After all these years, it’s finally our turn.

God knows—for Phil’s benefit, Yahweh—how many cigars Phil Katman Kohn has reviewed, poking, squeezing, sniffing, dissecting and occasionally even smoking them between stories that had absolutely nothing to do with the cigar at hand.

Now, with Phil apparently winding down the Katman cigar asylum and preparing to ride off into retirement—or collapse face-first into his keyboard—I think it’s time for us to review the reviewer.

Not his palate. Not his scores. Not whether he correctly identified Ecuadorian binder from Nicaraguan ligero.

Screw that.

I want to review the stuff that made me laugh out loud.

Not chuckle. Not smile knowingly at some clever turn of phrase. I mean the involuntary laugh that causes your wife—the only sane person left in the room—to look across at you and wonder if you’re off your meds again.

And trying to explain Katman only makes it worse. Every word digs the hole a little deeper until you realize you’re no longer explaining Phil—you’re just providing evidence for your own competency hearing.

So here are a few of my nominations for the Katman Kwoteables Hall of Fame.

“Others write about relevant shit. I ramble on incessantly.”
Possibly the most accurate self-review ever written.

Then there is:
“The flavor profile expands like a mushroom cloud over Cleveland. Thankfully, my third wife lives there.”
Two sentences. Cigar analysis, nuclear annihilation and an ex-wife. A stunning display of efficiency from a man who normally needs 1,500 words, three ex-wives and a prostate exam to get from the cold draw to the first inch.

And then there is the merkin story.
Phil announces that his toupee has come loose, followed immediately by his merkin, which naturally reminds him of a girlfriend from the early ’70s. A beautiful girl with long brown hair who apparently possessed enough additional hair below the equator to require “a miner’s cap and klieg lights.”

His recommendation?
Skip the salon and “go straight to a dog groomer.”
“She had no sense of humor. Never saw her again.”
Of course she didn’t, Phil.

And remember, we were reading a cigar review.

That one is just batshit—and perfectly Katman. There are very few non-institutionalized people capable of starting with a loose toupee, transitioning seamlessly to a merkin, arriving at a hairy girlfriend from 50 years ago and a dog groomer, and then somehow finding their way back to combustion characteristics.

You don’t read Katman looking for the shortest distance between two points.

You get on the fucking bus and see where it goes.

Then there is one of my all-time favorites:
“There might be some wood. I lick my belt to confirm I taste leather.”
That may be the finest review of cigar reviewing ever written.

Somewhere another reviewer is swirling smoke around his palate and detecting Madagascar vanilla, wet forest floor and the faint memory of his grandmother’s spice cabinet.
Phil is licking his belt.
Reviewer reviewed: Katman wins.

And then:
“The cigar is packed like a schnitzel at a nuclear plant.”
I have absolutely no idea what that means.
Yet somehow I know exactly how tightly that cigar was packed.

That is the peculiar genius of Katman.

For years we supposedly came for the cigars. Instead, we heard about wives, ex-wives, medical catastrophes, bodily functions, childhood memories, rock and roll, the Three Stooges, Eddie Munster, Boy Scouts, syncope, aneurysms, unfortunate romantic encounters, the occasional Curved Air name-drop and whatever other synaptic misfire occurred between lighting the cigar and reaching the final third.

Somewhere in there, occasionally, Phil reviewed the cigar.
So now we reverse the roles.
The readers review the reviewer.

Phil once called us his “cult following of smart weirdos.” Eventually the asylum got a name: Katmandia.
Seems about right.

So, citizens of Katmandia, dig through your memory—or better yet, dig through the old reviews—and post the Katman line, story, paragraph or completely unhinged detour that made you lose it.

The one that made you spit out your coffee.

The one you read to your wife even though you knew halfway through that this had been a terrible decision.

The one that made you wonder how the hell Phil got there from a discussion of wrapper combustion.

And especially the one that made you think:
Only Katman could write this shit.

Let’s give the old bastard his performance review before he retires.

No HR department. No 360-degree feedback. No improvement plan. At this point, improvement would ruin him.

Just the Great Katman Kwoteable Collection, assembled by the smart weirdos who have spent years wandering around Katmandia reading this magnificent nonsense.

Phil reviewed the cigars.
Now it’s our turn to review Phil.

So rise to the occasion, Katmandians.
What’s your favorite Katman Kwoteable?

Katman here; Trillionaire, Jeff Diaz wrote this mini manifesto.
I don’t believe for a minute that I wrote any of that stuff.

I am really uncomfortable posting this because I am very shy. Sure, I may drop names, but I squirm at praise.

Fuck it to the beat, eight to the bar…

Kwote me…if you dare. And I will reward one or more of you with a gondolier full of clitoris stampings and vulva engravings…and a couple cigars.

P.S. Fortunately, Jeff is allowing me to make payments.

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS, CONTEST