Parting Shots

Concluding my blogging experiment, I'd like to give a shout out to some of my local cigar shops:

Capital Cigar: Rock on, Don. Keep listening, keep hunting, and we'll keep nagging Tatuaje on your behalf. It'll be great to make CC a regular herfing spot.

Cliff's Smoke Shop: Thanks for being so open, Miles, and providing a quiet spot for a man to have a cigar and friendly chat. 60 years in the biz, and looking forward to more.

Jake's Cigars & Spirits: Todd is the man, keeping the humi filled with our favorite treats to go along with the well-stocked bar. Nice spot to cigar and imbibe, but gets way too loud at night. I'm too old to enjoy the college bar scene.

Ted's Tobacco (Lincoln): Mike, if you haven't noticed already, it's long past time to get your shit together. Stock that humidor like you want to be in business in this town.


Okay, my work is done here, really. Moving on to much bigger and better things, but under my more professional nom de plume. I wonder who'll even notice...

Numbers? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Numbers.

  I know a load of cigar bloggers provide rating numbers. I think it's a load of crap; Hugh Jass cigars don't need numbers. What the cigar is worth is inevitably up to you, the cigar consumer, not to some pretentious guy assigning value to a cigar that he had no hand in making.

Yet Another Hugh Jass Rant

  Yeah, certain cigar magazines have been pimping the concept that a true authority can quantify the value of a cigar. Then all the wannabes have to do the same, in order to appear to be discerning authorities in the craft of cigars. Of course, the rumors swirl that the ratings in the big mags aren't numbers based on the cigars themselves, but on the advertising budgets of the cigar makers. That's really beside the point. Cigars are a reality that transcends the numbers used to describe them.

  If Pete Johnson or Carlito Fuente want to assign a number to a cigar, they will, and usually it's called the Wholesale Price. It's a ballpark number that factors in the cost and care to make the cigar and bring it to you wherever you are. The cigar shop owner add a number to that representing his cost, overhead and taxes. The final number is the one that shows up on your receipt at the cash register.

  When you hit the cigar shop, the only numbers that are important are the digits on the bills, or card, in your wallet.

Hugh Jass Tweets

  Like anyone up on the times, I've joined Twitter, and in it found it to be mostly like watching press releases rolling in on a newsroom fax machine. While I have attempted some engagement and conversation via tweets, it just doesn't seem to be the generally accepted reality at all.

  While it's commonly called 'social media' I'm more inclined to call it 'cult media'. In a social setting, there is dialog, give and take, listening, asking, and responding. In a cult setting, there's the self-anointed guru making statements to his/her/its 'followers'. He who gets the most followers wins, right? And everyone on Twitter is their own guru, collecting followers, and attempting the occasional suck-up to someone more popular.

Call me an old man, but I prefer hanging out with the locals at a real cigar shop, actually communicating with real, physically present people. Even the old-fashioned bulletin boards/discussion forums seem preferable to the "one-off statement" that passes for dialog on Twitter.  But, enough about the existential complaining, and get to some Twitter-centric annoyances.

Hugh Jass Tweeting Hand

@HughJassCynic Twitter Annoyances:

a) The only person that's glad to know you're at the baggage terminal at Reagan is the contract killer who's following your Twitter feed to get your exact location. The rest of us aren't quite so interested.

b) Please, no play-by-play of whatever you're doing at the time. Yes, you're having a blast at Fenway; I already saw that 5 tweets ago. And, yes, I know the Yankees STILL suck.

c)  #Please #Don't #Hashtag #Every #Single #Frigging #Word #In #Your #Tweets; Leave some # for the rest of us, eh?

d) Enough with the foul language, please. I've already hidden you from my Facebook feed for your continual F*bombs, I'm also ignoring you for your linguistic deficiencies on Twitter as well.

I'm sure that if I spend enough time on Twitter, I will uncover a host of other annoyances. But these are sufficient for now. And, by all means, if my attempts to converse around your tweets offends, let me know.


Follow @HughJassCynic 
And don't just follow me; challenge me, engage me. 

Connoisseur, NOT

Heaven save us from the connoisseurs!

The word 'connoisseur' is a derivation from the French 'connaisseur', which translates (roughly) to English as 'insufferably snooty bastard.' I'm sure you've known one or two:

-The guy who only smokes Cuban cigars, and thinks all others as equivalent to Swisher Sweets
-The guy who only brews freshly ground coffee that he's roasted himself, thinking store-bought ground coffee is akin to necrophilia
-The guy who flashes his exspendy watch, going on about the Breitling 17 movement versus the ETA 2836

A Hugh Jass Rant

I even shy away from the label of 'aficionado,' as I'm not a metrosexual male who would light his Opus X with a $20 bill, while standing over his Titleist Pro 1V on the 3rd fairway at Pebble Beach. Actually, I'm a working schlub that prefers puffing an Oliva Serie O, while blasting my Noodle+ out of a bunker at my local municipal course. (By the by, The Serie O is a great golf cigar; good enough to really enjoy, classy enough to not embarrass you when giving one to a stranger, and cheap enough that you won't cry when you accidentally drop it into a muddy divot.)

I like humble geekery; being passionate about something and then delving deeply into the craft/trade/process that excites you. Plus, being a geek doesn't necessarily involve being a pretentious prick and looking down your nose at people that know/care less than you do.

If someone has to stick a label on me, I guess that 'Hugh Jass' fits just as well as any other.