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."

It's unclear what happened to Peacocks after that, but it's not hard to figure that a reputation for leakage could kill a rubbermaker.

Bodine remembers headier times for Peacocks. His father once offered a sale on a box of condoms. "It was, like, 50 rubbers for a couple of bucks. A man came in one day and asked to buy a rubber, and I suggested our deal on a whole box of Peacocks. The guy glared at me and said, 'Kid, I'm a man, not a machine.'"

An Erotic World

Rick Ryan has discovered YouTube and f gured out how to use it as his backstage pass at strip clubs.

By NADIA PFLAUM

It's just another father-daughter outing to the strip club.

Rick Ryan and his 21-year-old daughter, Ashly, loiter near the bar at Dreamgirls, an all-nude joint east of Lee's Summit. The place would be completely unassuming but for the blinking marquee facing U.S. Route 50. Ryan is chatting with Kinky Kara, a bleach-blonde in a bra and panties. Kinky Kara tells Ryan that at his next stop, another strip club a mile away called Club Skin, he should look for a stripper called Spring.

"You know — Spring. My little blond, crazy friend," Kinky Kara says, jogging Ryan's memory.

Meanwhile, Ashly is hypnotized by a thick dancer writhing lazily on a tabletop.

"I could never dance nude," Ashly whispers. "I dance topless in Dallas, but I could never do that. I gotta save something for myself."

Similarly transfixed are two middle-aged guys sitting at the table, gazing up at the V shaved between the stripper's legs, as if it's going to tell them the meaning of life.

Ryan's devotion to the adult entertainment industry spans five decades. Now, the 59-year-old veteran of adult newspapers has taken to new media. Armed with his daughter's digital video camera, Ryan films his tours of Midwestern strip clubs and posts his reviews and interviews on YouTube.com. He calls his series "Rick Ryan’s World." He does it for free. After years of writing about strip clubs and the swinger lifestyle for adult newspapers and simultaneously hitting up such establishments for advertising dollars, Ryan is using YouTube as his way of propping up the flagging adult industry. If the Internet and all its cheap porn are sucking money away from live adult entertainment, Ryan figures he can use the Internet to help draw patrons back to his beloved strip clubs.

"I've always been a big promoter," Ryan explains. "I know how to promote. Most people don't think of how to promote their businesses; a lot of them have no clue. I believe wholeheartedly in the adult industry because I've been around it all my life, you know. So I'm always trying to promote the best I can, if they allow me to."

Club Skin is a boxy building with green siding at the end of a pockmarked dirt road by the highway. Its handwritten sign boasts: "No Cover Ever." Spring is nowhere to be found, so Ryan interviews a leggy, disinterested woman named Destiny. Ashly holds the camera. Destiny wears a gauzy white blouse and a denim skirt so short, it could be a belt. Destiny has made a cardboard cue card for herself so she can explain the club's membership policies.

The production of Ryan's video is rough, and the dialogue is unscripted. Ryan insists that his interviews feel "natural." During the filming, Ryan leans in close to Destiny's ear and audibly whispers, "Speak up."

Ryan's puffy Dallas Cowboys coat dwarfs his lean frame. In February 2005, Ryan found a lump on his neck, and a biopsy showed it to be cancerous. Six weeks of radiation and three chemotherapy treatments later, he's cancer-free and grateful that he's still kickin' — and that women are still strippin'.