Vickie Schultz, a reporter, is not happy. Let go by her newspaper in Cincinnati, she starts a new job in New Jersey without her family, friends, and cheating fiancé. Vickie expects to cover a breaking story about the Mayor and his female Police Chief. Instead, she’s assigned to the arrival of a whale on the shore — a huge pelagic mammal, not unlike the mythical Moby Dick. The sooner this stranded subject returns to the ocean (or doesn’t), the sooner Vickie gets her career back on track. As with her own struggles, though, the whale’s plight won’t be resolved quickly.

A beatnik finds peace through visions of a mythic turkey. A legless lout survives a ruthless drug dealer and rises to fame by manufacturing trailer hitches. The origin of the human body is recounted by two friendly anthropologists. And to bring them all together – a house-sized puppy made entirely of flame.