Big girls, little guys, lots of fun.
Gay porn star Michael Brandon goes from meth addict to anti-drug crusader--and back.
Andrew and Freddy Velez are the first brothers to die in America's War on Terror.
Llewellyn Werner thinks a few half-pipes could get Baghdad's economy rolling.
Rhien: I don't think I'm a man of many morals, necessarily, but I don't really wanna be that guy who drops a girl off and the next day, she's like, "Who are you again?"
How often have you picked up in here?
Rhien: Well, I was doing pretty well there for a while, and then I met my girlfriend. I've been with her for a year and a half. But not as much as I'd like. My girlfriend hates it when I bring a chick home anymore. Sometimes I have to be like, "Sorry, honey, we're fuckin' her." But sometimes she's cool with it, or she'll just sleep through it.
Matt: I've had some success.
Rhien: The first time for him was this girl that I'd been railin' for a little while. She was in here, drunk, and I wasn't here. So Matt went up to her, knowing that she thought he was me, and Matt said, "Do you want to come to my place and take a shower?"
Matt: She was all like, "I'm really hot." So I said, "Do you want to come to my place and take a shower? Will that help?" I did feel really bad the next day, though.
So you guys pull the switch?
Rhien: Just that one time. He actually pulled the switch, though. I don't actually do the switch.
Matt: But I think that if a girl said, "Hey, do you guys both want to come [home with me]?" we'd be in on it.
Being brothers, that doesn't bother you?
Rhien: Why would it?
Matt: We were naked in the womb together.
What would you make a woman to put her in the mood?
Rhien: Some sort of alcoholic smoothie with, like, dark chocolate and asparagus.
Matt: And stir it with my wiener.
Rhien: No, that comes later. Maybe get the massage going, maybe breathe in her ear a little bit.
How do you tell when a woman is in the mood?
Matt: When she keeps looking down.
Rhien: When she looks sleepy.
What's the greatest word in the English language?
Matt: Cunnilingus.
You wasted no time saying that.
Matt: For the longest time, I was like, "What the hell does that mean?" And then I found out, and I was like, "Oh, wow. I never expected that."
Rhien: He just thought it meant great — like, "My coffee is so cunnilingus this morning."
By CHARLES FERRUZZA
Veteran newscaster Walt Bodine remembers the popularity of Peacock-brand condoms back in the 1930s. Bodine was working at his father's all-night drugstore at Linwood and Troost. "Men were a little sheepish about asking for rubbers early in the day," he said. "But as the night went on, they lost their inhibitions. And since we were open 24 hours and surrounded by apartment hotels, the later it got, the more rubbers we sold."
And it wouldn't have been hard to restock the shelves. Kansas City, it seems, was once the headquarters for Peacock rubbers. It was a heady time for Prohibition-snubbing Kansas City — and for condoms.
But it wasn't always that way. In 1000 B.C., Egyptian men employed tubes of fine linen to protect their peckers from infection or unwanted pregnancies. By the 19th century, a frisky farmer or a randy rancher could make his own condom with a sheep's intestine, following this recipe (as quoted in Reay Tannahill's Sex in History): "Soak it first in water, turn it on both sides, then repeat the operation in a weak ley (solution) of soda, which must be changed every four or five hours, for five or six successive times; then remove the mucous membrane with the nail; sulphur, wash in clean water, and then in soap and water; rinse, inflate and dry. Next cut it to the required length and attach a piece of ribbon to the open end."
The convenience of prepackaged, easy-to-use condoms changed sex in America when the first commercially produced rubbers were introduced to consumers in 1855. These early prophylactics were expensive, though, and hard to find.
Interest in condoms exploded when soldiers returning from World War I brought sexually transmitted diseases back with them. By the 1930s, almost every U.S. drugstore sold inexpensive, thin, single-use rubbers.
Peacocks were made by the Dean Rubber Manufacturing Company in North Kansas City. The pocket-sized tins for Dean Rubber's signature brands — Parisian, Peacock, Ultrex Platinum — are highly prized collectibles that still trade hands on eBay. Particularly popular are elaborate Peacock ("Redi-Wet, Hygienically Lubricated") containers and giveaway items such as Peacock bill clips, key chains and tape measures.
"The Peacocks tins are among the prettiest condom tins ever made," says George Goehring, one of the authors of Remember Your Rubbers: Collectible Condom Containers. "And Peacocks were being sold right up into the 1950s."
In 1966, the Dean Rubber Manufacturing Company was prosecuted in U.S. District Court when a small percentage of rubbers from five shipments of condoms were found to contain holes, "thus failing to meet government specifications ... by having a lower quality than professed through written expression and inherent meaning."