Wrapper: Ecuadorian Sumatra
Binder: Dominican Cotuí
Filler: Dominican La Canela
Size: 6.5 x 58 Torpedo Box Pressed
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $30.00
Released: June 2022
Quantity Released: 2,000 humidors of 60

My cigars received two years of humidor aging.

THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
This is a two off. I’m not flush enough to spend $90 on three cigars for a 5-minute review. I love you guys, but not that much.

It’s a beautiful cigar although the wrapper is not very oily for a stick with two years of aging. It is flat brown like a Nubian queen that has gone bra-less since the 1960’s.

This is a huge cigar. I don’t know why I am about to punish myself reviewing something that will probably take nearly 3 hours. How do I know this? This is my second stick.

This is going to be kick ass, possibly not in a good way, similar to using paint remover to comb my hair. Meanwhile, I task Clairol Nice’n Easy for my Shama-lama-ding-dong. It burns the katman willy like sticking one’s finger into a marmot’s business. I’ll wait for you to burn that image from your brain. I’m still waiting. I gotta keep going…send me a bill.

The aroma from the wrapper is 90% barnyard. Turning my schnoz inside out to garner the remaining bouquets is not something I can undo. So, I’ll just make it up: dark chocolate, espresso, almonds, baking species, and black pepper. See, you had no idea that was entirely bullshit. Anyone can be a cigar reviewer.

The trick that LFD invented with these maddening chisel heads is you can squeeze the tip like your 16-year-old self…mangling a large zit before the Friday night dance. I stare at my PerfecPunch. I have no idea what to do with it. It stares back. I hear a tiny voice, “What do you want from me, boychik? If I had a brain, I’d find a career as a mohel working hand in hand with a rabbi for those darling 8-day olds.” I don my priest frock and the little bastard dangles without a participle.

Have I mentioned that this little fokker has the weight of a barbell? Oh Gawd…I pinch the cap. It doesn’t work. I clip it and the airflow is only a tad better so my PerfecDraw gets the nod from its place on the bench. It works but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that a $30 stick needs help to smoke it.

The cold draw is nothing special. The usual suspects of baking spices, dark chocolate, espresso, almonds, black pepper, and cloves. It tells me that hot cocoa will be the star of the procession.

Hey Russ. Think I’m too old for a career in the UFL? Asking for a friend who is seriously retarded. He thought he could live his life as a professional trombone player.

Nice start but a hunk of the cap falls off. Again…a $30 cigar. The chisel head is merely a gimmick. Everything is always a gimmick with cigars. The enormous competition a manufacturer feels is met with sometimes ridiculous offerings. What’s not a gimmick is the medicinal quality that smoking a cigar brings to our lives. If we must scuba dive through all the ‘Look at me, look at this, and look at that,’ we survive the masquerade that a good cigar hides. The peak of gimmicks is a reasonably priced cigar. Manufacturers must have been sick on that day.

I will probably hover around the first inch for 15-20 minutes as this is the most bulbous part of the cigar.

Dark chocolate is all in. The blend is very smooth and creamy. Not the slightest bit peppery for such dark leanings in its use of imagery. Instead, the Ecuadorian and Dominican leaves sing to me. I smoked my first stick a year ago. It was not smooth and I gave up hope. A shame that it takes two years of hibernation for a cigar to repel the hordes of mediocrity.

I don’t expect this cigar to be a flavor bomb. I have a sick sense that it will follow the learning curve of all LFD blends and attract the masses who don’t know what they don’t know. The Andalusian Bull was a hoax. The LFD footballs were a gimmick. Often, LFD is just a scoche better than CAO. I digress.

This is what happens when I have three hours to kill. I apologize for the way I write. I jettison all the rules when I create because I’m in the moment. Should I edit myself? Absolutely. Do I? Nope. My apologies.

Nuttiness encompasses notes of raw almonds, pine nuts, and sweet pecans.

Ever play a supertonic Dorian scale when you should have played a subdominant Phrygian scale instead? Me neither.

Despite the cigar being very pleasant, I expect more than a dab of convolution from an expensive cigar. Smooth-i-osity is wonderful but I need a kick in the nads as I finish up that long and winding road of that first inch. 25 minutes. Yikes.

Is there some complexity? Not really. Is it richly refined? Meh. Is it slightly flavorful? Yes. Gimme gimme some lovin’.

Inch 2. Nothing. No progression. It lies there in its own confluence. Honestly, I could just discard this thing and maybe light up the new Paul Stulac Blue Lightning Sky *Katman Edition* instead. Less than 20 bundles left. Use promo code KATMAN for 10% off. This blend sold over 1000 cigars in less than 48 hours. Thank you.

And the cigar goes out.

I’m not a patient man. $30 is an outrageous tactic for a $10 cigar. If I get to the second half and nothing has changed, I’m packing it in. I found only one review of this cigar and it was received warmly. But only one review since its release three years ago spells trouble. First is the fact that spending nearly $100 for three cigars is beyond most, even reviewers. Second, is word of mouth that said it was only a so-so work of artistry.

I spent 90 minutes on this thing and it is a waste of your money. You want to smoke an LFD, then I suggest you seek out a reasonably priced one like the $12 Factory Press or the $11 Chapter One or the $12 La Nox. Lots of choices that won’t break the bank. Go to sponsor Small Batch Cigar. Take 10% off with promo code KATMAN.

Don’t forget that time is dwindling on snagging the $10 Paul Stulac Blue Lightning Sky *Katman Edition* from the only authorized retailer, Small Batch Cigar. Take 10% off with promo code KATMAN.

RATING: 84

And now for something completely different:
I watched an umpteenth documentary about Jonestown and this story came to mind.
It was 1972.

Dr. O. L. Jaggers (Universal World Church). The first church crowd sourced from the planet CERES. The story of an insane preacher.

We were the triumvirate. The Musketeers. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Skip, Travis, and me. We were roommates during our college days. We lived in a nice 3-bedroom house in Santa Ana. On summer nights, we regularly climbed up to the hip and valley roof and watched the stars and passed the doobies. Marvelous times even though we were as poor as church mice.

The Triumvirate +1 Phil Kohn, Travis Hirth, Tim Krenzien (R.I.P), Skip Howlett (R.I.P.) ~aka “Zelmo Mutz & The Enrique Twins”

We had a few indulgences on TV. Star Trek, Rocky and Bullwinkle, live music concerts…and Dr. O.L. Jaggers.

Jaggers and his wife Miss Velma were very odd creatures that entertained us to the point that our sides hurt from laughing. They were a pair of evangelical preachers that also scared the bejeezus out of us.

Miss Velma standing on planet Earth:

We decided we would spend a Sunday morning in the presence of both.

Jaggers was based out of South-Central L.A. He had a huge church cluttered with massive paintings of himself and his wife…they seemed god-like in their poses. But stagecraft was the real show.

Jaggers had built a 60’ long golden altar on that stage. The altar was over 10’-0 high.
It was painted white with gold trim. It had gargoyles and angels and weird outcroppings of artistic impressions of Jesus and Mary. Above the altar were disco balls that were lit and spinning so that the golden altar sparkled like something that had dropped from alien ships.

The altar was so big, it could fit a four-piece band along with 15 Gospel singers on it. Directly in front of the altar, was a dazzling white grand piano with gold trim. Jaggers would play arpeggios while singing his theme song “I’m nuts, how are you?”

Back to the essentials of the Jaggers: They were insane. While Jaggers preached, there would be 8th grade science and biology movie clips shown on a huge screen behind him. They had the scratches and stutter of old Super 8 films. And none of it had anything to do with what he preached. Of course, no one had any idea what he preached because he was a daft sod. He wore white garb that looked like it was made for The Commodores. But he tweren’t no Lionel Ritchie.

Our favorite part was near the end of the show when he grabbed his white Fender Stratocaster and began playing Pete Townshend style, with windmill strokes. Mind you, this man was in his 60’s at the time and was ultra conservative in his politics.

He told us TV viewers the only way our prayers could be heard by God was to send him money…and in return, he would send us a golden prayer cloth with the outline of his hand on it. So being the suckers we were, we sent the money and got a ratty, thread torn, golden cloth about 6” x 6” with a stamped handprint on it.

Because of the location in L.A., we were the only white people in his church. But we were welcomed with warmth and generosity.

We marveled at the golden altar in person.

The crowd loved Jaggers and Miss Velma. They cheered and repeated words he prompted them to repeat like lemmings.

And then the anointing of the oil of the foreheads of the ritualistic. We got in line while the gospel singers tore the place up. I had a huge afro. Skip had hair past his shoulders. And Travis looked like the Gorton Fisherman. Real Hippies.

Women were flailing on the floors upon anointing. Convulsions. They got dragged away and out of the view of the TV camera. Every service was taped for airwave consumption.

I wish I had a photo at the moment he looked at me. I nearly gave him a heart attack. His hands shook as he took the ketchup bottle replaced with vegetable oil and squeezed it just a little extra on my forehead. There was pure hatred in his eyes. He played it straight for the cameras.

He announced that very Sunday morning we first attended that Jesus Christ would appear at his church for the Easter services in a few weeks. Travis went by himself only to report that Jesus was a no show. Travis was a crazy motherfucker and took LSD and rode the 40 miles to the church on his Harley. He really wanted to meet Jesus. Travis returned home disappointed and refused to join Skip and I for future visits.

Jaggers was such a nut that his sermons show up on YouTube. Here are some samples to give you an idea of what we were dealing with.

WARNING: I urge you to watch both videos in their entirety. To truly enjoy and understand what you hear and see, I suggest that you drink heavily or smoke 41% thc cannabis beforehand. It is only then, after you experience the Jaggers for 15 minutes and then 8 minutes…no matter the pain, that you will realize that my words can’t do the experience justice. Amen, brothers…you’ll thank me. Your lives will be changed forever. You shall ever curse me. God bless.

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