Cigar LOVE is in the Air

From Wikipedia: Saint Valentine’s Day, commonly shortened to Valentine’s Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs, Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD. It was deleted from the Roman calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI, but its religious observance is still permitted. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as “valentines“). The day first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.

What a crock.

valentines_day_sex-12562As I stood in the greeting card isle at the A&P last night, I was just one of a sorry collection of buffoons looking for that perfect card to buy for their wife. The guys were holding flowers, mylar blow-ups, heart-shaped boxes of candy, and other trinkets and whatnot, all to please the ladies of their lives. It  was an amazing display of lemmings walking mindlessly off the face of the cliff. And then it hit me like never before: What a god damned friggin scam this whole thing is… a total ruse perpetuated by Hallmark, Russell Stover and Whitman’s, all created to separate us from the dead presidents that reside in our wallets.

As I read though card after card, the announcement over the speaker called for “CLEAN UP IN AISLE FIVE” as the chowder flowed from my stomach much like the headlines of each Hallmark ditty. “To My Dearest Most Precious Wonderful Wife”… “To the Woman Who Holds the Key to My Heart”… My Love, My Soul Mate Forever… “You Are the True Light of My Life. Good God, who on Earth actually believes that this drivel makes a woman happy. (Well, actually nothing makes a woman happy, but we’ll leave this for another conversation.) So I found the perfect card – a cartoon of a grotty looking little cupid, smoking a cigar and passing wind from his loincloth. The inscription read: ‘Love Is In the Air’ and as we all know, nothing says ‘I Love You’ like a well-timed fart joke.

valfunny2Earlier I took a trek to the mall to get her something special that I know she’ll return, because admittedly I am a clueless dunce when it comes to purchasing chick stuff. So I stop in the Godiva Chocolate store figuring that I can’t go wrong there right? Get this: Six large chocolate covered strawberries for forty-two dollars! Are you freakin’ kidding me? Seven dollars a strawberry? I almost soiled my Levis on command as the mindless shopping primates were buying them up as fast as they could be bagged. I then picked up a box of a dozen chocolate candy nuts in a gold shiny box wrapped in a fancy ribbon, with a $36 price tag and blurted out several obscenities that had me removed from the premises by a pimple-faced fat kid who took his assistant clerk position awfully serious.

Everyone knows that Valentine’s Day is for women and men usually get some meaningless bupkis from their significant other. You know what, I told my wife I don’t want no stinkin’ card, candy, or any other kinds of loving bullshit. I told her to get me the one thing I cherish with all MY heart, I said, “Get me some cigars, woman!”

Now, I know that my wife hates cigars. She hates the smell and everything about them – except for the checks I get for working in the cigar industry (that seems to be okay for some reason.) It would be a cold day in Hades before my wife purchased me a cigar, but dammit, here I am spending that cigar money on all of these trinkets and whatnot, and you’d think just once she could put aside her disdain for premium tobacco, and make the sacrifice for her hubby, you know, the one who gave her the farting cupid card.

Listen, I already bought the Mrs. a dinner on Saturday, did flowers and cards this morning, so I am officially heading down to JR Cigars in Whippany, New Jersey to buy me some premium, hand-rolled, happy-sticks of love. NOTHING really says “I Love You” like your favorite cigar and today I will fall head over heels.

WE REMEMBER the LATE, GREAT SAL FONTANA.

Picture 16Sal was a dear, longtime friend to Lew and all here at JR, as well as Christian Eiroa, and all at Camacho Cigars, who he worked with for quite some time. I had the incredible pleasure to personally spend three days with him at the IPCPR show in Vegas in 2008, and I laughed for a week after I got home. Nobody could spin a story like him and his sense of humor could not be topped. His list of friends is long and deep and Sal Fontana will be missed by so many. Rest well, my friend.

Tommy Z

JR Cigars Blog With the Zman

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