Wrapper: Dominican Rosado
Binder: Dominican
Filler: Dominican
Size: 4.625 x 49 Belicoso
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $26.00
My cigars received 2 years of naked humidor time.
THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
My hopes are that the cigar plumps whilst in the heating up process. It is as light as a handful of toothpicks. Betwixt and between are sweet aromas from the wrapper: floral, barnyard, dark chocolate, Almond Roca, baking spices, and raspberry jam.
There is shrinkage as the cigar is 1/8” short of its designated length. Connoisseurs enjoy the concentration of flavors that emit from a pointy cap…but I see it differently as I am a mere Kohnoissuer. The belicoso cap is ¾” long. Using my slide rule, I use the catechism formula that states 4+>2 = 53~<- equals 16 sq pounds of loss as opposed to the good ol’ Robusto.
The other thing that is prevalent with pointy caps…the draw is horrible. I clip the cap and airflow is a nonpareil. I clip again and the airflow is better.
The cold draw is sassafras, baking spices, mint, espresso, and dark cocoa.
The first puffs belt me in the mouth like a baby seal fighting back. If the complexity rises to the occasion, like its initial wind flurries indicate, I’m in for a good time.
Well defined flavors with serious density. Graham crackers, cinnamon, brown sugar, earthy delights, and rich carbon filtrated chocolate toast.
An inch in and the cigar tastes…Dominican. It is easy going, lightly entertaining, and I’ve been here a million times. So far, nothing really stands out that reminds me I spent $25. The boys at SBC put out a brilliant blend called Avowed The Vow: Higher Calling. I love this cigar. If you’re going to drop $20 on a stick, this is my favorite way to go. It’s better than most OpusX blends.
I was living in London when Jaws came out. The media reported that the loony Yanks were going gaga over this shark movie. No one in the U.K. got it. No internet in 1975. I bought the book and read it while touring with Curved Air. It scared the shit out of me. I grew up in SoCal which meant I was familiar with the fear. And then, finally…the movie was released in Britain. Over there, I only saw two bodies of water: the Thames and the English Channel. And no one surfed either. But the Brits got the sharknado after that. More often than not, the band would get a ride on the ferry along with the trucks when we traversed the English Channel from Dover to the Hook of Holland. It was an overnight trip. What a miserable cadaver of water. The boat rocked like Jerry Lee Lewis. I was taught by the roadies the best way to avoid projectile vomiting was take a valium and have a couple beers. While I didn’t drink, I took their advice. I slept like a pig in a blanket while being tossed like a ping pong ball.
And then there is an improvement: sweet butteriness, prune Danish, raw cashews, dark coffee with real cream, wild Azania’s, and black pepper that knows its place in the universe.
The cigar plumped nicely. The burn is money. Construction is excellent.
Strength began at medium but now as inch two begins, I feel a fuzziness. You read Dominican and think mellow. Not this morning. My knees begin to wobble.
I like the factor of ten that comes with knowing what you are reviewing. I expect more from an expensive cigar. It’s the process of how I critique and I make no apologies. Everyone has their thing. Mine is blunderbuss style.
A smoothness finally erupts. It makes all the difference in the world. It shaves off the sharp edges and allows the blend to settle in. There is hope in Mudville.
It takes 40 minutes to thrash through the first half. It kept my attention with transitional changes that were decimally incremental. The truth will be told in the second half which is exactly 2.3125”. I finished college.
Construction can be assessed by its ability to stay lit no matter how long you let the thing sleep in your ashtray while giving coffee enemas to your dog, cleaning the sewer line for the neighborhood, dishing out compliments to first responders who must rescue you from the sewer line, and dusting one’s elongated scrotum that looks like the goiter on a 90-year-old man. It can take hours to get into the creases.
The second half is even better. Cosmic inception of dynamic principles.
Potent but smooth as silk. Purposely balanced. The ultimate Liv-a Snap. Better than Braunschweiger with purple onion and tomato on rye toast. More transparent than Marilyn Monroe blowing JFK while brushing off his security detail. Easier on the palate than cunnilingus after a dentist appointment. More on point than my relatives wandering the desert for 40 years.
The second soars. It hunkers down. The mystical and mysterious complex nature of what we love has arrived in a carriage driven by a headless horseman. Nicotine and too much coffee.
The strength is a wang dang doodle. I’m swimming in a sea of swarming simbas.
I’ve had so-so relations with the OpusX. It is more about promotion and marketing than seeing a very consistent brand. Generally, they need a lot of home humidor time, sometimes years. At this stage in my life, I’ve stopped gambling that I will be around 3 or 4 years from now. I wonder when I go to bed at night whether I will be there in the morning. To show you how neurotically paranoid I am, my click bait feed shows me the deaths of famous people my age who had serious dough. I feel like I won the race.
This is an excellent cigar. Instead of tracking down the elusive OpusX, pass go and snag the Avowed The Vow Higher Calling (Kelner) from Small Batch Cigar. (Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano, Binder: Ecuadorian Habano, Filler: Dominican Piloto Cubano/ Criollo ’98/ Corojo ’99/ San Vicente/Cotui).
Opus X cigars are not easy to find. But wait, there’s more…sponsor Small Batch Cigar has a large catalog of Arturo Fuente cigars. Take 10% off with promo code KATMAN.
RATING: 93
And now for something completely different:
I had a large group of friends (acquaintances really) back in the early 80’s. I owned the only recording studio in Long Beach, California. A city with 400,000 people.
We did well. While we recorded hundreds upon hundreds of bands, we specialized in doing radio commercials. I was the manager for two radio DJ’s who did a lot of voiceovers. If you think musicians are prima donnas, DJ’s and advertising reps were the biggest pain in the arse. The reps would insist on producing the radio spot by themselves. My engineer was great at what he did but he was shy and had no inkling how to stand up to the power mad clowns. The disc jockeys had a power thing and had a lot of trouble distinguishing reality from fiction. Both parties would fight like cats and dogs about the voiceover. I would often leave the control booth to hide my laughter at the absurdity of the whole thing. I’d listen to a finished spot and smack my forehead. I’d proceed to fix things and did a good job so that the customer never knew I fixed it. They thought that they were geniuses.
All types of bands recorded with us…but one that stands out: a radical speed metal punk band whose name I cannot remember. And who divested themselves of any chance of success because of drug abuse.
These guys were always fucked up on speed and weed. They insisted on recording at 8am on Sunday mornings…probably to keep the buzz going from staying up all night and partying. It was a horror show for me and my engineer who were night owls and liked to sleep in.
None of their songs lasted more than one minute. Some only 30 seconds. They insisted we record them directly to two track instead of the 16 tracks we offered. We set the board for the at the beginning of each tune and whatever happened, happened. There was no mixing of the tracks afterwards…no overdubs.
They would come in and lay down 20 songs in 4 hours. It was exhausting. These guys would bring an entourage so I was forced to bring in extra security because these folks had a tendency to steal things.
One Saturday night, they decided to rent our rehearsal studio next door. It wasn’t so much a rehearsal as it was a massive party with hundreds of their friends showing up.
Things became unruly quickly.
An hour or so into the party, they were trashing the P.A. system we provided with the rehearsal rental. If the sound was less than desired, they tended to bang on it like Khrushchev and his shoe.
We provided a homey lounge outside the actual rehearsal space and on this day, it was overextended with idiots. The overflow was outside standing around being noisy and rowdy. My studio was smack dab in the middle of the gay section of town. I was careful to never make ass jokes in front of anyone. We would get complaints from my neighbors each time the band showed up.
I saw, with my own eyes, as men and women were vomiting on the outside and inside walls of the studio. I saw one guy actually peeing in the corner of the lounge. That was enough. I called 911.
The cops heard the words ‘punk band’ and they showed up in droves looking for some fun. They completely blocked off the 4-lane road outside our studio. This was a main thoroughfare to get to the beach and downtown Long Beach. Two K-9 units arrived along with half a dozen patrol cars containing the biggest cops I had ever seen…with their batons at the ready.
The cops began to arrest people as the oblivious wannabe felons smoked doobies and snorted crank.
The ranking cop asked what I wanted. I told him to get them out of my studio…using extreme prejudice. A huge smile formed on his lips.
At least 15 cops began to round up everyone, shooing them outside while frisking most of them: discovering drugs and paraphernalia.
The band had trashed the rehearsal studio. They started screaming they wanted their money back. $10 an hour ($40 in 2025 dollars)…or they wouldn’t leave. Wrong thing to say in front of John Law.
Cops dragged people out of the studio by their tri-colored Mohawks.
Several L.A. news crews showed up. And then a riot began. More cops showed up and with them, a SWAT vehicle.
I stood very close to the largest cop there. It seemed he towered a foot above me. He had his arm around me to make sure the numbskulls noticed that I was under protection. He didn’t know I was packing my S&W .38 pistol. Something I kept on me when I worked at night.
It took almost an hour for things to calm down and for the bums to be removed either by their own volition, or by being arrested.
One of the band members threatened to kill me right in front of my big cop. That cop drew the baton from his belt and beat the living shit out of him, the whole time asking, “Who are you going to kill? Who are you going to kill?” I was horrified.
When it was all over, and the cops left, I perused the damage done. It looked like Hurricane Katrina had moved through there. I sat on a pee-stained couch in the lounge and put my head in my hands. The PA was ruined.
It took a team of people several days to clean up. A week later, the head-punk-in-charge showed up asking if they could book the following Sunday to record. The balls. Fortunately, I had made friends with the leaders of the gay community in that neighborhood and they were standing there when this happened. Punk boy threatened me again when I said no to his request. He suddenly tried to cold cock me and my neighbor leveled him like he was wet spaghetti. There were lots of straight girls in the neighborhood and since I was tall, neat, and thin…I made sure to walk in the most macho of fashion when I walked from the studio to the rehearsal hall. It didn’t work. I was hailed as a leading figure in the gay community. Damn. And if you think running a recording studio helped pick up women, you’d be wrong. I worked so many hours and spread so thin because of the projects I had in the boiler that I didn’t have time for anything other than brief booty calls. Lonely, but lots of fun.
The inner sanctum of my recording studio. L-R: Rick Tunstall, DJ Marshall Thomas, drummer Hal Blaine, Me:
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