Wrapper: Mexican San Andrés
Binder: Undisclosed
Filler: Undisclosed
Size: 6 x 52 Toro
Strength: Medium
Price: $9.99

Today we take a look at the Jas Sum Kral Fuck the FDA.
Samples were gifted to me by Skip Haynes.

BACKGROUND:
Regular production.
Factory: Tabacalera de Aragon S.A.
I could go on and on with pertinent info on why this cigar’s name is so blunt. But if you are a cigar smoker and you read information about how the FDA is trying to ass fuck us with ridiculous rules and enormous fees…there is no need for me to pontificate.
Let’s move on…

APPEARANCE:
The stick doesn’t feel like a premium cigar…it has numerous soft spots and feels underfilled. The wrapper has a patch quilt look to it with a bit of oiliness adorning its body. The cigar is right in the middle of being quite toothy and smooth…kind of like your puss from not shaving for a couple days.
Seams are visible but tight. Lots of veinage. The cap is a little sloppy and appears to be only a double cap.

The cigar band is quite intricate but nearly unreadable. Fuck the FDA is on the right side of the band in red and white. On the outer parts of the band, there is a herd of fists flipping the bird.

SMELL THE GLOVE:
Immediate floral notes followed by creaminess, butterscotch, barnyard, cedar, milk chocolate, espresso, an earthy note, and fresh horseradish.
The cold draw presents flavors of barnyard, creaminess, malt, cedar, and a little papery.
The draw is very airy so no need for my PerfecDraw draw adjustment tool.

FIRST THIRD:
A couple months ago, Skip sent me some unreleased versions. I began to review it, but it was probably the worst cigar of all time…I never got past the 1” mark and had to toss it to save humanity.
This is the real deal from Skip who purchased them when they were released in March of this year.

I’m leaving it to the Cosmic Muffin to show this cigar some respect and not repeat the aborted review of a dog turd inflamed with psoriasis.
Here goes nuttin’ honey…

Lots of smoke fills the area around my head giving me a saintly look. St. Phillip of Katmanistan.
It starts off bland.

Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if JSK made a huge political statement by releasing a crap cigar?
I’m not getting any zest from the cigar and we’ve only just begun.

Only Halfwheel had the cajones to review it…so far. And Halfwheel won’t be getting a Xmas card from JSK this year.

A sudden combo of black and red pepper emerges setting my nasal hairs ablaze. Shit. It went from Gran Habano to La Bomba with a flick of a switch.

The tobacco tastes musty. I don’t know if the binder and filler are undisclosed because they are a secret that JSK wants to use to heighten its mystique…or they can’t remember what they used. Either way, I suggest JSK not go around bragging about this mysterious tobacco. At the moment, this tastes like a $2 bundle cigar.

Damn. Double damn.
The burn is wonky.
The flavor profile is not a tenth of the elements in the smell-a-thon. All I taste is hay and malt.
Now I know why I can’t find reviews from the usual suspects. They didn’t think this cigar was worth the time to review it…or didn’t want to piss off JSK.

I’ve smoked an inch of this fried moose dick and I see no redemption in its future.
Even if this cigar needs 9 months of humi time, I should be tasting the blender’s intent. It seems the blending committee was on a lunch break when the intern, with no smoking experience, chose this blend.

The mustiness goes away. If it hadn’t, I was going to cut this review short. But now some flavors emerge from the detritus of the rag pile…creaminess moves to the forefront; the peppery elements are milder and not so abrasive. There is a chocolate malted milk ball thing going on in the background. Any lick of natural sweetness is AWOL. The hay component is reigning supreme. Way to go JSK.

The cigar’s one redeeming factor is that due to being underfilled and light as a toothpick, it burns quickly so I don’t have to suffer…and neither do you, by reading my ramblings.

I’m half an inch away from the second third and it’s only been 15 minutes of smoke time.
If anyone in the FDA smokes cigars, they must be laughing. Attack the agency by putting out a cigar so bad that it is a rip-off to JSK’s loyal customers.

If you go to the JSK web site, this cigar is missing from its cabal of blends. But…they do sell a nice Fuck the FDA tee shirt. They are milking this…too bad they were tone deaf to the smoking panel that gave this cigar a big thumbs up for release. I can’t begin to imagine what blends they fucking turned down…it’s not quite bamboo under the fingernails; but close.

The crap burn reinforces my opinion that this cigar is poorly constructed. WTF?

SECOND THIRD:
We were slammed with customers last night at Prime Cigar. I’m exhausted and nearly gave up the idea of trying to write coherently. That was a trick statement. Everyone that agrees I can write coherently, place your elbow in your mouth and send me the pic.

Obviously, not a lick of complexity. No transitions. The finish tastes nasty. No nuances or subtlety. Just a linear taste composite akin to the things you throw over your fence into the neighbor’s yard.

JSK really fucked up big time. Are we dealing with mentally challenged decision makers? This is a horrible cigar…but I’m having a good time. Nothing like starting your day forced to smoke a prairie doughnut.

Is that shoe polish? And none of the reviewers’ favorite go-to: earth, wood and leather. Although, I may have to borrow Charlotte’s self-flagellation device and whip the shit out of myself for allowing my day off to be ruined by this two hour adventure in beginning writing for the sake of getting something published. I gave up on this cigar once. I’m going full Indian this time.

Another photo of this cigar? We don’t need no stinkin’ photos. I will hire a courtroom artist to make some sketches…I’m not wasting my time taking some pics of this Quorum afterbirth.

I’m here all day so I can wait for an actual pleasant flavor to emerge.
First sip of water…oh lord…it actually takes all the fecal matter finish and disappears it.
As I smack my lips, the taste gets worse with each chomp of my well chiseled jaw…think of Dudley Do-Right…or Boris Badanov.

There is zero improvement as the cigar burns itself to hell.

There is no way I am going to waste my time, or yours, by smoking this entire moth larvae.
The part that cracks me up is that this is going to be a regular production cigar. Now the poor schmucks that fell for the PR are stuck with their 10 count bundles and waiting for a time to hand them off to their favorite mooch.

So, they probably sold a few hundred bundles. But by this time, word on the street must have gotten out that this is a stinkeroo. Regular production my ass. It will be in the clearance aisles by Thanksgiving.

Halfwheel was extremely generous in their appraisal. I taste nothing they did. And while I thought their rating of 84 was a bit harsh…I’m going to dive bomb that score.

Really, I can’t continue. The cigar has no plans on getting better or resembling anything but a liquor store cigar. It isn’t going to miraculously find a sweet spot in the second half. It is going down in flames as the piece of crap it is.

RATING: My score is actually in the minus category…

And now for something completely different:
1976

I was back home in Long Beach. Drawn and quartered from the traumatic experience of being shit canned from Curved Air over political reasons.

The last straw, from the band’s leaders’ point of view, was that Stewart Copeland and I were being requested for all the radio interviews in each city we played. Darryl was the founding member and had a massive, impenetrable ego. And not a lick of a sense of humor.
Stew and I were like Groucho and Chico. The radio DJ’s loved us. They even ignored our star of the show: Sonja Kristina.

Now, Stew had no worries about being fired. He was having a hot and heavy affair with Sonja. They lived together and eventually got married. So. his position was safe. Not to mention that his last name was Copeland. Miles Copeland was our manager. And Ian Copeland owned the booking agency. Both older brothers to Stew. They were a tight knit group.

Anyway, this infuriated Darryl as the request for Stew and me to do all the interviews was canonized by Miles Copeland. To make things worse, print media spoke mostly to Stew and I because we were better copy. We were funny. And the media ate it up. The other members had no idea how to make people laugh. All we were doing was channeling the Marx Brothers.

Plain and simple, Stew and I were smart assess. Sometimes, we got a real humorless interviewer and boy was that a bitch. These guys usually got mad when we didn’t give straight answers. I mean, really mad. We didn’t care. Doing interviews was an unpleasant pain in the ass. We didn’t get paid but it and it was supposed to have the effect of putting more asses into the seats of our concert that night.

We had no idea that Stew and I would be an item. We would have been happy if they just interviewed Darryl and Sonja while we sat on the hotel steps and smoked hash.

So, I was seen by the founding band members as too big for my britches. And I was gone with the help of a lousy album production for RCA. That’s right. I didn’t write the songs. I didn’t arrange them. But it was my fault that the album stunk, and someone had to be sacrificed. Perfect set up to get rid of the funny bassist that stole Darryl’s thunder.

Back home, I got a letter from a friend, Butch Hatcher. An American singer that was in the southern rock band, Flatrock. And he was our singer for a short while before Curved Air did a reunion tour; and after seeing the massive, positive result of the Curved Air reunion tour, Darryl got rid of Butch and made Darryl’s new band the new Curved Air. We went from being called “Stark Naked and the Car Thieves” to Curved Air.

Stark Naked and the Car Thieves at our first gig in Nottingham, England:

Same place in Nottingham England for the first gig of Stark Naked. (I attempted to do my best Harpo Marx impersonation. Funny. I don’t remember asking Mick Jacques to put his hand on my knee…guitarists, man…)

Butch asked that I deliver a note to Supertramp’s manager who he had an affair with in England. So, I called and got an audience.
I was given directions where to go. And it happened to be where Supertramp was renting a house for rehearsal purposes.

The band was hold up in a mansion in Beverly Hills getting ready to record their next album. The living room had been turned into a mini recording studio for their demos.

I arrived and was ushered out to the pool area where the band and the manager were soaking up Southern California rays.

When I was introduced as Curved Air’s bassist, Supertramp members went nuts. Remember, this was 1976. They fawned over me. Took me a week to wash it off. I know it is hard for Americans to fathom the brouhaha over Curved Air.

But they were HUGE in Europe. And South America. And Japan. Literally legends in the music business that couldn’t break in this country. I guess we sounded too much like a mix of Jefferson Airplane/It’s a Beautiful Day (“White Bird”).

I spent a glorious afternoon with these wonderful people.
We then spent some time jamming in the living room.

When it was time to go, I stood up, took the bassist’s Fender P bass off and because of the unusually low ceiling, smashed the head of the bass into that ceiling causing a big crack in the neck.

It was a 1958 P bass. Worth a fortune. I couldn’t believe what I had done. They tried to make me feel like it was nothing and that they had a good luthier who could fix it, but I was so embarrassed. I had never broken an instrument in my life.
I left them with my head hung low.
Before I broke the bass, I had been invited to the recording studio to lay some tracks down. For some reason, the call never came.
I was a real putz.

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