This Thanksgiving, Think about how YOU can become a better man

Horatio writes: To be clear, we are not big lovers of Thanksgiving. A full house is not a house which is kind to the lover of self-pleasure. So we have always viewed the holiday as a cleansing period for self-assessment - a time to ask ourselves the question, How Can I Become A Better Man?

The answer to this question, as so many others, can be found in one of two places. The Mormon Bible, and the Porns of old. As ever, we seek inspiration in the second -- and the answer is clear thanks to these 1973 ads... Change is never on the inside. You are perfect just the way you are. And physical improvement is just a clip of a coupon away.

Our favorites: The Masculiner Co's Quick Change hairpiece set which automatically turn you into Murray from Flight of the Conchords. "Simply check the color you want or send a sample of your hair and leave the matching to our expert" ( Click to Enlarge Photos...)



Elevators by Brockton Footwear "With Elevators you have a lot going for you. Two extra inches to help you measure up. With Elevators on your feet and that gleam in your eye she will know you're up to something."

How to Be Taller Booklet by NEW HEIGHT of Brampton, ON Canada, a mysterious booklet which will give you a few inches in height for those who are "Fed up with being called 'shorty,' 'Little Man' or even "Hey you down there."

Zagats Guide to BOSTON

Horatio writes: Welcome to our new occasional feature. Now there is a Zagats for almost everything, we are proud to add to the range with our definitive guide to the best places to acquire porno mags in the 1970's and '80's. We start with The Puritan City, The City on a Hill, Beantown, Boston. Thanks to Adam of San Francisco for this review. Please send yours our way.

BOB'S CANDY STORE used to be in Waban Square in Newton. It was run, fittingly, by Bob, the meanest guy who ever lived and who was totally bald aside from a fringe of white hair that he let shoot out of the front. Bob carried himself like a man whose biggest regret in life was opening a store populated only by twelve year olds, a target audience he clearly despised. One was left to wonder exactly what he was thinking when he went into the candy store business.

The store had a huge wooden counter, more befitting of a bar, running round two sides of the shop. Bob longed for adult custom so much, that he kept a mid-sized stock of porno mags - Playboys and Penthouses -- under the bar. His biggest mistake was positioning it right next to the small entry way which was cut into the bar so he could enter and exit. And so, here's how you got your porn at Bobs: Most important, you had to be tight with my friend, Eliahu who was a tubby kid who had been blessed with deceptive speed which made him great at two things: On the basketball court he had an explosive burst to the basket, which made him impossible to stop in the paint. In Bobs, he had all the skills necessary to become an experienced klepto. Eliahu would wait patiently for Bob to become distracted by a gaggle of kids purchasing jawbreakers down one end of the bar. This was his cue to launch himself under the bar, grab a handful of magazines and thrust them down the front of his pants in one practiced silky-smooth move. Watching him operate was almost as thrilling as using the magazines later back in my bedroom. Just knowing what was going to go down and then watching it happen was like being privy to watching Babe Ruth hit a "called shot" home run week in week out.

Small barrier to be able to frequent the store. Bob is now dead and his shop has now closed. But don't let that stop you.

And what do you want to be when you grow up?

Horatio writes: This web site has fixated almost exclusively on how the random pieces of pornographic material we managed to get our hands on controlled our hearts and minds and defined the way we thought about ladies and the world of love. What it has failed to do is to examine the myriad of ways these magazines influenced our thinking in less obvious ways. Let's pretend for the sake of argument that reading porn magazines fail-safe guaranteed you would develop sufficient love-making skills to pleasure women both one-and-one, and in small groups. But what were the less obvious collateral benefits? In this instance, if you dedicated a vast proportion of your waking hours to reading porn as a teen, what career track were you setting yourself on? The answer to this question, and countless others, lay in the small ad section at the back of the magazines. Have a close look and ponder just how much majestic whoopee a professional meat cutter gets nowadays anyway? Enjoy this selection from a 1971 edition of Stud Magazine. (click on images to enlarge)

Golden Toilets

Frederick Goldensnapple of Texas writes:

Hands down, from ages 12 to 18, my house was the most popular place to shit in the neighborhood. It wasn't the toilet paper, although it was 2-ply. It wasn't the lighting, although my mom always did have the eye of a true Texas aesthete. And it wasn't the location-- my house was a good half mile by foot further away than anyone else's. It was the sink. Or rather, what lie hidden beneath it.

My friends discovered it before I did. And for weeks, could it have been years?, I couldn't figure out why all my childhood pals insisted on making my house the location for their afterschool dump du jour. In hopes of unravelling this mystery, one day after everyone had left, I secluded myself in the commode, determined to figure this thing out once and for all.

Other than mom's impressive collection of lotions and potions and dad's harsh-smelling aftershaves there was nothing out of the ordinary in here. Was I missing something? I counted the tiles on the floor. And recounted them. I then proceeded to catalogue everything in the room with a zeal to rival missieurs Coopers and Lybrand themselves. Still nothing.

In desperation, I flopped on the floor and landed face to face with the cabinet beneath the sink. But what was this? A false bottom? There, in the two or three inches between the cabinet and floor was porn, glorious porn! Hot Bottoms and Playboy! Elated, I flipped over on my back and poured through every magazine then and there.

To this day, my mom still tells her friends about the Civil War-esque case of dysentery I came down with between the ages of 12 and 18. Until, of course, I switched to soy milk in college and everything cleared up.