TWO FRIGGIN YEARS!… HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO OUR LITTLE BLOGGY
Yes, boys and girls, cigar lovers of all ages… it has been two whole years since yours truly has been blogging for JR Cigars Blog With the Zman. Two years of my life has been lovingly dedicated to the stogie smoking faithful of the blogosphere.
I have no one but the big cheese whiz at JR, himself, to thank for 
this most-happening gig. Lew has such a fondness for me and he shows his caring nature in so many ways. Like the time we were flying to the Dominican Republic with executives of General Cigar, and during our re-fueling in West Palm beach, he told me that everyone took a vote for me to shut the f@#k up. Good lord, can you feel the love? Then just last week I stopped in at JR to see the man, who hasn’t seen me in person in a couple of months. I’ve lost about 20 pounds since my infamous lawn tractor accident (found out in the hospital that my blood pressure would make a great bowling score, hence the weight loss.) He looked at me and said, “Man, you lost a lot of weight!” I said, well thank you, Lew, that was awfully nice of you. He then replied with all sincerity, “I mean now you just look fat, before you were f@#cking disgusting.”
You just can’t make this stuff up, people.
Blogging is a very different form of writing, really like nothing else I’ve ever done in my career. For close to two decades I wrote advertising copy. For the past 5 years I’ve been scribing feature length stories for Cigar Magazine. Writing magazine articles is SO infinitely different than doing a blog. Magazine work requires a lot of thought, massaging, research, self-editing, editor’s editing, and plodding. But a blog is very off the cuff, trusting your gut and running with it. Blogging, is definitely more opinionated and more emotional. You can really spill your guts out, letting your heart talk more 
than your head, which can get you in trouble at times. Plus you get to be topical, so there’s almost never a chance of running out of things to yak about.
Then there is the reader commenting aspect that makes the world of blogging all-together different than any other form of writing. You post something, then within an instant, someone tells you what they think – agreeing, disagreeing, or telling you how far up your blow-hole to shove your opinion.
Now, sometimes what I think is funny, and you think is funny, doesn’t mean everyone thinks is a gasser. Last year I wrote about the British MI6 making it public that they 
were looking for gay secret agents. The story was true, but of course I embellished with a tad bit of off-color humor and good God, did I ever hear about it. One guy wrote me that I was the reason why young homosexual men were getting their heads bashed in with baseball bats in violent acts of hatred across America. Yes, I am a retard level asshat at times, but I found it hard to believe that my moronic depiction of where agents hide their weaponry was the sole reason for this breed of vile hate in this country. Another guy, a writer from down south, who considered himself a humorist, chastised me for using curse words in my writing. He felt it was important to lecture me on the need for working “clean” and that using vulgarities attracted lowbrow mentalities 
and suggested that it was demeaning to the craft. Well, let me be the first one to say FUCK YOU and that lame-ass nag you rode in on, bro. As Yukon Cornelius said to Hermy, “You eat what you like, and I’ll eat what I like.” Writing, humor, and comedy are all part of an art form so please don’t break a hip falling off that high horse telling me how to perform my art. Why not write Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Lewis Black, Dave Chappel, or Jim Norton, and cry on their shoes with the same born again bullshit? This is my house, people, if you don’t like the décor, then get the hell out. Well, actually it’s JR’s house and I’m just leasing the place, but you know what I mean, god dammit.
All righty, then… gosh, where was I?
Yes indeed, I have hit a nerve or ten with my opinions of left wing politics, Al Sharpton, Michael Jackson, and the Dallas Cowboys, but I’ve learned that sometimes you need to ruffle a shitload of feathers in order for people to get worked up, excited, and talking about what you’ve written. Sometimes you need to piss people off, waking them up from their slumberous zombie-like walk through life.
Lastly, I sometimes even get to write about my love and passion for premium, handrolled cigars. And may I take timeout to shill for a moment to tell you 
that the Frank LLaenza 1961’s, Troya Classicos, and the new Siglo Limited Reserves, are off the chart delicious. Now, you’re on a damned cigar website, so why not order some good stuff and keep us all in business over here. You remember I used to do this blog thingy five days a week and now I’m down to one. So please get off your lazy ass, break out the credit card and order up some seriously great smokes – all because you deserve it!
So thank you all for reading, commenting, and telling me where to shove it for the past two years. I love doing this and I love you all, no, really I do. Okay, I’m full of crap, I can only stomach most of you and there’s only a handful of people here with any redeeming value, whatsoever. All you morons really want are pictures of gorgeous honnies with bulging tatas and you could give a rat’s dumper what the hell I write. But I will say that it’s sure a hell of a lot better than asking if you guys want fries with dat.
Happy Anniversary to me,
Tommy Z.
JR Cigars Blog With the Zman
