Hello, My Name is Zman and I am a Cigar Snob…
I swear I never intended to become one, but it just kind of happened. Out of the total blue, when I was least expecting it, I, Tommy Z, became a cigar snob.
I think I’ve been one for quite some time but could never admit it. All the signs were there but I just continued to ignore them. Like every time I lose my patience when I light up and some clueless boner asks me, “Is that a Cuban?”
Why does every turd who knows absolutely nothing of the fine art of puro enjoyment, feel the need to ask if the tobacco stick dangling from my lips, is a Cuban cigar? I really do get all uppity and act like a pompous ass, inquiring why they need to know? “Are you with the Feds?” I’ll ask, “I mean you do know that obtaining Cuban cigars on U.S. soil is an act of treason?” That’s when they kind of do an awkward half chuckle, not knowing if I’m a total asshole or not. Of course I realize that they’re just trying to make conversation and that they know zilch about the fruits of the Isle de Cuba. But it’s such a novice question and the fact that it does peeve me, truly shows that I am indeed a goddamned cigar snob.
Okay, NOTHING pisses this snob off more than the blithering idiots who bring out the fake Cohibas at a party or an outdoor function. “Hey Zman… have I got some great contraband for you,” says my well-intentioned neighbor, who breaks out the glass-top humidor box, chock full of “faux-hibas” that his buddy got in Ontario last week. “Wow,” I’ll say with a dagger full of rye sarcasm, “A Cohiba with a gray colored wrapper. I’ve never seen a goddamned gray wrapper before. You order these special?” Of course my pal gets all indignant, swearing that they’re real and that his buddy is Cuban. “I don’t care if you’re buddy is Castro’s f@#king lawn guy, these are fake pieces of mierde, and get them out of my presence!”
Goddamned snob. I know it.
A friend of mine claimed he uses tap water and a sponge to keep the stoags in his $7 POS humidor, fit. When he opened it up at a barbecue at his house this past summer, every single premium stick was covered in grotesque mold, and I proceeded to bang him over the head with a ring of uncooked kielbasa. Stupid bastid! And yes, he tried to convince me, “Uh… it’s something called plume… or bloom… and it good for the cigars!” Friggin moron! The only thing that they’re now good for is curing gonorrhea. (Blogger’s note: I had to look up the spelling of gonorrhea and unfortunately, the first dictionary I found was complete with vivid photographic images. Yow.) You simply cannot cheap out when attempting to care for your prized, hand-rolled smokes.
Then there was this morning, where my snobbery reached an all-time high. I was taking my daughter back to her college dorm, when I passed a convenience store with a sign that said, “Humidor Inside Filled With Premium Hand-Rolled Quality Cigars.” Okay, I made the mental note and knew it would be a definite stop on the way back. I’ve found over the years that sometimes these out of the way bodegas have some hard-to-find primo smokes and I have scored some great stuff in the past – including a bevy of legit Cubanos, complete with the appropriate brown colored wrappers.
So I walked in and Apu asked if he could help me. “Just point me to the humidor,” I said with some early morning fervor. Instead of leading me to a back room, harboring a glass-encased walk-in shrine filled with Padron Anni’s, VSG’s, and Monte Edmundos – the dude pulls out a dusty, old wooden box from underneath the counter, and proceeds to show me ten POS brands that I never heard of, wrapped in crinkly, yellowed cellophane.
“You have GOT TO be yanking my cobra, chief!” Damn, I was not a happy feller.
“Deese are delicious hand-rolled cigars,” he assured me. “I get dem from reliable source.”
“Goddammit, Apu! This is pure crap! You put that sign in the window and make me stop in here for crap! You’re a liar, that’s what you are!”
“Boolsheet!” he yelled out in his defense. “ Deese are made from Cuban seed!”
“Yeah, well I was made from human seed, and your cigars are utter worthless Shinola! Do you even know what that means, you liar?!”
“You get out of my store! You insult me!” he bellowed, while pointing a can of Raid Ant & Roach spray at me.
“You’re the one who insulted decent gentlemen everywhere, with your ridiculous claim of ‘premium’ hand-rolled goodness! I eschew you, you broken-Englished son of a bitch!”
“GET OUT!!! I CALL COPS!!!” he started screaming while flailing his insect killer, about.
So, I wisely high-tailed out of that hole, as I didn’t think a face full of pesticide would help my morning commute, any. But god damn… why couldn’t I just politely smile and say I’d be back, or that I forgot my wallet, or any other friendlier response, than the one accusing our shop keep (with the incredible nudie book & scratch-off lottery selection) of vile tobacco laden atrocities?
What the hell is wrong with me?
I am a cigar snob… that’s what’s wrong with me. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I do now admit that I am ass-deep in full-fledge snobbery, and some sort of 12-step intervention may be the only way out of this gut-wrenching conundrum.
Say… are you a snob, too? Hello, My Name is Zman and I am a Cigar Snob…
Tommy Z.
JR Cigars Blog With the Zman
December 14th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Zman, you should have let the guy spray you. In addition to ridding you of tobacco beetles, you would have smelled “country fresh,” which I’m sure would have been an improvement. LOL
December 14th, 2009 at 6:50 am
don’t feel bad ya silly bastid. i have been banned from the cigar store in the mall after i steared some customers away from the over priced house brand crap to some hoya and el reys.
oh, and where the hell is the titties? it makes reading your drivel so much easier…
December 14th, 2009 at 9:33 am
there is a gas station about 2 blocks from where I live that just changed hands. The new owners put a “Premium Hand Rolled Cigars” sign out front so naturally I stopped in. Zman, you stole my rant. The had stuff called “Carbon Copy” in a bad Cohiba knock off wrapper. The rest of the stuff was in even worse disrepair. The only thing good about this place is the gas is usually $0.10 cheaper then any place else.
December 14th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Oh yeah, where are the titties?
December 14th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Next week’s blog should be all about titties. With lots of pictures.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
And it should not include the word “gonorrhea”.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Hello…my name is Brian and I agree with Z-Man (God help me!)
December 15th, 2009 at 12:20 am
There, there, Brian, it’s going to be all right.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Don’t worry Brian, your condition can be cured. It just requires a lot of cigars and scotch.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:45 am
And an infusion of about 150 IQ points! LMAO!!!
December 15th, 2009 at 12:55 am
I likes me some, glass-topped Cohibas.
Honestly, give me a gas-station pack of Backwoods before some Don Juan $8 cigar from some fly-by-night party store.
I must agree with the ‘Fiend when he stated, “And it should not include the word “gonorrhea”.” +1 to that for sure.
Next week I think you should blog about the 12 Woman of Tiger Woods. There must some great pics out there we can all enjoy and you can throw in some cigar content. And, to spur this place on, you need to convince Lew to offer a “Blog Member” only ‘gar special. Its time we loyal blog readers were rewarded.
December 15th, 2009 at 1:17 am
This entire blog entry assumes that being a “cigar snob” is a bad thing. I submit to you that quite the opposite is the truth – that those ignorant slobs proffering glass-topped boxes of Cohibas need to be smacked upside the head for being morons and given the benefit of a little education.
Case in point – it tends to really piss off the local vendors on the beach in Mexico when you pull aside their “mark” and inform him that that box of “Cohibas” he is about to buy for $175 (down from $350) aren’t the real McCoy, and that if he wants a legit Cuban cigar, he can walk 100 yards to the hotel’s gift shop and pay $20 for a single, and that a box of REAL Cohiba Esplenditos is gonna sell for north of $500 in most tourist locations in Mexico and that they’re illegal to bring back to the U.S. anyhow, so why not just go up and buy a single for twenty bucks, smoke it and have the experience rather than talking to these hucksters on the beach? Nope – they don’t like it much when you do that. But how can you watch a guy get screwed blind right next to you and not say something??
December 15th, 2009 at 1:36 am
Zman would love to watch a guy get screwed blind or sighted. He’s kinky that way.
December 15th, 2009 at 1:51 am
When I leave the country, I won’t buy any Cubans except from official Habanos stores. I guess that’s being a cigar snob, but I am also cheap, and don’t want to get ripped off. If I decide to plunk down the outrageous number of sheckels for a Cuban cigar, it damn well better be the real thing. I also worry about bringing them back, because the Cuban corojo wrappers have a rather distinctive reddish hue, especially when put next to Hondurans, Nicaraguans or Dominicans. It’s a dead giveaway.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:16 am
RL7…take some cigar bands with you and switch them.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:00 am
I did, but the color is still a dead giveaway. But I brought back 4 this last trip. The way the prices seem to have gone up, you’d think Nancy Pelosi is running Habanos now.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:05 am
The only saving grace is that probably most customs agents and TSA agents are as blissfully cigar ignorant as the general populace, and don’t know anything about cigars in general, and the color of Cubans in particular. Yeah, they might be able to figure out a box that said HABANOS on it, but a few individual cigars mixed in with a few legal ones in a travel humidor. Highly doubtful.
December 15th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Unbanded cigars can’t be confiscated. There’s no way to prove anything.
December 15th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Yes they can, Cotty. They only need suspicion and that gives them the right.
December 15th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Only in Amerika.
December 16th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Without bands, there is no basis for “suspicion”, Z. I’ve been there and had my cigars inspected. As someone that has been caught at the border with Cuban cigars before, I am subject to increased scrutiny. When you have a mix of cigars, and some are banded and some are unbanded, there is no possible way for them to differentiate one cigar from another. The only thing they have as evidence is the bands. I smoke a lot of unbanded bundled cigars. One cigar in cello pretty much looks like another cigar in cello…
December 16th, 2009 at 2:17 am
A WOMAN’S POEM:
Before I lay me down to sleep,
I pray for a man who’s not a creep,
One who’s handsome, smart and strong.
One who loves to listen long,
One who thinks before he speaks,
One who’ll call, not wait for weeks.
I pray he’s rich and self-employed,
And when I spend, won’t be annoyed.
Pull out my chair and hold my hand.
Massage my feet and help me stand.
Oh send a king to make me queen.
A man who loves to cook and clean.
I pray this man will love no other.
And relish visits with my mother.
A MAN’S POEM:
I pray for a deaf-mute gymnast nymphomaniac with
big tits who owns a bar on a golf course,
and loves to send me fishing and drinking. This
doesn’t rhyme and I don’t give a shit.
December 16th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Well said, Lou! Very funny.
Cotty, you are right that there’s no basis, but just the thought of suspicion is all that Customs needs.
December 16th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Okay, I’m going to Vancouver to visit my daughter for the holidays. This is what I do to bring Cubans back. I already have several different bands that I mailed to my daughter. When I get to Canada I buy the Cubans I want and reband them. I then write down what I rebanded and mail the Cuban bands home. Never had a problem.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:20 am
I have already stared praying for a deaf-mute gymnast nymphomaniac.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:35 am
in you’re case, z-man, she best be blind too…
December 16th, 2009 at 10:02 am
CottyGee Says:
“This entire blog entry assumes that being a “cigar snob” is a bad thing. I submit to you that quite the opposite is the truth – that those ignorant slobs proffering glass-topped boxes of Cohibas need to be smacked upside the head for being morons and given the benefit of a little education.”
I beg to differ. I wish I were an ignorant slob. Think about how much easier (and cheaper) life would be if we had no friggin’ clue what a good cigar ought to look like, taste like, and smoke like.
Yep. I wish I were an ignorant slob.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I’ve been praying for a deaf-mute gymnast nymphomaniac with
nice-sized tits who owns a bar on a golf course, and loves to send me hiking and drinking.
However, I ended up with a work-a-holic wife who graciously (and unconditionally) puts up with me (or, as I have stated before, TOLERATES me) for who I am, and for that, I really ought to be eternally grateful.
December 17th, 2009 at 1:31 am
brian b Says:
“I’ve been praying for a deaf-mute gymnast nymphomaniac with
nice-sized tits who owns a bar on a golf course, and loves to send me hiking and drinking.
However, I ended up with a work-a-holic wife who graciously (and unconditionally) puts up with me (or, as I have stated before, TOLERATES me) for who I am, and for that, I really ought to be eternally grateful.”
Why can’t we have both?
December 17th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Or be like Tiger and have a dozen or more?
December 18th, 2009 at 4:45 am
I think he was trying for a different type of 19 holes (or is that ho’s).
December 21st, 2009 at 4:37 am
Third week in a row . . .
2:30 in the afternoon and no new blog.
March 1st, 2010 at 12:58 am
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