his head —
based on a mistranslation of
something in the Bible —
which became a standard
figure of Moses even though
it was based on an error.
Sigmund Freud said something
about it. Something
intriguing, no doubt.
Yr pal,
BarTel