PUTNEY — Our new president and savior smokes.
This is not good. I can picture him slipping one of his secret service agents a fin so he won't tell Michelle that he is copping a cigarette in the Rose Garden. Even then he may be taking a big chance. Would you like Michelle Obama to catch you breaking the rules? Neither would I.
I would recommend that if Barack is jonesin' for a butt, he should switch to cigars. Nothing says I am the friggin' President like a big ol' Churchill stuck in your jaws.
First, I would recommend that he lift the ban on Cuba. Those commies may suck at commerce (who doesn't though, right?), but they roll the best cigars on earth, bar none. Cigarettes are smelly, common, dirty, and unhealthy. Good cigars are none of those things and they come with their own literature.
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Ruth, my tolerant angel and, to date, wife, has offered proof that she has accepted the indisputable fact that I, her logy Lothario, smoke cigars. Ruth recently waved the white flag in the stogie wars and bought me a subscription to Cigar Aficionado magazine.
I had always thought that an "aficionado" was a Spanish gigolo, but no. According to the dictionary an aficionado is "an ardent enthusiast." That's me, all right. I am very ardent about my stogies. There's nothing like a blast of molasses-thick cigar smoke auguring through the old canals to give you a nice legal buzz.
But imagine my disgust when I received my first copy of Cigar Aficionado and found an array of the most pretentious bilge ever to besmirch the printed page. I found 354 oversized pages crammed with cravats, arched eyebrows, diamond stickpins, Rush Limbaugh look-alikes, and merchandise that the Sultan of Brunei would deem extravagant.
In my first issue, “Ivor Spencer's School for Butlers” instructs the gentleman's gentleman on the noble art of ironing the newspaper, passing the humidor (don't forget the ladies), bowing to the master (true), and folding the table linen (wear gloves). Bootlicking and belly crawling weren't mentioned but certainly implied.
Almost every page had some chairman-of-the-board type in a Savile Row suit puffing on a Cuban stogie and chatting to a wasp-waisted, large-boobed woman half his age wearing $8 billion worth of diamonds around her neck. You just want to sneak up from behind and give him an "atomic wedgie," then snatch his girlfriend's wig off and throw it into the punch bowl.
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The cigars advertised on the glossy pages of Cigar Aficionado are to die for - this I admit. I looked up the retail price of a box of 25 Dunhill Altamiras shown being clipped by a Geilguldian gentleman with a gold guillotine - 135 bucks. Want a box of the famed Credo Pythagoras? Try 165 charlies. About 75 cents a drag, I would estimate.
But hey - who would quibble over price when they get a load of the "rich earthiness, leather and sweet spices like nutmeg with a pleasing woody finish"? I'm lucky if I don't get a herd of tobacco worms racing for my lips when I fire up one of my domestic stinkers. If Cigar Aficionado were to review my brand of cigars, it might sound like this:
"A putrid blend of burning dog hair and chicken droppings, flames to a fizzling cinder inside of five minutes with a not-so-subtle fish-slime aftertaste."
While this is quite true, one can forgive a few imperfections at 55 cents apiece. In their defense, my cigars accentuate the taste of Cheez Doodles and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
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Cigar smoking isn't exactly good for you, but it isn't too bad either. Look at the late George Burns (a great name for a cigar smoker), who celebrated 100 years on the planet and always had a fine cigar clamped between his plates. The secret is you don't inhale cigars (or cigar smoke), so they won't give you lung cancer. Some air-hugging doomsayers will tell you they cause lip melanomas, but to them I say, "Well, maybe."
I can't recommend Cigar Aficionado to the President. He is, after all, a man of the people. Ruth was just trying to elevate my persona by getting me a subscription to Cigar Aficionado. Honey, you can't make a truffle out of a toadstool - sorry.