Archive for the ‘steve nathan’ Category

Give Ireland Back To The Irish… Please! by Steve Nathan

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

So, Sunday was St. Patrick’s day. Oh, what a glorious day for the Irish! As the saying goes, there are only two kinds of people in the world: the Irish and those with healthy livers.

 

Alright, calm down! I was only kidding; some of my best friends are Irish and not all of them are drunks. In fact, one of them only drinks a case of beer on the weekends. Sheesh, everybody is so politically correct these days!

 

And why the hell would you Tri-Staters want to spend the day in the Big Apple, crowded in like a herd of cattle stuffed behind police lines, watching the big parade and then navigating past the throngs of pimply white kids in green plastic hats puking up cheap whiskey all over Times Square to get back to your car or train?

 

The good folks in “Nawf Carolina,” where everyone has a friend named Bubba and even toddlers know how to drive

Filthy Hooligan Display

tractors, had a much more relaxing day at the World’s Largest Cigar Store because right here at good old J•R Cigars in the heart of County Alamance, from March 6 until St.Puketricks Day, March 17, we featured a fantastic deal on the Alec Bradley Cigar Company’s brand-new, limited-edition candela-wrapped Filthy Hooligan cigar, which is made with the same well-aged multination blend and double binder used in the extremely popular Black Market line.

 

This 6.00 x 50 cigar is finished with super-lush, super-green candela leaf straight from the renowned Plasencia farms in Nicaragua, which is just a short 5,034 miles from Dublin, Ireland! And with any purchase of these great cigars, we gave away all kinds of cool stuff like bottle openers, cutters, t-shirts, mugs, Irish hookers and lime -green Rascal scooters for our elderly clientele (actually, I’m not sure about the hookers and scooters; maybe I made that part up).

 

But for all of you that chose salty corned beef and green beer over a trip to J•R, not to worry; we still have plenty of these Filthy Hooligan cigars in stock sans holiday swag. And whatever you think about candela (green) cigars (and I’m sure it somehow correlates to the taste of raw lettuce or lawnmower clippings), I ask that you give these a try. The nice folks at Alec Bradley have put the long-forgotten green stick (again I use that stupid word) back on the map with these yummy smokes! You will be amazed at how good these cigars taste. And trust me, they had to put a gun to my head to smoke one!

 

Enough of the shameless advertising, you say? Well, guys, this is a J•R blog, for Chrissakes! We gotta pay the bills, you know!

 

Big Italian Nick

On a more serious note: Being a swarthy curmudgeon of Russian descent, I feel no real connection to this festive Irish holiday. The extent of my celebration was having a green bagel with my coffee on Sunday morning. But the same cannot be said for some of my coworkers who showed up on Friday in their pseudo St. Patty’s day attire. Say hello to J•R’s “Big Italian Nick”! Top o’ the mornin’ to ya and… fuhgeddaboudit!

 

Well, that’s it for now, and I would like to personally thank all of you that called in sick today with a mysterious virus bought on by a shitload of green beer and Irish whiskey; I made it to work this morning in record time! In fact, the roads were so clear that the toll collector at the Turnpike was reading War and Peace when I pulled up!

Flavorless in New York City by Steve Nathan

Friday, March 8th, 2013

All of you “New Joisey” commuters and native “New Yawkers” may already know that, in October of 2009, the Big Apple’s mayor created an ordinance that restricts the sale of flavored tobaccos throughout the whole city. So, if you’re looking to purchase some “Jamaican Me Crazy” aromatic pipe tobacco or a cognac-flavored corona, you’re in for a big shock.

 

Per New York City’s health commissioner, “Flavored-tobacco products are marketed to youth, their packaging resembling that of candy and gum, and young people are more likely than adults to try flavored-tobacco products. This law, one of the first of its kind in the country, ensures that youth will be protected from these harmful products.”

 

Okay, I can understand if the honorable doctor was referring specifically to the monitored sale of those cheapo candy-store flavored blunts sitting on the front counter at the local Quickie Mart and are many times irresponsibly sold to underage smokers with fake IDs, because I sure don’t see a market for those amongst the old farts that enjoy a good machine made cigar. And I surely can’t imagine my 93-year-old Uncle Irving enjoying a blueberry stogie after downing a bagel with a shmear: “Oy vey! What’s up with these farkakte flavors? Where the hell is my Dutch Masters?”

 

Regulating Tobacco

So, yes, I can see regulating such blatant unregulated abuse of tobacco. But to make a sweeping bill that affects allflavored pipe tobaccos and cigars, no matter where or how they are sold, is pure stupidity that just adds another nail in the coffin for those poor tobacconists that have already been kicked in the cajones with a 75% tobacco surcharge in thecity that never sleeps!

 

This is just another example of government telling us what to do. For our own health, the King of Manhattan decided he was going to fight obesity as the New York City Health Department became the first in the nation to ban the sale of sugared beverages exceeding 16 ounces at restaurants, mobile food carts, sports arenas and movie theaters. Well, guess what? If I consume four triple cheeseburgers and a bag of Cheetos with my “healthier” eight-ounce soda, I’m still going to eventually be fat enough to have my own zip code! And admit it, most very corpulent (lard-ass) people wash down their bucket of chicken with a diet soda anyway. Perhaps it makes them feel less guilty… but I digress!

 

Let’s get back to the flavored-tobacco ban. Show me one pimply kid living with his parents and making $120 a week bagging groceries who is walking into a fine tobacco shop and dropping 10 bucks on a Maker’s Mark bourbon cigar, complete with glass tube and fancy melted-wax cap. No way, fella! He’s headed to that Quickie Mart for a 65¢ blueberry dog rocket so he can smoke Latin lettuce in his bedroom without his mom smelling anything suspicious. And he certainly isn’t going to take his whole paycheck and buy an $85.00 Savinelli pipe and a tin of Mac Baren Cherry Cavendish to start his spiral into the depths of tobacco addiction: Unsatisfied by smoking just cherry pipe tobacco, he turns to marijuana, the gateway drug to opiates. And when the opiates become too expensive, he hocks his Savinelli pipe for a bag of crack. And sadly, when he is living in a cardboard box behind the Home Depot, he will forever regret that first bowl of Mac Baren Cherry Cavendish…

 

Luckily things are a little better across the pond in “Joisey,” where our main man hasn’t seen his shoes since 1983; we are still allowed the guilty pleasure of negotiating a giant Slurpee while loading our pipes with gobs of gooey-casing goodness or smoking any flavored cigar that our hearts desire.

 

Mr. Mayor, there are much bigger problems to tackle in your city. And one day, if you’re not too busy, maybe you can put on a gas mask and walk into one of your local tobacco shops to see for yourself that you are depriving responsible adults their freedom of choice to enjoy flavored tobaccos… as they have for many years before you interceded. And guess what? I’m also sure you won’t find any nicotine-starved young folks drooling over a jar of vanilla pipe tobacco and begging for a fix.

 

 

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