COLUMN: MDWAP

True story:  This is The Column That Never Printed.  The paper thought it was a little too taboo for a family paper.  It's the only time I've ever had something rejected outright.

I almost just wrecked my car.

On the way home earlier today, I was driving along, completely by myself, laughing SO uncontrollably hard that I suddenly became SUPER light-headed and thought I was about to pass out. I had to pull over to the side of road and put my head between my knees for a few seconds to regain composure.

I could have been seconds away from wrapping my car around a telephone pole, death by laughter. Instead of writing this column, I could be tended to by paramedics this very minute. But that's not the worst part. Had I passed out behind the wheel and required medical assistance, their first thought upon approaching my car probably wouldn't have been, "Hey, is that the dude from the newspaper?" It wouldn't have even been, "How did this guy end up crashing into a phone pole?"

No, had they come within earshot of my car, their first thought would have most definitely been, "Wait, was this guy driving around listening to PORNOGRAPHY?" This was almost my legacy.

I've been SO looking forward to this summer. Feeling the warmth of the sun. Seeing friends. Going to concerts and ballgames and being in crowds without worrying who's breathing on me. But the thing I've been looking forward to the most this summer is finally here: a new season of my favorite podcast, "My Dad Wrote A Porno."

Let's spell this disclaimer fully out: I am not endorsing this podcast. We are a family-friendly publication, and by its very nature, MDWAP is obviously NOT. If you're a wholesome and upstanding human being, don't give this podcast a second of your time. But if you can handle adult humor and you're POSITIVE there are no children anywhere within earshot, you can find MDWAP on most podcast streamers. Just don't blame me if you laugh so hard you wrap your car around a tree. You've been warned.   

In actuality, the podcast is NOT what it sounds like. But it's also EXACTLY what it sounds like. Host Jamie Morton is a British media producer who discovered his retired father had taken up a new hobby: self-publishing a series of ridiculously terrible erotic novels ("Belinda Blinked") he'd been secretly writing in the garden shed under the pen name Rocky Flintstone.

As a Christmas present to his friends, Morton took his dad's magnum opus of filth to a holiday luncheon and, through gales of laughter and embarassment, read it aloud to his best friends. One of those friends was Alice Levine, a BBC radio presenter, who immediately declared it should be a podcast. 

That was 2015. Today, "My Dad Wrote a Porno" is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. With over 250 million downloads, it's spawned a book, a world tour, and an HBO special. The sixth season debuted earlier this month, and it's as cringe-worthy and hysterical as ever. Each unscripted episode simply consists of Morton reading aloud a new chapter of his dad's work to Levine and their mutual friend James Cooper, while the three rip it to pieces mercilessly.  

Here's the thing: Rocky Flintstone has managed to create one of the least erotic attempts at erotica ever composed. It is legendarily bad. "Belinda Blinked" makes "50 Shades of Grey" seem like Shakespeare. The dialogue is stilted, the metaphors messy, and the tawdry bits are about as sexy as a stainless steel skillet.

The heroine of Rocky's tales is Belinda Blumenthal. She's the international sales director of Steele's Pots and Pans, because there's obviously no sexier industry than non-stick cookware. In each book, Belinda travels the globe selling pots and pans and, well, you know. But the plots make limited sense, even for this, umm, genre. To date, Belinda has traveled around Europe, visited the United States, taken the mainstage at the Millennium Dome, thwarted terrorists, briefly died and visited heaven, saved her friends from an avalanche, been kidnapped by villains in a hot air balloon, and was recently left for dead in the Australian outback. In the real world, all of this has taken six years to unfold; in the timeline of the book, it's all happened in roughly three months.

Over the six books, Rocky has described body parts as being "like pomegranates" and similar to "the bolts which held together the hull of the fateful Titanic." In certain risque scenes, characters appear to have grown third arms and accomplished feats that defy both common sense and the fundamental laws of physics. Some characters have entirely changed names over the course of a single chapter. Quality control is not a big concern to Rocky Flintstone.

On the podcast, Levine and Cooper constantly interrupt Morton to remind him that the filth he's reading was written by his DAD. I always thought my dad was a little weird because HIS favorite hobby is building replica Civil War cannons. I've never been more thankful of those cannons in my life. Dunno about you folks, but I'm perfectly 100% happy in my delusions that my parents sleep in separate beds Dick Van Dyke-style and I must have been some kind of immaculate conception. 

Oh, and speaking of Dick Van Dyke, in one famous bit of Rocky's novels, Belinda dies and goes to heaven, where she meets Dick Van Dyke. Jamie had to later tell his dad the unfortunate news that Dick Van Dyke is still very much alive. Oopsy. 

Again, if you're a virtuous and wholesome person with any sense of scruples, don't ever listen to this nonsense and feel free to pretend that I'm far too upstanding a person to listen to this hilarious filth. But if you're driving along and pull up next to a chubby guy barely in control of his vehicle because he's laughing like a lunatic, he might NOT be entirely deranged. He's probably just listening to porn.