Alec Bradley Seconds

Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate. And I'm Mike. We are going to do a first ever on the podcast. I hope you're all sitting down. Unless you're standing and listening, then that's great too. We're going to do two back to back in one episode, one episode. I feel like I'm like a circus. Step right up, step right up. Come and see the great show of Nate and Mike smoking two Alec Bradley seconds back to back.

These are unlabeled, but we've got a light wrapper and we've got a short wrapper and they are Rothschilds. These are Rothschild size. Yep. So we're going to start with the light one and we've got a doozy of a topic this episode, but we're going to start with the light one and then we'll get into the topic. So I'm going to get cut and lit. And Mike will tell us a little bit about the cigars. So these are Alec Bradley's, as you know, Rothschild size, which I like.

And Alec Bradley makes a lot of promo style cigars, I would say. And this is something they call a second. So these are not, they're usually wrapped too tight or too loose or there's something off about them. Maybe the color, the one I have is not off color. I got them in a bundle. I don't know. Mine told me an off color joke, but otherwise it's pretty good. You know what? And I have to say, I just lit it and the draw is amazing through this. So it might be loose, looser than their spec.

That's oversized. You know what? That could be of the original cigar. And I don't even know what these are originally supposed to be, to be perfectly honest. It's not like the Edge Humar, something. It's more like the Ben Maduro, except I know the brand of this one. Yes. Okay. You know, I'm just going to go out on a limb. And I think I mentioned before on this podcast that I'm not the taste expert and I'm not the smell expert. You know, my wife sometimes would be like, oh, what's that smell?

Can you smell that? And I'm like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. But I'm getting kind of like an almost like a nutty, like kind of like a nut flavor from this. It is. And they smell really nice. They smell. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like what a cigar should smell like. Yes. Ha ha ha. But. So first few puffs, you know, I like it so far. As we know on the show, sometimes what you taste at the beginning is what you taste at the end. And sometimes it's not.

But as it stands right now, even though it's a second, I would happily smoke this all the way to the end. Yes. Like I say, most of these are, it's a branded second. So it's probably going to be pretty good. And you can guess based on the shape and the color of what they're supposed to be. Wink, wink. It's not like a Fuma where they're saying it's this cigar. This was supposed to be a factory rolled cigar that was just one of the ones that couldn't pass the test. So to speak.

Yeah. Well, and they have other cigars that don't pass any tests and they probably just trash, right? Like quality control purposes, like it got wrapped weird or, you know, the length. I'm guessing they don't have a lot of wrap issues. They probably have a lot of discoloration issues as they age. Oh, okay. Yeah. Usually when they're discolored, it's not like really obvious. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, not to, not to like, you know, us, right?

We don't look at their production line every day, you know? Right. It's a cigar that would look out of place in the box. Yes. But not out of place in my hand, which is where it currently is. And I like smoking seconds. I think a lot of guys like myself do. Yeah. But there's really nothing wrong with that.

You know, it's, and with the way everything's been kind of more globalized, you can get a lot of, I don't really want to call them knockoffs because it isn't really, but there's a lot of imitations or alternate versions of things you can buy that, or emulate. They emulate the name brand expensive price tag, but they do it in a way that doesn't have the expensive price tag.

So you're not like a hundred percent sure what you're going to get, but you know, if they went, if they studied what they're kind of like emulating, you just know it's going to be, it's going to be good. It's going to be decent. So Right. I'm a big fan of factory second, Redwing boots. Okay. A lot of times they have like a loose, the stitching is tight, but the way that they blasted the leather, there's like a loose spot on it. So it's not perfectly shaped. Oh, okay.

Which blends right out after you wear it, after you wear them and get them worn in, you can't tell. But there's like a weird, you know, there's like a loose spot or a tight spot. Okay. That'll shake back in as you use them. You know, you can't even tell. Yeah. Those black Redwings that I wear, you've seen me wear them. Yeah. Those were seconds. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I saved 130 bucks. Yeah. Buying seconds and you, one of the boots had a loose part.

It had a little bulge right where the last meets the welt at the bottom. Okay. And it was just ugly until you, until I broke them in. And then now you can't even tell. Yeah. So well, and even, even to the untrained or uninitiated, I'm sure at the very beginning, unless you were looking really closely, you couldn't tell. Yeah. Once they were on my feet, they were fine, but you're not going to charge 320 bucks for a pair of boots that aren't perfect.

No, and not representative of the brand you want to convey, but that doesn't mean that they're any worse than, you know, the, the flagship line or the non-second version, you know, it's just, if I had an office job, I'd wear those every day. Didn't quite, didn't quite meet the quality control brands, you know, on point stuff. So, but I'm really excited because we get to talk about one of my favorite authors tonight. Today, whenever you're listening, Kurt Vonnegut. Yes. So we did the Animal Farm.

We both read that. We didn't call each other every night and read, read each other chapters, but we both read or consumed it. Because Mike does a lot of audio books because he's in the car a lot. And I've never really gotten into the audio books. So I always just read and we both read Animal Farmer. We talked about that on a previous episode and we did a Kurt Vonnegut book, Slaughterhouse Five, which is one of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut books of all time. It's a very famous book.

And it's the first time that I ever listened to it. I listened to it on audiobook twice. Yeah. And have you, have you had any exposure to Kurt Vonnegut previously? No, no, I did not. Okay. I've had exposure to post modernist literature. So I understood the style and the content. Yes. So, you know, like I read Boiling Hippos and the Beat Novels and all that sort of thing.

And I would say, and I recently read for the first time White Noise, which I know they're going out with a, I think a movie adaptation of that. And I can't, and forgive me, I can't remember the author right now. I think it's something I'm not even going to guess, but I read it and I was very impressed. And it's actually, if you've heard of the band, the Airborne Toxic Event, that's the novel they take their band name from. But it's basically a professor who is an expert in Hitler studies.

So that's all he teaches is Hitler. Not because he's pro Hitler, but that's just his, he's made, it's funny because he made like a huge name for himself in Hitler studies, but he doesn't speak German. And so part of the book is he's super nervous about having to go give this keynote speech because he doesn't speak German and everybody's going to expect him to speak German because he's a Hitler studies professor. So it's, I think it fits in that same vein of postmodern. Right. Or very similar to.

It's by Don DeLilo, Never Her Own. Yeah. I would recommend that book. That one's, that one's pretty fun and disturbing. Kind of like most of- Never read it to be honest with you. Well yeah. And I had never read it until I think last year. Cause I've been trying to branch out and read more, read more books and read more things that are, I don't know, different, I guess, not Game of Thrones or Twilight or Harry Potter.

It's eye opening to read a lot of the postmodern novels by like that World War II veteran generation. Yeah. Cause it's always like, those fuckers were dark. It's so anti what society tells you those people should be. Oh sure. You know what I mean? Or like what the media says, like, oh, the last great war.

And to dive right into Slaughterhouse Five, I love like the prelude or the preface where he's talking about, he goes and talks to his war buddy and his wife, his war buddy's wife is like, you better not make this where people want to go and enlist. Right. You guys were all men and you were all heroes and it was glorious. And she's like, you were kids and you better not make this where more kids sign up to go fight. Right. And it definitely was not, it was definitely an anti war novel.

I want you to talk first because I've read it before and I've got all my own like, you know, Kurt Vonnegut reading Boner, I guess. Sure. But you having never read a Kurt Vonnegut book, I'm so excited to hear your thoughts, whether bad or both or indifferent. So the first listen through, I read it more literally than it was intended or I listened to it more literally than it was intended to be taken. And I was like, God damn, this is dark.

You know, I focused a lot on his wife dying as he was in the hospital. And like those like darker personal aspects and I kind of didn't focus a whole lot on the World War II story. What could be taken as flashbacks, right? Quote unquote. Well he's unstuck in time. So he's he's unstuck in time, but I focus less on that and more on his like life story, which did tie in. It was patterned throughout and it was so depressing.

Yeah. And then the second time through, I listened to it more of like a PTSD kind of story where I was like, because I had already heard the story, I could focus more on the details. Yeah, there's a lot of details and a lot of the things obviously got tied back and tied back and tied back. Yeah, which I thought was funny. And I definitely on second reading perceived it as a attack on the US government and their denial of PTSD and World War II soldiers because that was a theme over and over.

That I noticed on the second reading where it was like, oh, he was in the hospital for the psychiatric thing, but it was definitely wasn't the war. Just like in the end, it was like this brigadier general who had never seen the war who just totally discounted him. Yes. He was saying something bad about the bombing of Dresden because it's totally just war is wonderful.

Yeah. Well, and the counterpoint, I guess not the counterpoint, but like another thing is that brigadier general was complaining because he had to rewrite his World War II history books because they just declassified the Dresden bombing and now he had to include that in his book, right? Yes. He had to go back and rewrite it and include Dresden because if he didn't, then nobody was going to believe he was even part of the war because now it's been declassified. Right.

And he said a bunch of sissies to that effect would have been bothered about all the death that was caused in the Battle of Dresden, even though Dresden was known not to have any value in the war, which it did, I'm sure. Well yeah. That's what total war is, right? We're still complaining about the burning of Atlanta. Yeah. And just for our, to get our listeners up to speed, if you've never read Slaughterhouse 5, we've got spoiler alerts, yada, yada.

But it's basically Kurt Vonnegut lived through the bombing of Dresden. And this is his novelization kind of, of that. And it's maybe less about the actual bombing of Dresden than it is about, like you said, you know, just war in general and kind of the government's role in war, which is different than the people actually fighting the war's role in war.

Sure. And I viewed, well, I guess, like I say, I read it, I listened to it once through, took it literally the second time he started paying attention. And it almost seemed like every time that he slipped between the two was a triggering event for like PTSD, like a PTSD trigger. And then it would flip and flip and flip. And it was always on a trigger point and a trigger point and trigger point. And it was very well done. Oh man.

I'm sure that you pick more up on it when you read it with your eyes instead of listening to it in a novel. Yeah. And I did, and Mike and I talked about this a little bit on in between episodes, we'll say, but Kurt Vonnegut does some really phenomenal, and we're not talking Vincent van Gogh or Picasso, but he does some phenomenal hand illustrations in his books. And like I said, if you have like an elementary school kid, that's about the level of his drawings, no offense to Kurt.

And I think they're intentionally done that way, right? Because he does write about a lot of heavy subjects, but he does so in kind of like a laugh out loud way. And I told Mike this too, my brother and I read almost everything Kurt has ever written and then we read it in high school and like early college. And we instantly like after the first like book or two, this was still when you could go out in public, right?

And you could read a book and nobody would look at you like you're like a mass murderer or something. But this was before like internet was on your phone and all this stuff. But we made a rule that we can't read Kurt Vonnegut in public because you're reading about the firebombing of Dresden and then he'll throw something in there and it's just the most absurd funny thing ever.

Like one of the lines in the book was I think when Billy Pilgrim was at the zoo on Trafalgar Moor and they were like, and he goes and Billy was hung or something like he had like a massive cock or something. And it's like what? He had a massive wing. Yeah, massive wing. And you're like, wait a second, this is a book about the firebombing of Dresden. You have your protagonist in an alien zoo stripped naked. He's got a massive wing and he's banging a movie star.

But then even the banging the movie star came back later and Billy was like, oh yeah, a lot of times I just had to do like domestic things for her and she wanted like attention because she was raising our child. But we're in a zoo so is it like, it wasn't really like a child, like humans, like on earth. So like it was disconnected somehow, right? And you could like pick that up from the writing. So I don't know, I really love Kurt Vonnegut and his writing style.

And it's- I laughed at the beginning when he said most of the things in this story are true. Well, at least some of the things. Well, this and this and this and this I did see with my own eyes. Yeah, yeah. Where it's like, okay, so we've already been prefaced. The parts of the war, a lot of it like is true. Oh yeah. Yeah. And there is like a very true story hidden in there. Yeah. And one of my favorite things and you know, I've read this book a lot because it's one of my favorites of his.

I love, I think every book I've read of his I really enjoy. And I wish I could keep them all separate in my head, but it's all kind of like the mass of Kurt Vonnegut, right? So like when I think about Kurt Vonnegut, I think of course of Slaughterhouse Five, but I think of all the other books of his that I've read and I can't remember which scenes are from which books because they all kind of blend together because- Sure. No, I know exactly what you mean.

It's like Dune. Once you've read a lot of the Dune story, it's hard to pick out where- Which book did this happen in? I remember liking it, but I don't know where it was. Where can I say? But I love, I love because in Slaughterhouse Five, it starts out the first whole chapter is him, just him, Kurt Vonnegut. He's writing about himself going and visiting a war buddy whose wife hates him and stuff. And then you're like, okay, I guess this is a preface.

And then it's all Billy Pilgrim and it's like, you're three quarters of the way through. And somebody shit their brains out. And then Kurt goes, that was me. That was I. I was there. I shit my brains out in that boxcar or something. And it's like, he throws himself back in there and you're like, oh, holy fuck. He told me he was in here at the beginning. More broadly than that, it was somebody said, I'm going to shit my brains out. Then that person said, oh, there they go. There they go.

That was me. There they go. I mean, it's that kind of stuff where it's like, but you're reading about the firebombing of Dresden, but you're not. I mean, you're reading about human nature, really. I found the parts about World War II very intriguing, especially like the Englishman's speech was interesting. Oh, yeah. The American Nazi was super interesting. I thought that his little diagnosis of America was like on the nose. All Americans are poor.

They're trained to hate each other, especially the other poor. And everything that he said was actually true. Like I've been in a bar with a small little American plague and the little picture on the wall that says, if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? I've been in those bars. It was you. Literally that. Yeah. And it's true. I loved how the English, they were captured at the start of the war, right? And they built up their POW camp and they were putting on stage plays, stage plays.

And then you get these Americans and it's at the end of the war and they've been fighting and slugging through the trenches and the mud and the death and the blood. And they get dragged into the POW camp after spending a week on this train. And they're watching like Cinderella by the English being put out on stage. Like these very buff Englishmen who have been working out for five years. Yeah. And improving their lives and reading and making the best of their time in the POW camp.

But you read it and it's like, you feel as disoriented as Billy Pilgrim did. And he steals the spray painted silver boots and that's what he wears the rest of the novel. So he's always wearing this goofy getup because he just has to scrounge. But you're watching a stage play and they were able to acquire silver spray paint in their POW camp to put on the stage play. And they were the two brothers, the snipers, right? That got killed when Billy got picked up.

And he got fresh off of people dying in front of his eyes. And now he's watching Cinderella on stage. Right. And he was already in shock, clearly. Well, yes, of course. He was already in shock by the time that he got picked up. And very interesting. Yeah. I like that he kept on laying down and trying to die. And they kept on picking him up and picking him up and picking him up.

And then the two guys who were trying to keep him alive and the weird guy who died in the train, which how was it Billy Pilgrim's fault that the weird guy died? Yeah. And that was the guy that was like, we're the three musketeers. And then the other two snipers were like, we don't want no part of that. We don't want to be the three musketeers. How was it Billy's fault that that guy died on the train, though? I just don't get it. It's not, no, but it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's weird.

That's kind of the point. Yeah. The second time through, I tried to find the point at which he fucked with this guy, but it just never came about. He would just blame for his death for no reason. Oh yeah. The only reason this other guy, I think his name was what, Ronald? Something like that. He was a plumber. He was the son of a plumber who was really into weird shit executions.

Yeah. But the only, I think the only reason that Billy was ever blamed was because Billy was the exact opposite personality of this guy. And so this guy took Billy's wanting to die and not wanting to fight the war anymore as like a personal affront. And I think that's the only reason because Billy was like, do you guys go on without me? Just leave me. I'm happy. Like leave me alone. And this guy would go back and like punch Billy in the face and like get him up and moving again. You know?

So like he kind of made it his own like personal vendetta to keep Billy alive, which he hated. But the only reason he did it was because he hated Billy so much that he didn't want Billy to like be able to die and fulfill his destiny or whatever, because it was so against this other guy's perspective. Right. And I really like the cast of characters, you know, the hobo, which I identify with the hobo. I've had it worse. I've had it worse. Yes. Yeah. Until he died.

Yes. And I'll meet you in Cody, Wyoming. You know, wild Bill. Yeah. If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, find wild Bill. Yeah. Cody is a huge fucking place, by the way. Oh, I know that. I know. I've been there. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's a ridiculous statement. I looked for a wild Bill. It probably goes over the heads of readers who don't live in like, who've never been there. It's like a huge... Yeah. Or who don't live or have come from bum fuck nowhere.

Yeah. There's a thousand wild Bills in Cody, Wyoming, I'm sure. Yeah. There has to be. There has to be. All right. So quick pause. I'm done with this cigar. What? I'm only halfway through. Holy shit, dude. What the hell? I don't know. Maybe mine's looser than yours. That's what she said. Must be. Mine's actually tasting great too. Dude, I like this one. This one's really good. And maybe that's why I've been smoking it so much. Yeah. It's light.

It's lighter than... I mean, it's a Connecticut, so it is a little lighter. Yeah. Which maybe I'm starting to really like the Connecticut's, I guess. I think they've got a really good place. What was the one that we smoked that was a Connecticut, but then it got like so dark at the end that we were both like buzzing? Was that the Edge? No, that wasn't the Edge. That was the Perdomo Champagne. That one is great. But it was the big one. Yeah. It was like a Super Toro. It was not like a Robusto.

It was Super Toro. I liked that one a lot. And that was the 10th anniversary special edition, blah, blah, blah, blah. That was a pretty expensive stick. Okay. That one was so good. Yeah. I think I only got two of those. But yes, it was that one. I think I paid $12 for it. Okay. So at a store it would be 18 bucks, 15 bucks. Easy. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good stick though. It was really good. This one's really good. I like this one a lot. How much do you have left? You're only halfway through?

I have over two inches left, if you can believe it. I absolutely cannot. But yeah. I don't know how the hell you popped that down. The truth is the truth, I guess. Well, you were doing a little more talking. That's true. Yeah. We're vamping a lot. We're not doing the synopsis of the story. It's difficult to do a synopsis of the story. You can't. It's Billy's on a second time.

You can't really summarize the story other than the firebombing of Dresden plays a part, aliens play a part, PTSD, and just general life. The layout of the story, the World War II part is in order, but then it cuts. The beginning and the end of the novel are actually the same setting, and the middle is jumbled up. It starts and ends in the same place, and the narrator actually takes over for the last page or so. And then the World War II story goes throughout, which is horrific.

I actually did not know that they made, I mean, I don't even know if it's true. I did look up the bombing of Dresden. He made up the number. There was not, according to the government, 135,000 people that died. That was thrown out, but they think it's more like 30,000, 40,000 people died, which is horrific, but less so. With those stats too, though, I don't know that they always count the full civilian count. Right.

And the government has maybe, because our government did it, so they have a vested interest in making that number less in retrospect. So I don't know. It's probably somewhere between the two numbers is what I would say. Just trying to look at it logically, I suppose. But it's interesting is all the times I've read it, and even this last time I read it, I never even considered PTSD. Really? So that's a great insight because it totally does make sense. Oh, my grandfather had real bad PTSD.

Okay. But that's why I enjoy it. It fits the premise, right? Yeah. That's why I like reading books with other people, because everybody's got a little bit different take on everything. So it really opens up awareness. Well, you never notice the anti-government talk with, oh, this has nothing to do with the war. It was repeated multiple times. Oh, no. I picked up the anti-government. Yeah. This has nothing to do with the war. I never ascribed it like the PTSD lens or filter. You know what I mean?

A lot of the postmodern, the beat generation, those guys all wrote about it before the government admitted it was true. Yeah. But there's an awful lot that's going on in the book, even though it's a short book, and it's written very excessively. He doesn't- Oh, yeah. There's nothing complicated to it. But there's a lot going on. And that's why I like it so much. And one of my favorite things about Kurt Vonnegut is he takes almost like everyday feelings.

And I suppose whether they're PTSD or not, but when he talks about Billy marrying the wife that he married, and then becoming a successful optometrist because his wife's dad ran a successful optometry business. He ran the school. And he never really even liked his wife, but Kurt made a point that Billy bought this super expensive $800 ring to give to his wife at this party. But then, do you remember when Billy got so shook up by the barbershop quartet that sang his songs?

By the Fabs. Yes. And he got so shook up that he couldn't even give her the ring in the manner he intended. And then now that you say PTSD, I'm like, oh my, that makes sense. That's exactly what that was. Did you also pick up on Billy treated his wife so well, there was another woman at the party that was jealous and started talking shit about how his wife already had all the jewelry in town? Yes. So even though he was not super impressed with his wife, he still treated her very, very well.

Oh, of course. Of course. And then it got even weirder because there's so much with Billy's character to delve into, that he didn't want to be in the war and he wanted to die. But then he came back from the war and he married this woman he didn't really want to marry, but he did. And then he treated her great, like you should. She got the diamond that he found in the coat. And there's never any instances of him ever behaving poorly towards her. Other than cheating on her once. In the zoo?

No, no. Oh, okay. Yes. Yep. But he was drunk, so it's okay, right? And he was shamed and he couldn't find the steering wheel. Yes. And he was in the back seat. But you know, and that, and that like, and I feel almost like that generation was like, I don't know of most, but like, I feel like a lot of them had mistresses. Like that was just kind of like the culture at the time. But I think by and large, he treated her very well.

And only us, the readers knew that he didn't, wasn't super thrilled about the whole thing. She was as big as a house. Yes. And she kept on eating candy. That was constant too, eating candy. Yeah. And only to us, the reader, like that wasn't something that he went about town saying, I don't think. You know, like you never got that feeling that he was vindictive in any way. No. And I also got the feeling that his son, the green beret died too, even though it wasn't explicitly said.

Yeah. Cause there's a line where it was like, oh yeah, back when he was still alive or something. Yes. Back when he was still alive. And I think, you know, like Kurt takes a lot of these very complex emotions and kind of like packages them up in a little like humorous anecdote. You know, like the, the aliens, the Trafalgar Morians or Trafal, I don't know how to pronounce it, but. Have you lit your second cigar, Nate? Not yet. I'm waiting for you. Oh, you should light it.

And if I'm, if I fall behind, I mean, I had, oh, I got a good intro. I'm going to put this one out. So I'll wait. I'll wait for you. We should light at the same time so we can give initial thoughts. Thanks. This is starting to get a little sour on me. Yeah. And the last two inches here, I put it out in an inch. So it was smoking it faster than I otherwise would.

Yes. Well, there's, there's really no rush, but you know, mine got a little sour at the last inch and a half and I gave it the last half inch and then it kind of poured out. So mine's woody and light and a little nutty. It's very pleasant. I got more nut. I got more nutty at the beginning and it kind of gets into more of that, um, woodiness later, but it's good. I like, I like both flavors. Even right now I'm getting like walnut. It's sort of more like an acorn.

Yeah. Everybody's every acorn, acorns. And uh, now it's more like a darker walnut. Very nice. It's changed. It's a, like I say, it's a good smoke. Yeah. A lot of these, especially if you get a branded second, it seems like it's a good cigar. It's probably not something you're going to give to your uncle at a party because it doesn't have a band on it. But if you did, it'd be good. Depending on how much you like your uncle, uh, and how into appearances he is.

But I think if you gave this to somebody, I think they would like it. Like even your uncle would like it. They might like turn their nose up. Like, oh, it doesn't have a band on it. But right. Well, I mentioned last episode that I smoked a edge at a party. Yeah. The reason why I did is I was going to go to this party and I knew that Sarah's uncle was going to be there and he smoked cigars and he gave me a punch. He gave me a pretty good cigar too.

But uh, when we lit it up, I was like, you know, blah, blah, blah. I actually liked the fuma of this cigar a lot better because they had a box of the fuma and I got a box of the edges and the fuma are way better. And he's like, oh man, I need to try one of those now. Okay. Should have brought to him. But because I, I do think the fuma are better. Just me too. So Nate, you want to take us down?

This is not a novel where we can start at the beginning and end at the end because it gets jumped so far. Yeah. It's really not. Billy's life gets cut up. The beginning and the end of his life are the same, same place where his wife is dead and now he's at home in a house that doesn't have any heat and his daughter is treating him like a child. Yes. Who's apparently very attractive. Even though she's also eating a Mars bar, hinting that she's going to blow up as big as a house as well.

Yes. But she doesn't have the same personality that the mother had because apparently I never felt like Billy's wife was mean or overly commandeering or patientizing. She seemed like a very nice woman. And I think the daughter, I don't know where she got the personality from, but she didn't inherit the personality from either of her parents.

So that's probably her own doing, but the daughter definitely did seem a little more like up in their business and wanted to take charge of Billy's life, especially post accident. Yes. And you know, you can- That made me really depressed too. Yeah. That was so depressing. And you can, I mean, you can look at this novel and you can look at it in a lot of different ways.

You can read it as a very lighthearted alien slash anti-war novel and not dig too deep on anything and say, okay, well, they really were the aliens. They really did take him to the zoo and he really did make love in public to the movie star and raise a child there. And their perspective on life is that everybody's always alive all the time. Just choose, it just depends on when you choose to remember them, you know, like, which is a nice thought. And maybe it's true.

I'm not a fourth dimensional or fifth dimensional interstellar being. So I don't know for sure, but you know, and then you can also read it in a way where it's like this is just a man, Kurt, trying to deal with the atrocities of war, which is basically just war. You know, you don't have to go kill and rape and pillage to have war be an atrocity.

Sure. And maybe it's just his way of trying to deal with it and to rationalize the people that have died in the war that either he directly caused or just indirectly witnessed, you know, and hey, they were alive five minutes ago. So if I remember them five minutes ago, they're still alive. So, you know, there's a lot of different levels or layers that you can kind of read into this book. And it's really kind of a terrible topic.

Well, I remember my grandfather talking extensively about how to blow up German, American and French tanks. Okay. A lot on the Western front. Okay. He was a tanker. He drove tanks. He was six feet tall, which was too tall to be a tanker, but he joined up in California and he got put into a tank division being a graduate of eighth grade. But he knew everything about how to blow up other tanks and his own tank and how to avoid getting hit.

And he would talk a lot about it, but he never talked about killing people. Yeah. And so my grandpa was a merchant Marine on Navy ships and he was there at Normandy and he was there offshore of Okinawa. Sure. The only time he ever talked about anything war related was once. And it was, he was, I don't know, a couple of years from death at the time, you know, so he was older and we were all older, you know, the grandkids, it was just me and my two younger brothers there.

And he got fairly drunk at dinner, not, you know, like an appropriate level of drunkenness. You know what I mean? Like somebody gets drunk and they're chatty. Not like the drunken, I'm going to, I don't know, smash this plate and be angry.

But you know, he was always very, very reserved and he would tell us stories about the war, but he'd only tell us about like a dog that they found and they kind of adopted and this monkey that he adopted and then had to give to some other sailor, you know, cause he was done with his tour or something. But the only time he ever talked about like war stuff, you know, like more war stuff was that one night when he got, got a little too drunk at dinner.

And it's just, it's different, you know, it's not something you go, you don't go to war for fame and glory, you know, or if you do, you find out real quick that that's not why anybody's there. I think, you know, sure. So it's kind of, it's one of those book topics where you're not going to go into it thinking it's, I mean, I don't know.

It's like, it's a super heavy topic and for Kurt Vonnegut to be able to write a book about it and to make me laugh out loud, like, and I, so like I read every night before bed and so Sarah's always, you know, just laying there and doing her own stuff. And I just started laughing and she goes, what are you reading now?

And so I showed her the line where Kurt was talking about this other woman and she's like, I can't remember what the, what the, like the full insult was, but it was like, she was a, like, I don't know, a titty flubicus or something. Like it was some, some like super silly made up word, but like just his timing with where that came was hilarious, you know, and it made me laugh like literally out loud.

And I know, you know, the current generation is like, Oh, I laughed out loud and it doesn't mean that they laughed and they say literally a lot, but like, honest to God, I laughed out loud. Probably three, three or four times in the reading of the book about the firebombing of Dresden of all things to be laughing about, but it wasn't actually the firebombing I was laughing about.

But I think just, you know, for Kurt to be able to write a book about that kind of a topic and it's, well, that's a, that's like a theme in war is that there are funny moments and they're funnier because you're doing horrible things. Yes. So that's a, the way I feel about my experience in the oil field a lot of ways.

Yeah. And I think that, and that was one of my, one of my biggest praises of Kurt Vonnegut is he can take a lot of these very serious topics and emotions and feelings that are almost universal to humanity and he can make them funny.

At least in the extent where, you know, it's not like a Saturday night live, like, you know, I'm going to roll on the floor laughing, but like funny in a way where it's like, it's funny because I relate to it or he made me relate to this or, you know, so I think, are you lighting up your second one? I just finished my second one. I opened my second beer here as well. You mean you finished your first one? Oh yes. I finished my second, first one. La la la la la la la la la la la la la.

Word salad out of my mouth. Yeah. So we're going to, yeah. I finished it or I was about an inch and a quarter away from the end at circuit real sour. Yeah. It was like, it's done now. It's done. It was good though. Yeah, it was good. I liked it. That's the great part of all the Rothschild cigar. They are good until the end. And that's like, yeah, awesome. Yep. So now this, this next one's darker. Yes. This is a Maduro wrapper. Same shape, same exact size, same company.

I believe that, you know, I did not look it up. I like the mystery. But usually when these companies come up with a line, they'll do a Maduro in a Connecticut. So I happened to be there at the right time to get the seconds and they're good. That's definitely not something I need to put tequila on to make it taste good. So no, that was a, that was a good smoke. From what I remember, which I've smoked both of these before, I do have an opinion and I will let you know after we smoke it.

Okay. So I've got this one going, trying to gauge any tastes that I'm getting from it. I think I'm getting just the plain like, I don't know if you'd call it the stereotypical Maduro taste. Mine's sweet and dark and harder. This one's much harder. Mine are stored in the same humidor. Yeah, mine were too. Right next to each other. This one does feel tighter packed. I guess. This one's definitely tighter packed than the other one. This is too tight.

Yeah. The other one, the airflow and maybe it was too much airflow and that's why I smoked it so fast. But I mean, the draw through this one is fine. Like it's what I would expect maybe. The draw is great and the taste is actually good too. I get maybe a little fruit. Okay. It's sweet and like not tangy, but fruity. It's good. Yeah. It's good. We'll see as it progresses along the way. Yes. So my grandfather was not so free. I don't know any of the battles he went in.

He didn't even tell us the tank battalion or anything like that he was in. I found all that stuff out later in life as when he died, he left a whole box of medals and patches and all these things he got. And then we could backtrace. You can backtrace based on where he was and he fought the whole way across Europe. He was there until 1945. He joined in 1942 on January 1st or something, like right away. He was there the whole time.

Well I like in the book when Dresden gets firebombed and then later they go back to get their trophies of war. Yes. And then they get accosted or Billy gets accosted by that couple because the horses were bleeding and stuff. But the trophies of war, I don't know if it's really like a thing, but I know it's a thing because I have my grandfather's trophies of war in my basement. Really? Yes. And so I think that everybody probably did it, but I don't think it was a conscious thing.

My grandfather had no trophies of war as far as I know. His trophy was that on one of his breaks, he went on a blind date with my grandmother and came back and married her. Yep. That's what my grandpa did. He was a World War II nurse and on a blind date they met and then they married after it. Okay. So I told you my grandfather was stationed off of Normandy and he was part of the shelling because he was merchant marine so he ran all the guns on the Navy ships.

He didn't run all the guns, but that's what the merchant marines did. They ran the guns on the ships. After they had won Normandy, they all got to go ashore and so he picked up a bunch of stuff and one of the things he picked up was a German rifle and he was walking back onto the ship on the gangplank and the commanding officer ordered him to turn over the rifle to the commanding officer. My grandpa was like, there's no way I was given that asshole.

The rifle I picked up from the battlefield so I threw it in the ocean. Rather than give it to the commanding officer, he threw it in the ocean. But he did bring back an American helmet and a Nazi helmet so I have both of those in my basement. I can't believe I haven't shown you the helmets. Why aren't they on your wall? That's what I want to know. Because it's not socially acceptable to hang a Nazi helmet anywhere really. Yeah, it is. I got my battle helmet on the wall.

You've seen it, haven't you? No. Yeah, I got my old hard hat on the wall. Oh, your hard hat. Down in the little game room area down there. Oh, I get distracted by the Star Trek posters. Yeah. I always see the Star Trek posters. They're posters in frames, just so everybody knows. My house does not have posters on the wall without frames. We don't either. We should have a woman living in the house.

I started putting mine in frames because they were starting to get ratty because move in apartments and stuff. So I just put them in frames and it's easier. Sure. But I got a lot of movie posters that aren't up. We'll just put it that way. I'm putting a lot of my posters on the ceiling of my work room. Okay. My little freezer room. Yeah. Yep. That's where tequila goes. Okay. Perfect. I don't have any cool war stuff. My grandfather, I don't know, like I say, he never told a shit about it.

Yeah. He didn't want to talk about it. My dad was in seven complex. Okay. And he doesn't really want to talk a whole lot about it either. He was always logistics though. So he doesn't have like super duper war fancy stories. It's like, you know, we smoked two cartons of cigarettes a day and put together radios. And I was like, two cartons of cigarettes. He's like, yes, two cartons of cigarettes every single day. I'm like, why the fuck is that?

He's like, well, we were always under bombing, you know? Yeah. It's like, oh, okay. I can see how you can smoke two cartons of cigarettes a day when the cigarettes are free and you're getting bombed. Yeah. So my dad did have a friend that was in the Arab in Saigon. Okay. And he didn't want to talk about it either. Like nobody that I knew who was in these wars want to talk about it.

Yeah. I, you know, and the only reason that we probably ever got anything out of my grandpa is because as kids you're curious, so you ask, but he would never tell other than some of the, like, the, you know, the lighter stories where they found this dog or they, you know, he had a monkey as a pet for a little bit from one of the Pacific islands or wherever.

And the only reason we heard the other story is because he was actually, I don't know if he was, I don't think he was dishonorably discharged, but he had a mark on his record and he was, I guess, reminiscing about that when he, when he had a couple too many beers or drinks that, that one night because his friend wanted to see his discharge papers and his friend noticed that on his discharge papers that he had a, a strike or I don't know what you call it.

And so he told us the whole story and it was pretty wild, but it didn't have a whole lot to do with actual like fighting and killing, you know, it was, it wasn't about that. It was about just, you know, people, I guess, and not, not turning in your friend for doing something not, not anti-American or anti-war, but like just doing something stupid, you know. And so that's what he got in trouble for, for not bringing that immediately to the superior officer. Right. Nothing to do with that.

I know that my grandfather entered in as a 16 year old private and exited a mid-level sergeant. Okay. My father told me that meant that, that meant that he, he must've killed a lot of people. Okay. Yeah. I don't know, I don't know what my grandpa exited as, but I know he started or he enlisted at 16 and he had to have his parents sign off.

Sure. My great aunt signed off for my grandfather and actually talked with his retirement and everything too, because he had the legal birth date and the real birth date. Okay. And the government tried to fight him on it a couple of times when he was receiving benefits as a 80 year old guy, 70 year old guy. Yep. So, which is always fascinating. US government is always so great to their veterans. That is what I've heard. Yeah. So any other thoughts about Slaughterhouse Five?

Well, we're only, I'm not even halfway through the cigar. I never said you were, man. I just thought, you know, I'll tell you this real quick is no matter how many times I read that book, every time he says Billy's story starts with this and ends with Poe to Wheat, I always flip to the back page because it's just satisfying because it does end that way. Yes. Well, it's used as a device when shit gets so ridiculous that there's nothing else to say.

Yeah. Every time there's a bird or a dog bark or it's like, it's above and beyond what can be talked about really. Yep. Did you pick up on the so it goes? Yes. Every time somebody dies or mentions of death. Anything dies. Yes. So it goes. And there's a lot of so it goes. A lot of death. It is a World War II story. Oh, I wanted to talk about Kilgore Trout. Yes. I hated Kilgore Trout. Kilgore Trout makes an appearance in a lot of Kurt Vonnegut's books.

Yes. And Kurt Vonnegut makes a lot of appearances in Kurt Vonnegut books, but only peripherally, right? So when Kurt Vonnegut made appearances in Slaughterhouse Five, he wasn't stealing any show. It was just, I was there. In some of the other books, it's like, and I was sitting there at the same bar or something. He's always just kind of like there. But Kilgore Trout isn't a lot of different things, but why do you dislike Kilgore? He was an unpleasant person.

He spit fish flakes on the woman's titties and he would have followed Billy up to the bathroom when he was having a panic attack. Yeah. Which is what he was having, right? Well, yeah. He had a panic attack and went up, went upstairs and Billy had to tell him to stay downstairs. Yeah. He was freaking out. I just didn't like his, he was like just over the top. Yeah. I didn't care for that. Not subtle. Not subtle like in Minnesota.

No. And then it was funny, he got the attention of that one woman at the party and was telling her all about this book that he hadn't even written yet. Oh yeah, he was telling her straight lies and she was believing it. Yeah. Interesting character in a novel, but there's too many people that really like that. I love the bit when Billy goes to the sex shop, right? But the only reason he goes to the sex shop is because they have Kilgurr Trout novels in the window dressing. Yes. Remember?

And they're like, hey, hey, all the stuff you want is in the back. And he goes, no, I just want the Kilgurr Trout novel. I haven't read this one yet. And he gets into this whole, like it's a whole thing. Like he's in this whole almost like altercation with the Smut Shop owners because he was convinced he hadn't read this Kilgurr Trout novel yet and he bought it and brings it home. And he's like, oh, I had read that one.

He definitely saw a picture of a donkey fucking a woman in front of a curtain with Doric columns on the sides. And it was the same one. He had to have seen it. Yeah. It was the same one from his war buddy. Remember? I think Kurt Vonnegut had to have seen it. Yeah, no, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The same one from the war buddy. Yeah. I never looked up to see if it was real. But they showed Billy that in the Smut Shop and that was the same one that his war buddy showed him. It was the same photo.

I did follow that. Second time reading through, of course. Or listening. Yes. I'm listening. I'm not reading. Which does make a huge difference, of course. Yeah. It's like I said, there's layers and layers. I wanted to listen to it a third time because I bet I would pick up on more layers.

Yeah. It's kind of like a literature class in college where they have you read it through once, you take your notes, and you read it through it twice, you take your notes, you read it through three times, and you take your notes. Yeah. You pick up on different layers of the story every single time you read it because you already know the base layer before you go through the second time, the third time. Oh, yeah.

I would say rather than... And I'm not going to dissuade you from listening to it a third time, but I would say go for something else by Kurt. Go for like Cat's Cradle or something. Every time I hear Cat's Cradle, I think of the song. Yeah. But read or listen to just anything other by Kurt Vonnegut than Slaughterhouse-Five. And I think by exposing yourself to more Kurt Vonnegut novels, you will get a better understanding of Kurt Vonnegut or of his style.

And then after you've listened to one or two others by him, then go back and listen to Slaughterhouse-Five again. Sure. Because there's a reason that Slaughterhouse-Five is maybe his most well-known novel or the one that most people think of when they think of Kurt Vonnegut. I mean, it's a great novel. But I think if that's the only Kurt Vonnegut book you read or are exposed to, there's so much more to Kurt Vonnegut in a lot of his other stories.

And he's got... And like I said at the beginning, I wish I could remember which books all of these things are from, but there's one whole book that's based on Bokanism. Okay. And it's a made up religion that he made where the people who started the religion had no families and they decided that everybody is their family. And that's kind of like, I mean, it's very, very service level, but that's their whole thing is like, everybody's my family.

And so you've got all these different religious ceremonies and things, but it's all to do with everybody's my family and I can make my own family kind of thing. And then he's got one where it's the Church of Jesus Christ the Missing. So they don't believe that Jesus Christ was crucified and died. They just believe that he got lost. And so they're looking under dinner plates, behind curtains. They're always looking for Jesus. I think I'd like that one or at least test it out.

And then there's one all about Ice Nine. And this is like the world's most dangerous compound. It turns everything to ice, like everything, every living thing. And the whole novel revolves around the threat of this Ice Nine being released. But it's told in Kurt Vonnegut style. So everything's hilarious and sad. You don't know if you should be laughing or crying. But I think if you, and this is for anybody who's never been exposed to Kurt Vonnegut, is read one of his books, read it twice.

But before you read it a third time, read some of his other stuff and get a feel for, I don't know, his worldview maybe. I mean, maybe that's what it is. But he's one of those ones where if you enjoy one of his books, you're going to enjoy the rest of them. Right. It's like Kurt Vonnegut. It's like George Orwell. Similar theme. For sure. Very different settings, but very similar ideals he's striving for, I guess. Yes. Similar vein, similar or different.

I am halfway through my cigar and it's good. It's still fruity. As well. Yeah. I don't know. I'm trying to decide if I like this one better than the other one. It's very good. Different, but it's good. Yeah, it is a bit different, but I think we like that. This one is definitely darker, but it's got layers of flavor. It does. It's not peppery and it's not spicy. And that's a good thing. Yeah. It's just kind of sweet and fruity, but dark. Yep. It's got that undertone.

Yes. Which, again, one of the themes of our show here is a lot of times if you can get a cheaper cigar that's good, they are typically very good. And this is very good. Yeah. This is very good. And I think that's true. Like we talked about it last episode where we're not smoking the top of the line stuff. The most expensive things. No. We're trying a lot. A lot of different things. We like to sometimes take a gamble on something that could either be great or terrible. Right.

And this is low tier. One of the cheaper cigars we've ever smoked for sure. Yeah. I think I got these for two, maybe $3 a piece. Okay. That's even cheaper than the Ben Maduros we smoked. Yes, it is a lot cheaper. Half the size as well. Yeah. But this one has the flavor. Whereas the Ben Maduro, I don't want to say it was like the blandest thing that I've ever smoked, but it was pretty bland. I would never smoke them without a topping. Without tequila. Yeah. Yeah, basically.

With tequila, it's fine. And we smoked two of them and both of them were good with tequila. Oh yeah. Well, we smoked three of them a piece. Yeah. One without and two with. One without and two with. So there's your testimonial for tequila cigars. And one with vodka. And the vodka was not the ticket. No, don't do that. Don't do that. As tempted as you might be to do that, we can't recommend that. There's something about the tequila. It's got that spice to it naturally.

Yeah. Yeah. That really raises the profile. Yes. It brings, it enhances the flavors, I think. I think so too. Yeah. Kind of blends well. I want to try a Connecticut tequila cigar. We could try something. We had to find a cheap one that was a Connecticut. Yeah. Don't they do Connecticut bin cigars? I'm sure. They can't just do Maduros, can they? No, they don't. I mean, obviously they're going to have Connecticut's. They're not as common because the Maduros are more popular overall.

Okay. Makes sense. Well, I'm excited that you liked Slaughterhouse Five. Yeah, like I say, upon second listening, it was more interesting because I knew the baseline of where it was going to go. Yeah. You weren't so focused on what's going to happen next. Right. You could read a little more into everything.

See, and I even thought that maybe the whole Trafalgador journey was based on his like... I did agree that it was like the drug-addled mind of a person who was in a horrible crash who had PTSD. Yeah. Like I could see that being the underlying cause. This was that way. Yeah. With flashbacks. He was clearly... I mean, like you say, it's like flashback, flashback, flashback. It depends on how you want to look at it. Yeah. But he also did flash forwards. Yeah. Oh yeah.

In the very beginning of the book too. So it's very interesting. And I guess it's kind of like up to your interpretation as the reader or listener. Well, I don't know if he noticed, but at the beginning he never said, oh, it'll be fine. It's only to the middle of the book where he started to get this attitude of like, I've already seen what's happening. It'll be great. Yeah. Until the very end where he was totally confident. Yes. That it'll be fine. Yep. So it's interesting.

Not a page turner in the same way that Game of Thrones would be, I guess. I've never actually read it or even watched a show of Game of Thrones, but it's good. Well, so I've read the first three books and then I quit because I couldn't stand it anymore. I will say this, the first book was great, but I don't like George R.R. Martin's writing style. Okay. And I actually looked up why.

And it's because that he, I don't remember what the term is, but what he does is he creates the characters and then the characters basically have to live out their story. So he doesn't really know how things are going to end. Right? So he creates all these characters and puts them together and then he writes it true to how those characters would actually behave in those circumstances, which on paper sounds great.

But when you get into even the second book and he's killing everybody, like everybody fucking dies. And then by the third book, all the people that he introduced in the second book are all dead. And then it's like, well, none of the characters that I like are still alive. And now you're introducing even more characters in the third book. And I just, I don't have the energy to learn all of these new characters, three or four books in. And I know you're going to kill these ones too.

So what am I invested in? I don't really care about the land that you've created. Like I don't care who ends up being the ultimate ruler of this shit pile that you've created. And some people like that and that's fine, you know, but there's not like one, I mean, there's a couple of characters that live throughout, but they're like minor characters and then they like disappear. And then you're like invested in other characters.

And then like two books later, they kind of come back and you're like, well, and then other characters disappear for a long time. And what I read was that there was actually supposed to be like a five year gap. Like we're talking five years, a five year gap between two of the books. And the reason there's so many books is because George R.R. Martin couldn't jump five years ahead in the lives of these characters without actually writing their five year life story.

Because he couldn't foresee that because he only wrote the characters. And so it gets kind of monotonous and like everybody fucking dies. So it's not like Lord of the Rings, you know, and when I read the first book, I'm like, oh my God, this is like Lord of the Rings for like adults because there's like killing and there's like sex and there's intrigue and you know, like there's all this stuff.

But then it's like everybody's dying all the time and you get all these new characters so that you're not really following one character throughout. There's not like one protagonist. And I think if he had a different writing style, you could do that same thing and you could kill a lot of people and you could like get your reader off balance. Is this guy really the bad guy? Is this guy the good guy? But it takes so long because he's only writing the characters.

He doesn't really have an end in sight. He doesn't know how it ends yet because he hasn't written it. And that's why the TV show, the last couple of seasons were so bad because they went beyond the books and the writers looked at the end of what the viewer wanted and then they backtracked to make that happen for the viewer. So it felt contrived because it was and it was completely against George RR's writing style.

Sure. So it felt disingenuous to his style of writing, which will pull you right out of the world. And that's why the last couple of seasons were bad is what I read. And I haven't watched it, but I don't care because I can't. Like there's just, it's too much. It's almost like trying to watch a modern Marvel movie because you have to watch all of the other stuff now.

Like before I liked Marvel movies because you could get into it at any point and it didn't matter, but now they did the big Thanos thing, right? And they wiped out half the planet and they came back like five years later, but they didn't age. And so now every Marvel movie has to like reference that incident within the timeline. And so you have to kind of like, you're always kind of like reminded that there's 20 other movies leading up to this one movie.

So they kind of shifted from where all their movies were accessible to anybody. And now they're only accessible to those people that are watching every single Marvel movie. Yeah. I stopped watching superhero movies a long time ago. Yeah. So I'm just not, I'm not interested. Yeah. I mean, so that's my thought on Game of Thrones anyways.

Like it's, it's, there's too many characters and it's, it's kind of mundane, even though exciting things happen, but like he has to write every single characters, like every single day out and he might not include it in the book, but like, you can just, you kind of can tell that like he's writing all of this stuff out and it gets kind of like, well, okay.

So this character forgot to brush their hair this one morning and that leads to this and then the other thing, because that's out of character for them, but that's what happened that morning. So now we're going down this path. There's going to be a lot of Game of Thrones post humanists or post death reading is what you're saying. His estate is going to be probably posting a lot of this. I mean, if he's actually physically running it out genuinely, yeah.

And I don't know for sure how much he actually is, but yeah, you could get like the daily journals of character A, character B, character double C or whatever it is, you know? And now they've got the prequel out leading up to it. And I don't think he wrote any prequel stuff. So this is just like, he sold the rights and now they're doing a prequel and they're doing the Lord of the Rings prequel too, I guess. So two episodes are out right now. I haven't watched it yet. No, I'm not going to either.

I don't know. I probably won't. I'll just wait and see how the reviews are. I'm not going to watch it base. I don't care. I don't want to. I don't really care either. And I think part of the reason is because they've been milking and mining these franchises to exploitation levels that I don't have any faith in the modern filmmaker to take these franchises that have built themselves up on their own and then just milk them for that one more drop.

Yeah. Lance Epplin used to write songs about Lord of the Rings. And if it's not that good, then I'm not interested because it was amazing at one time. I just don't care. I didn't watch the last Harry Potter movie either. Not Harry Potter, what the hell was it called? Wild Beasts or whatever the fuck. Oh yeah, that stuff. Yeah, I watched the first two, The Tales of Grindelwald or Fantastic Beasts. Yeah, well they're all fantastic. You drop the main actor and now we're going to continue to watch.

I fuck that. I'm done with it. Yeah. And those are all like those Fantastic Beasts. It's like what? There's three or four of them, but they're all like prequels and they're not really based on the books. They're just based on whatever. They're just filling out little tidbits from the books. So I think we watched the first one and we really didn't like the first one. All the Harry Potter movies, like the full on Harry Potter movies, they're good. They're all good. I didn't like the sixth one.

The Half-Blood Prince, I did not think did justice to the book. As a reader of the books, I didn't like it. It wasn't because it was a bad movie. I can't see it as a movie because I've read the book. And here's the thing is I like the ending of the movie franchise better than the ending of the books. Really? Because in the books, Harry Potter is like some kind of lame ass accountant and not the greatest wizard that ever lived. He was a mid-level order. Whatever. He was a bureaucrat.

Yes. In the movies, he's just bringing his kid to the platform and that's it. We don't need to know what he's doing. That's the best ending. I don't need to know that he's living a depressing life as a bureaucrat. He's living a life just like us, man. Mid-level nuns. Mid-level nobodies. I know, but I don't want that for my fantasy protagonist. That's not what he needs to be. I liked it just fine. I liked it all until that last chapter when they told us what he was.

And then I was like, this is the worst. The literal worst. But he was banging the super hot redheaded skank from the whole Weasley universe, right? Yeah, whatever. If that's the price for that, count me out. Okay. So, anyway, sometimes they do good stuff, but I don't know. See, no, I'm done with my cigar. Yeah, I'm at an inch. So an inch, it's starting to get a little toasty, but not sour. The flavor is good. Yeah, this one is still good.

Of course, the other one got a little sour at the end there, but... It did. This was so good. So what were your thoughts that you wanted to wait and tell me about? Because I liked both of these. It's tough. I think I would probably... I don't know. I liked the change of intensity of the Connecticut wrapper better, but I think this Maduro is better all the way through. I would agree. I had smoked both of these before, and I thought the Connecticut was so-so. Yeah. It was fun.

And the Maduro was also fine. Yeah. But smoking them back to back, if you had to choose... Smoking them back to back, I would choose the Maduro. The Connecticut was good, but the Maduro was better, I think. Marginally so. Marginally so. But it was better. Yeah. Like you say, they're not anything I'd write home about. They're good, but they're not intensely good. It's not something that I would be like, try this. This is really good. It's good enough.

Yeah. So we're about 80 minutes in on this podcast. For a 40 minute cigar, they're both fine. Yeah. They're not bad. Not bad. I don't think you'd smoke one and say, man, I'd never smoke that again. Not anything where it's not mind blowing like the Rocky Patel Fumas. Right. Right. But these ones are just fine. It's not a Moon Trance. It's not a Rocky Patel Fuma. No. It's not Edge Connecticut. The Edge Connecticut's are very good. Yes. Any Edge Connecticut is going to be good.

Yep. But if you want a cheap 40 minute cigar, can't go wrong, I don't think with these. No, that's good. Do you think I'm too positive about all the cigars you smoke? No, I don't think so. Except for that. Most of them are decent. You mean that stupid fucking Blood Red Moon one? That was, I keep them in the box and that's going to be like the Frank cigar, I think. Okay, perfect. That's how bad it is. Give it to the uncle you don't like. Oh my god, it's awful. Maybe one of them would be good.

It's almost like they had like a dead animal in one of them. It's awful. Yeah, they ground up a mouse with the leaves. This putrid, terrible. I'd rather smoke a shrew than one of these. One of these ones that we just smoked? Yeah, I would. I'd rather smoke a shrew. And they're good. Oh yeah. We haven't smoked one on the show yet. What should we do? Yeah, we're going to do a big shrew showdown. Yeah, we have to, that'll be a while away. We're coordinating. We got to coordinate.

Several brands together. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, this is better than a Backwoods or a cigar you'd get at a gas station. Yes. And they're flavorful and good. And these are better than a Bin Maduro, or at least the ones we got. Yeah. Oh yeah. But the Bin Maduro, a lot of Bin cigars are trash and these are not trash. They're good, but. Yeah, these are decent. These are decent, you know? Yeah. I think the only one that I'd really ever say no to is the Blood Red Moon.

I don't think I could smoke another one. Oh, that. Several of the CEO flavors were terrible. Yeah, but not quite as bad as the Blood Red Moon. No. But you know. The Blood Red Moon was awful. The Bella Vanilla was really bad too. Yeah. That one was bad. The other ones I could probably do. I was out of the moon trance. They don't really have anything going on there. I don't know why they make any of the other ones.

No. You know, but the other ones, like, if somebody had one and was like, hey, would you smoke one with me? I probably would as long as it wasn't the Bella Vanilla. Yeah. But. That's true. Because the Irish Dream was OK. It was fine. It was fine. Like, whatever. But these were good. They weren't like, I don't know. They were just good. Yeah, it was fine. Just good is good enough, though, for 250 a stick or whatever. Yeah, and it depends on. I think I got them for $20 a bundle.

OK. Something like that. For like 10. I think I paid $2 even plus tax. OK. So they're good enough for that, for sure. Well, yeah. And it all depends on when you're smoking, where you're smoking, who you're smoking with. Right. Yeah. It's great on a lawn mower. Oh, yeah. Sometimes and not too shabby on a podcast either. So no, you go. Very good. As far as that goes. Anyway, I think that's about it for the night. That's it. Thanks for listening.