Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. I'm Nate and we've got our guest, Dev, on board with us today. What are we smoking, Mike? We are smoking a Buffalo Trace cigar. Does this have any correlation or relation to the whiskey? It is. They came out with the cigar as a memorial for the company. I thought it was for the poor bison on the wrapper there. The memorial for the bison. I'm not sure if it's taste, I don't know a whole lot about it. We got it, you know more about it than I do.
Yeah, I think I got like a five pack of it from PipesandCigars.com, not a sponsor, and gave you a couple. We're going to try to explain this on air, this cigar, and Mike you give input because Dev hasn't smoked a whole lot of cigars. He smoked some. Yeah, I smoked a fair amount of cigars when I played golf on the regular, probably about 20 some years ago. So it really has been a while since I've imbibed. And Dev's 32 for our listeners. That's his age.
So looking at this cigar, if we hold it so that we can read the wrapper, on the very bottom it's got a green bit of ribbon, and then about, I don't know, five sixteenths of the way up, whatever that is. It's probably more like what, nine sixteenths, ten sixteenths of the way up? I'd say nine. Nine. So you've got the buffalo trace, it's a little mini wrapper, and then it's got a big buffalo head wrapper closer to the end that you stick in your mouth.
And correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, but we want to take the green one off, because that's where we like it. You have to take the green one off, yes. And then you leave the other two on until... I was going to make that assumption. Okay. Until it sticks once up a bit. Go ahead. And what I do, and what I typically do, Mike, and this is probably wrong because I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is. I usually just take all the wrappers off, and then I light that thing and just do it. I do not.
I leave the banding on until the cigar heats up enough and the glue loosens. Okay, that's what I was thinking. And then it'll come right off. Once the glue loosens, it'll come right off, no problem. Okay. Because it's always been so tight, I always just spit on it, and then it just slides right off. I'm fucking with everybody. Oh my God. That's a sex joke. All right. I get it. Okay. I like it. Dev's got it. All right. And then, Mike, so this is what I do, and I've seen you do both.
I've seen you do both. I usually just stick the uncut end, the foreskin as it were, of the cigar, into my mouth to moisten it a bit before I cut it so that I get less split wrapper or whatever. Yes. And sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. So what's the best here for Dev to try? I would tell him to lip it. I lip this one when I cut it. Okay. Just moisten it a bit? It all depends. I look at the cigar and I see how moist the wrapper is, and if I think it's moist enough, I won't.
I'll just cut it. I won't actually get it wet. Yeah. I usually wet mine. I'll wet all of mine. I mean, seriously, honestly. Not really a sex joke thing. All right. Here goes. I'm assuming that you guys are doing the straight cut and not a cross cut. Yeah. We're doing the straight cut. I'm going to let Dev do his own straight cut. One hole is bigger, so stick the big end in that part. No. Okay. Sorry. Ah. And then right there is the no-no zone.
So anything you want circumcised goes in the no-no zone. And how? Yep. Just stick it in, hold the pressure back, and snip. It's sharp. There you go. And then dump that in the ash tray. There you go. And then this has a mirror on the lid, and you just hold it, and you light it, and you rotate it as you light it, and inhale. Gotcha. But not into the lungs. Right. Just hold it in the mouth. And if Mike has any other tips for lighting, you want to kind of rotate it a bit.
Rotate the cigar, and make sure you get even flame, and rotate it until it's 100% lit around it. Then you're good to go. There's a mirror on there, so you can kind of see the mirror in there. So when you puff, it all should be red. Now Mike, have you smoked this one before? I have not. This is the first time for me. Like I say, I have no idea what to expect. Whether it's got a whiskey casing, it does not taste like it has a whiskey casing to it. It just tastes like a standard Maduro cigar.
Yeah, and I've smoked this one before. So this is the rare, rare instance. This is history in the making, where I've smoked a cigar Mike hasn't. Interesting. What are your initial thoughts, Dev? It's smoky. It's got a slightly bitter taste on my lips. Enjoyable on the first couple. Yeah, I guess I do get a peppery, but I also do get a slight bitterness. And I taste a little bit of the pepper. Most cigars are a little bitter at the very get-go, especially with this wrapper. Darkness, so.
I don't get the bitterness anymore because it is bitter, now that you say it, but I get more pepper out of it than anything else. I also should warn you that I smoked a Rocky Patel Edge earlier today, so it is Labor Day for the listeners. We have been forewarned. I was at a Labor Day party. I didn't make you call it early, did I? No. You were already on the road when I called you. I had been texting Mike all day about, hey, we're going to smoke this cigar, and Dev's on board finally.
We're going to get to talk to Dev, because Desmond wanted to do this for a little bit of time. Indeed. And it was time to start the podcast, and there was no Mike, no Mike, and Dev and I were sitting here. And so I decided to give Mike a call, which is something my generation almost never does. So I'm sure Mike was worried that I was dead in a ditch somewhere. So sorry to give you a heart attack, Mike. But then he was driving, and I'm like, well, are we not doing the podcast then?
But here we are. So have it be known that speed laws do not count if you're late for a podcast. So let's get to know Dev a little bit. Dev kind of wanted to do a cold open, where he didn't want to get to know either one of us very well before hopping on the podcast. A little bit. I thought it might be kind of interesting to just sort of jump right into it and have it be as sort of natural and organic as possible.
We're just three guys on the golf course that happen to be looking for our ball in the same set of weeds, because that's how I golf. I do too. I tend to slice it quite a bit. Do you really? It's funny. I golfed a lot when I was younger. I was doing massage therapy, and I was just getting into it and had my own practice, and it was slow, and I sort of had my own schedule. So my brother-in-law had a super open schedule too, and so we golfed probably three times a week. And yeah.
So where was I going again? You're just talking about your slicing. But I do want to say that I agree with all of Dev's initial impressions of the cigar, but I'm getting a little faint sweetness coming from it. There is sweetness. Now that I'm a few puffs in. Yeah. Very peppery. I'm getting a lot of peppery. I thought we were going to talk about your wife, Mike. A dark sweetness with some pepper. A dark sweetness with some pepper. What can I say? I like them black and bitter.
Nice. That's just the souls though. Well, we never described her physically, so she can be black and bitter and dark and sweet and peppery on the spots. Yes. If that makes you subscribe to our podcast, then that's what she is. I think I was saying I had a lot of free time on my hands, and that's when I was golfing, and then I had three kids, and priorities change, and you just don't have enough time anymore. The golf course was when I smoked cigars, so I just stopped indulging, I guess, in that.
I stopped... Actually, I smoked cigarettes back then too. When I turned 40, I quit smoking cigarettes. It was like, okay, well, I'm going to be 40. It was right when they were trying to get funding for the new Viking Stadium, and so they decided to jack the prices of cigarettes up another $2. I'm like, okay, well, this is a perfect time to just stop smoking. After that, I was like, okay, I'm not smoking cigarettes, so I guess I'm not smoking anything. There you have it.
Now I'm 49. 32, he means, 32. 32, yes. That's what I meant. 49 is the new 32. Yep. Why shouldn't it be? Why not? How I know Dev is we were at the same rave, and he had the same color glow bracelet that I had. We were the only two with the pink glow bracelets, which is weird because you would think that pink is a popular color at raves, but apparently not. Is he also seven feet tall? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, when he's fully erect, yes. No, there we go.
No, Dev and I are neighbors, but we've since become more than that. So bad, dude. This is our coming out story. I'm just kidding. But no, so the other, well, Saturday, I was building a workbench with my other buddy, and we needed some socket adapters because we had power drills, but they only had the small socket adapter. And we had these big fucking leg screws that we had to sink in, and we tried it with just the socket handle, and it sucked ass.
So we're like, absolutely not, we're not doing this manually. We got to figure out what adapter we need. And Dev does a lot of work on cars and things. And I just figured he would have them because I saw his two, I've seen his two, you got two rolling toolboxes in the garage, don't you? Sort of, they're not rolling, but. Well, yeah. If you hit them hard enough, they'll roll. They'll roll. Yeah. So he had the adapters we needed, so he saved the day, but we keep very friendly relations to you.
You're talking like a three quarter to a quarter inch impact adapter? Like a half inch or something. Yeah. It was like a half inch that you can sink right into your drill. So it's got that hex head on it. Yeah. Sure. But we were, what was it? It was national night out. So it was a couple of months ago, a month ago. Yep. We've known each other for 42 years. You know what? Time is so weird ever since the pandemic, I think.
Like I can't, I don't know what, when it is or how long it's been since something. But maybe that's just getting older because it feels like 2000 was like 10 years ago, but it was 22 years ago. I agree with both of your statements. I agree with both of your statements there because I think that the pandemic sped up a lot of people's dissatisfaction with their lives. They had a lot of reassessing. Everybody did. I feel called out. What are you doing? No. What's going on here?
Are we- No, no. I'm laying down on my sofa. I think a lot of people reassess their careers and they reassess their relationships. You know, there's like a big- Absolutely. There's a huge turnover in the workforce right now and I think a lot of people just kind of reassess what they find important in life. And a huge increase in monkeypox. So what's that tell you? Well, we already talked about that. Well, do you remember that whole killer bee thing that kind of like- Yeah.
I wish that would have been bigger. Like I'd love to come out with like an electronic racket to kill killer bees, but instead of we got COVID. I mean, what was that? Was that just a distraction? I mean, I'm sure that's what it was. Well, the killer bee thing- Yeah. They hybridized European with African bees because the European bee population was doing really poorly in South America and they started spreading North and they thought that they would just continue to spread North forever.
But then they hit winter time and then all the bees died. Because they Africanized European bees so that the European bees would be more adaptable to the summer times in South America and it made them more aggressive. But then they couldn't handle winter and so they all died off in like Mexico and they never made it up here. Wow. I do know about that because I know two guys that are beekeepers. So yeah, I have two friends that are beekeepers. Did it create concern for them? Were they worried?
Yes, because if you get one of those bees into your hives, they'll interbreed with the local population and then the bees have become more aggressive towards the beekeepers and stuff too. They are more aggressive, but they can't handle winter. But they never made it this far North, right? Like you said they- No, never. Okay. They made it into like Arizona, but then they had a couple cold years and they all died off. At least here.
Down in like Central and South America, they still have that problem, but not in the states right now. I got stung by a bee today, of all things. That's right. Yeah. Right in between, right on my forefinger, like right down by the base. It was not fun, but good news, I'm not allergic, so I'm not the size of like an overripe tomato. It's crazy how painful a bee sting can be. It's not right. It's not right how painful it is. Yeah. It's, yeah.
They always seem to get you on like just the right spot. A sensitive body part. Like right where you don't want a bee sting, which incidentally is my entire body. So they always get me there. But no, as a way of more of an introduction to Davin, what we want to try and talk about and what he was super jacked up about talking about is we were talking to National Night Out because the cops were here and I was trying to get him to tase his wife because she was splittering on my lawn.
Just friendly neighborhood stuff. Yeah. Just rappers. But they were threatening to tase me and then we were kind of talking after, after party hours about how like I've never been in a physical altercation, like a fight, right? Yeah, like a legit fight. Yeah, and have you been in one? So I was thinking about that and I had a couple interactions when I was a teenager with kids that were bullying me, so to speak, I guess.
There was a time when this, I was just getting harassed by this kid and there really was no basis for it other than he didn't like the way I looked. Which is awesome, by the way. How I look or it's awesome that he didn't like it. No, that's how you look. You look awesome. Thanks, man. So people, of course, are going to be jealous about that. So I had come from another school.
It was like the beginning of like the skater days and I had like long bangs and sort of a side spike on the side of my head. So that was kind of a cool look where I was coming from and I came to this new school and sort of being harassed. But anyway, this one boy was calling me names and I never was one to just put up with it and just take it. So he asked me if I wanted to fight. He's like, you want to fight? Okay. I'd never been in a fight before.
So he said he wanted to meet at Kordiak Park at five o'clock. And God, what grade I was in. Seventh grade, I think. And so right before dinner, I asked my brother who was six years younger than me. So he was just a kid. I'm like, hey, I'm going to get in a fight. Do you want to come with me? So I show up with my kid brother and this guy has another guy with him.
And it was just one of those things where he was just kind of, we were just talking shit back and forth and there was like some shoving going on, just shoving back and forth. I don't know if you've experienced this or seen it. It's like, I've seen some sort of this weird thing where like pretty lame fights, but you throw the first punch. No, you throw the first punch. It was like, okay, this is stupid. Like I guess if we're doing this, I'm going for it.
So I just socked him in the gut and he didn't even fight back. And he just sort of like doubled over a little bit and he was like, hey, we're cool, man. We're cool. And he like shook my hand and it was really bizarre and he never bothered me again. But that was, I mean, that was the first sort of thing. There's others, but obviously I'd like to get, find out if, if we know Nate has never been, how about you, Mike? I have been in a few physical altercations.
And that shoving thing is usually where they, where they stop depending on who you're with. Yeah. So just like, it's not really like even like an honor thing, but my, my friend in middle school was getting picked on by this kid that was held back like, I don't know, two or three years, right? So it wasn't his first year being held back. And I'm quite tall now, but I didn't really spring up until high school and he was picking on my friend.
And so after class one day, I pinned him up against the wall and you know, he's like a foot taller than I am because he's, you know, three years older than I am. And I told him to leave my buddy alone. And then we became best friends. Like the three of us all became best friends, but there was no like punching or anything. It was just like push them against the wall. And that was kind of it, you know?
And so like Dev and I were talking, like, is it weird that as educated and logical and rational men that there's some part of us that still wants to get into a fight? Not like, you know, hiding rolls of quarters in your, in your boxing gloves kind of fight, like not dirty fighting, but just like almost like fight club. Like I don't, I don't want to like lose an eye. I don't want to necessarily spit out teeth, but you know.
But just sort of like establishing yourself as like the animalistic side of a man, you know, you know, with just a deep core feeling of having to sort of either establish yourself or defend yourself or defend somebody around you in a physical way. And we've, we got to talk and thought that was really an interesting concept because okay, ideally it's in you sort of to need to defend and fight. So yeah, I mean.
Ideally you'd want to win, but like even to some extent, like even if you got into a fight and you're like, Hey, I'm still standing. Like I was able to take a beating, you know, like, I mean the first Rocky movie, like, you know, Adrian, like I did it. Like even that to some extent is like enough.
I don't want to go and like just fight a random person because what if they're packing or you got knives or, you know, what is there some like jujitsu master or something, but there's some kind of like weird evolutionary thing. I think. I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that you guys are educated gentlemen where violence was not a routine part of your lives. Right. Because I never grew, I did not grow up in a violent area.
Nate knows where I grew up, but I lived in a violent world being like a traveling person and fighting is, is violent and it is ugly. And somebody will turn your head into a fucking canoe. So you definitely want to avoid confrontation if you can. And in my, at least in my experience, I got into one physical fight where it was like the stand up punch, punch fight happened to be in the middle of a road over something very dumb.
And I've been sucker punched a few times and those always ended with me grabbing them and then like immediately back and down because they didn't want to get hurt. Cause once I'm a big guy, Deb doesn't know who I am, but I'm a big strong guy and I got really strong hands. So once I got my hands on them, they knew that I could really, really hurt them. If I want, I mean, I showed him your only fans, so he kind of knew. I am the man with the 10 inch cock. Yeah. Well, I will be subscribing.
Yes. Yes. But in my experience, fights are usually extremely violent and they're not very gentlemanly and they're either quick or they're, it leads to ultra violence very quickly. Well I actually went to school with a guy that got shot in the head in a fight when we were in trade school. Wow. See, and that's, is he okay? Yeah. Yeah. He's not okay. That's when it becomes not, yeah. I mean, that's when it becomes not, you're not fighting anymore. You're just, yeah.
And so like, and that's kind of what we were talking about. There's a distinction between like, we've got this evolutionary need as males to kind of like set a, set a pecking order almost, you know, or to like prove yourself or whatever it is. And maybe that's why people get into like extreme sports. We don't necessarily want to go and like kill somebody else or we don't want to be killed, you know?
Maybe that's why Fight Club is such a great movie because like you have to go and buy these things that they all match the other things that you already have. And really men are more, you know, historically antiquity speaking, men have been the hunters and women have been the gatherers. And we're kind of now we don't get to hunt things and we don't get to go and do, you know, like the manly things that evolution has trained us to do.
And so that's why people get really like super upset about their sports team or something. Like I don't know. I mean, but there's gotta be, there's gotta be like a healthy outlet and maybe that's where like the Fight Club comes in, you know? I think Fight Club, I love the movie and I love the book. It was great, but it's just not realistic. People are, when it comes down to, when you start fighting, it gets, whoever is going to lose. How the rules go out the window. It becomes violent.
Like in an instant. The violence rolls up and wraps up and wraps up. And the first person to take it to the true, like I'm going to kill you violence is always the winner. You know? Well, and it's always that way. Here's the other thing is in a fight, if it's a real fight and is knuckles to knuckles, and I mean, it's obviously more than knuckles to knuckles, but like you don't know what the other person is capable of or what they, where they're willing to take it.
So it's so intense that if you're in a fight, it's, it's on and anything goes. Am I right? Like, um, I mean, okay. I've got a clear shot of this dude's nuts right now. Should I, should I go for it? You know what I mean? Like, cause there's always that thing like, Oh yeah, you don't go for nuts. You go to the nuts or to the back of the head or the side of the head. If they don't go down now, you're fucked because they know it's on and it's going to be extremely violent.
And now you have to either give up or you have to take it up a notch from there, you know? And usually guy doesn't go down from a shot to the nuts in a fight. Use your testosterone is up here. That's adrenaline is up. Like everything is your ramped into it. It doesn't hurt until later, you know, physically hurt until after the fact. It's not a movie, right? Yeah. But I mean, we talked about this too.
When we were, when we were chatting about this, you know, like a month ago is, you know, logically, right? Like logically, if, if you know anything about fighting, even just from textbook, I mean, you know, you know, the, the weak spots, right? So even if you've never been in a fight, you know, where to focus your energy and effort if you want to end the fight instantly or as close to instantly as you can, right?
Like you know, the places to go for, we're not going to mention them here because we don't promote fighting and violence and you should love everybody and be a rational human being in that, you know, uncaged apes, like, like us here on the podcast, but you know, like rationally or logically, you know, where is going to end the fight the quickest for you on your opponent. But that's not the point of like getting into a fight.
Like just because you can outsmart them doesn't mean, you know, I mean, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's weird. It's like sick almost. Like I just want to go and go, I just want to be rocky. I want to go like 18 rounds with Apollo Creed and, but not have, not to have my eyelid like razor blade opened. Like that would be okay if that didn't happen to me in my life. Sure. Most fights start with somebody hitting you in the back of the head when you're sitting down.
Yeah. But I mean like, you know, like is it wrong to want like an honorable, like almost duel where it's like, there's people there that will stop it if, if the other person gets out of hand or if you get out of hand. I think the other thing too is like, if you've never been in a fight, you don't know what you're capable of either. You know, like I've got two younger brothers and I'm capable of some really fucked up shit. Not even like fight wise, but just like, you know, to win.
So there's also that. And so some of it is like knowing your limits and what you're capable of, or like knowing those kind of like dark things about you that you'd rather not get out. So when you say you don't know what the other person's capable of, I mean, you don't also, you also don't know what you're capable of sometimes. And that can be equally frightening. It can be. So did it, did it ever get pretty knocked down, dragged out with your siblings then?
I mean, I know siblings can be pretty ruthless with each other, but super ruthless. I hope, I mean, I don't know if my brother's listening to the podcast. I mean, I hope it didn't get that way. I hope it was just normal stuff, but like we had kind of like an angry household. And so we didn't really have good ways to manage our anger as kids. We've all kind of gotten our new ways of, or like our adult ways of moving beyond that anger and that super testosterone stuff.
But you know, like I'm happy to not be that angry all the time, like super happy, but I still want to get into a fight. I mean, not like, you know, not like a life threatening fight or like I got to get my copay has to go up on my insurance kind of fight. But just, just, just to urge that sort of in the back of your mind, because it's never happened before.
And so you don't like, you feel like you're kind of maybe missing out on something or missing out on something that you're not missing out on anything. I assure you. Well, I know. And I know it's dumb and stupid. It's like the stupidest thing ever. Like, they don't want to get into a fight. I can tell you, if you were to get sucker punched in a bar and you got into a fight and it happened a couple of times, your immediate response is like, Nate, see me, I'm a big guy.
I'm going to get them on the ground to get on top. They, they're going to give up because they know they've lost. You're on top of them. Yeah. Like that's, it's not, you're just standing up and fighting. Like if you're the bigger, stronger guy, or if you're big enough, you flip them, you get on top of them, get them on the ground. And then you can fucking start hitting them with your arm. Yeah. Used to, I mean, you don't even hit them with your fist. You just hit them with your arm.
Like straight up. Okay. See, now I feel like, I feel like, you know, Mike's got some experience maybe with, well, clearly you've been in a few fights. Have you had any training in any sort of self-defense? No. Okay. I was beat up by my cousins and my brothers, but I was not. No. So what? Well, some of that's evolutionary though. It is. Yeah. You get on top of them, you hit them with your elbow. Like I'm talking your forearm, you know, hit them with your fist.
You just kind of like get your weight on them and start just bashing them with your forearm and your elbow. Cause you're not going to hurt you. You're just going to hurt them, you know? Right. So you can really get your shoulder into it and you're in control. You know, the fight, like a real fight, which I've seen many fights other than me being in them, it always goes to the ground. It's always easier to fight on the ground. I see. That's okay. And I haven't seen a lot of fights.
I mean, so the only fights that I've seen is when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, you know, middle school, high school, everybody was getting into fights and it was always a big deal. I don't know if you guys experienced the same thing. It was like, Oh, meet you out back at the water tower and the entire school piles out and crowds around and there's just a crazy battle Royale. It was like, I've seen probably six fights like that.
I think they discontinued that when you went to high school and when I did, but I was a smaller town. And then I was like the last class in high school before they put in the security cameras. Okay. Right. Cause like, that's when like a lot of the school shootings started to happen. So they started putting in all these cameras everywhere after I graduated.
And I was like, man, how am I going to like, if I was still in high school, how would I hide out in a corner and talk nerdy stuff with my friends with the cameras everywhere? So the other scenario that I can think of that I was ever in a fight was another one of those things where I was being picked on about the same thing or whatever. I guess I was a real geek, but it was on the bus and I was the very first stop on the bus. And okay, so can I say a word in context or okay. Yeah, well, so, okay.
So this kid that had been giving me a hard time, he was a year younger than me and he was probably entire head shorter than me. And he was always calling me a faggot. And I'm like, fuck you, fuck you. And I was talking back to him and I was just like, I wasn't taking his shit. I'm like, this is a little kid. I mean, I could take this kid if I really had to, you know, I'm like, screw you. So I was sitting in the front of the bus because that's where kind of the nerdy kids sit, I guess.
Or somebody new to a school that's not established. So I'm the first stop on the bus. I get off and I start walking home. It was probably like two blocks home and the entire bus unloads behind me. I'm like, all right, well, this isn't going to be good. So I'm just walking. I'm like, I'm out of here. I know something's going to go down, but I'm just going to make a beeline home. And I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around and boom, I got sucker punched right in the eye.
And here's what triggered in me. It wasn't trying to take the kid down. I grabbed him by the nape of the neck and I started pounding on his head. I'm like, I was like, I had so much adrenaline built up because I knew something was going to happen. But when I got a hold of this kid, I wasn't going to stop. Like it was, it was an absolute animalistic thing, but I wasn't trying to get on top of him. I was pounding on his head and I was like, okay, this is pretty ruthless.
Well, another kid grabbed me from behind and punched me in my other eye, which was his older brother. And I'm like, okay, here we have like a two on one situation now. And a neighbor saw it came and broke the thing up. That bottom line is like my instinct was, okay, I got hit and I'm going to hit and it's not going to stop. But I was what, how old are you when you're in seventh grade? Yeah, not too old. I guess. I don't know. 13, 12, something like that. Yeah. 13, somewhere in there.
Yeah. So real quick, I'm about halfway done. I'm maybe like a quarter inch from the closest band, which I'm about to tear off. I'm a little behind you and mine keeps going up because I'm not puffing as much on it. He's doing more chatting than he is smoking, which is fine because that's what we wanted to guess. Focus on the task at hand, which is smoking the cigar. Do you have any thoughts? I'm enjoying it. Yeah. I am enjoying this. Yeah. I'm not smoking the bitter anymore.
The bitter wasn't even necessarily a negative thing for me. It was just part of it, but I feel like it's smooth. There's nothing harsh in my mouth about it. Yeah. I do have, I'm definitely getting more of the peppery now as well. Yeah. I think it's good. Full disclosure, the first one I smoked of this, I didn't really like, I didn't care for. But I think this one's just fine. I don't know that it's overly complex or changing notes necessarily, but it's smooth and it's tasty.
I am way past you guys. I have a quarter left of the cigar because I was being sad when you guys are chitty chatting, which is good. And it has not changed a note. It's dark. It's got some sweetness. It's peppery, very smooth, not overly strong. It's consistent. It's consistent. And that takes, we've talked about it many times on the show. It takes a lot of talent to make a cigar taste the same way all the way through as you're burning leaf and building up tar and everything in the wrap.
So is there in the cigar world a grading of cigars too? This is a mid-range or this is a really hidey-tidy cigar. Well, I know pipes and cigars, they have a darkness scale. They got the little arrows up and down. And I think there's five of them. And so if you've got one arrow filled in, it's a lighter cigar. And if you've got four or five filled in, it's darker. So they give you a little bit of the taste profile in that. I'm sure there's something more scientific.
Well, there's also the Cigar Aficionado rankings, which people follow religiously. And in my opinion, a lot of those rankings are based off how much they cost and how much the magazine gets as a promo. But we mostly smoke mid-tier and lower-tier cigars. We've had a couple upper-tier cigars, but I don't think that the upper-tier cigars are any better than mid-tier. Lower-tier cigars are really wild in how good or bad they are.
But if you get something like a Perdomo, which is what we smoked last episode, it's going to be good. And it's a mid-tier cigar. You can go to a cigar lounge and get one for 10, 12 bucks. And that's really all you need to spend to get a good cigar. You can get a good cigar for five bucks, six bucks too. But you have to be more discerning. But less, yeah, less consistent. A lot of $5 and $6 cigars are terrible. Yeah, it's not as consistent.
If you spend 10, 15 bucks on a cigar, it's going to be pretty good. Okay. But yeah, I think that's what I enjoy too, is being able to smoke the cigars that anyone can afford and anyone can go get. Sure. We're not smoking the wrapped in gold foil. I don't know if there is one. I'm sure somewhere there is. Yeah, I have one. I have one. Oh, of course. Of course Mike would. I got it as a Christmas present from Sarah's uncle. I got one for a Christmas present.
And I think for our season finales, maybe we'll smoke an upper-tier one or something more in the $20 per stick range. You can get up to 40, 50 bucks a stick too, and more expensive than that too. I know man, but until we get some sponsors, I'm just saying, we'll smoke some upper-tier for us ones on the show. But mostly we've been smoking in the 10 and under range, right? Yeah, for the most part. For the most part. For the most part, the cigar shop.
Because we, Dev might not know this, but we order them online in bulk and you get really good prices when you start getting online and getting a lot of cigars at a time. You can get some good deals. Very good deals. And then where are you getting most of your recommendations? You guys are subscribed to magazines or certain- I just go based on what we talked about this, a couple episodes ago we talked about this where I do more of the tech stuff and Mike kind of does the cigar scouting.
So he's more got a feel on the pulse of the cigar thing. And sometimes when I buy cigars, I'm just like, hey, this one sounds good. So I'll buy that. And then I'll give Mike a few sticks. But usually it's like Mike, like, hey, we should smoke this one or that one. And he kind of hooks me up with some of those because he buys in bulk a lot. So here's going to be a layman's sort of question, I guess, for a while.
And I don't know if it was because of the inability to acquire it, but everybody was all about the Cubans. You got to get the Cuban cigars. And they were illegal or something, right? The embargo. So are they a better cigar or were they just coveted because they were hard to get a hold of? I have smoked a Cuban cigar and the Cuban cigar thing, there's a long history. So they put an embargo on them in the Kennedy administration.
And at that time, a bunch of the friends of the Kennedys imported a shit ton of Cuban tobacco. So for many years, you could get a Cuban leaf cigar that was hand rolled in the United States. And that's one of the cigars that I smoked. If you go to a foreign country as an American, you have to be really careful because they're going to try to fuck you over and tell you it's a Cuban cigar. You have to be very careful. You can go up to Canada and get a Cuban cigar at a cigar shop there.
I spent $30 in 2006, I want to say, on a Cuban cigar that was hand rolled in America. And it was a good cigar, but it wasn't any better than a $10 or $15 cigar that you can buy today. They're good. They're very oily and very dark and they are good. But a lot of the mystique is because we have the embargo and we don't have really access to them in the States.
And it's difficult to get a real one unless you go to a real cigar shop in another country, which a lot of people don't have the resources to do. Like if I go to Winnipeg, I'm going to a cigar shop and getting Cuban cigars, but you can't bring them back across the border. So you can smoke them there. And it makes it nice, but they're not really any better. But is there just, there's not just one Cuban cigar either. No, there's several brands. So it's the same thing as here.
You can buy an American cigar, but as we've demonstrated on the show already, some of them are terrible and some of them are great. And a lot of them are middle- Romeo and Julieta, Nicaraguan cigar, and it was great. Well, Romeo and Julieta makes Cuban cigars as well. I've had Arturo Fuente cigars and they make Cuban cigars and a lot of these companies, if you get it from a reputable company, it's going to be good. But it's just like anything else.
You could spend big money on a Cuban cigar and it's not the kind of cigar you like even, you know, and you're not going to like it. Oh, sure. And you're going to say, oh, Cuban cigars suck. But it's the same as here, anywhere else, any other country that makes cigars is it's not just one, we don't have the USA cigar company making every cigar in America. You know, there's the same with breweries. Like they all have their own take on them. They all have their own process.
They all have their own flavorings. They all have their own everything. So just to go and buy a Cuban cigar. Yeah. The only reason you're buying it is because we have the embargo. Are there some Cuban cigars that are great and would blow most of the stuff that we smoke out of the water? Sure. Are there some that would taste a lot worse than some of the ones that we smoke? Of course. Gotcha. I think I mean, I don't know.
I've never had a few figures, but I've heard like, you know, if you just want a Cuban, it's kind of overrated. If you know what you like, you can get a really good Cuban cigar. I see. It's not just get a real Cuban. You know, if you go to a Mexican border town, you're not getting a real Cuban cigar. But yeah, that's part of the mystique though. For us being poor white people in the middle of nowhere, then yeah, it's nice to have something that you can't have.
Yeah. I'd rather smoke the Rocky Patel in 1990 than try and go find a Cuban. Yeah. A CEO, Flathead 660 is a great cigar. Yeah. Hard to go wrong. I mean, are they comparable to a Cuban? I don't know. But you know, it's kind of like you figure out what you like and you smoke that. And if somebody offers you the chance to smoke a real Cuban, then do that too. You know, but I don't think the Cuban is the end all be all of cigars. No, it's not magical. It's like anything else, right?
Except the Moon Trance. Before, yeah, the Moon Trance is something else. They're truly great, but that comes around not too often. You were smoking with Dave? Yeah. Okay. It's like the AR-15 boom that happened after the assault weapons ban back in the day. You know, before then people were shooting mini-14s and mini-15s and mini-30s and shit. They're essentially the same firearm, just with a different stock, you know.
And if they do come up with a new assault weapons ban, they won't make a mini-14 illegal. So they'll just switch back to that and it'll be fine. It'll be perfectly fine. Nothing will have meaningfully changed. Just like even though they banned Cuban cigars, we're still smoking cigars and we enjoy them. Nothing has really changed except instead of Cuba getting the money, somebody else does. Gotcha. Right. And there was talks during the Obama administration of lifting the ban.
I'm not sure where it went. I'm sure nowhere. Probably nowhere. But it's pointless. Ultimately it's pointless. Thanks Obama. Yeah, thanks Obama. Exactly. We gotta bring that back. I say it all the time. It's still out there. Yeah. It's still out there. You never went anywhere. It's still here. Way to go, Brandon. Oh God. Yeah. Thanks, Brandon. I had a discussion with my relatives about that, about Trump, because they were, you know, saying how great Trump was.
And I was like, what's the difference? They couldn't say a single thing. My wonderful relatives who were Trumpers could not say a single thing that was better about Trump. It's like, well, it's because there is no difference, is there? Basically, I didn't say exactly that, but what is the meaningful difference in policy? The politicians are all the same. It's the same shit. My taxes went up. My freedom went down. And not in a good way.
But they sure find a way to blame the current administration when it's not who they... Or the last one. Yeah. Or the last one. Exactly. Right. Every problem in the whole world is because of, you know, Don Biden. Every single one. Yeah. And George Obama. I know. It was George Obama before. Yeah. Or, you know, Barack Trump. Yeah. They'll always figure out a way to not make it a systemic failure in policy. So anyway, so you guys are really big fans of the romanticization of fighting.
I wasn't expecting that. Of course, our lives are different. You know, our lives are totally different in our backgrounds. Our lives are different. I don't know that I would say I'm a fan of romanticizing fighting. It was just kind of a weird thing because it's like I've never really been in a fight that hasn't been over, you know, by pushing someone against a wall or, you know, whatever. Like I punched my cousin a few times because he was being a giant dick.
But there's not ever like a return punch, you know, so it wasn't really like a fight. It was just kind of like a way to end a disagreement, you know. And I wouldn't say like it's romanticized because I understand that I don't want to be in a fight. I understand it's a dangerous thing to be in a fight. But there's some like weird evolutionary like drive in my body that I can like recognize.
Sure. Like, you know, like it's not like it's not that I'm trying to romanticize fighting or that I, you know, because, you know, and I'll say like, hey, I'd like to be in like a super fair fight. We're just like two buddies and they're like, hey, let's just, you know, let's spar or let's like whatever. But like that's not really it, you know.
But I can understand that it's like a weird like evolutionary thing, you know, kind of like if you just want to like just fuck a whole bunch, you know, like that's kind of evolutionary, right. But you understand you can't just go fuck a whole bunch without getting syphilis or AIDS or crabs or whatever, whatever it is, you know, like there's always consequences and that's the whole that was kind of like what intrigued Devon myself where it's like, you know, we're educated people.
Like we're not, we're not, you know, go back 50, 60, 100 years where education was a lofty goal for a lot of people. And you know, and it still is in some instances, but and we should close that gap, of course. But like we understand like fighting isn't how you resolve things. But there's still that weird evolutionary thing like the evolutionary holdover, like the spleen or the appendix. Like what is that doing? Like I don't, I don't need it. It's tonsils. I don't need it, but it's here still.
So it's kind of that weird thing where it's like, I understand that it's dumb. Like I don't, like I shouldn't, I shouldn't even want, I shouldn't even be talking about wanting to do it. But it's this weird evolutionary kind of like drive almost. I don't feel that drive. Well, you are more evolved than me, I guess. And they're done. I'm not more evolved. I've just seen more fights.
Yeah. So when I was in high school, I had a buddy who was a wrestler and he was a little smaller than me, real strong, wiry guy. And he was teaching me a little bit about wrestling. And on a couple of occasions we engaged in a wrestling match. It wasn't weird or anything, but that is an interesting experience too, because there is so much strength involved and it's a very intense thing too.
So it's not the same thing, I guess, as fighting per se, but you are really struggling to overtake another person or trying to get out of a certain situation. And I mean, that was kind of a, I guess, sort of a similar sort of concept, I guess, in that like, you're trying to establish yourself with your strength and stamina to be able to overcome another person. And there were times when I was being held down or there were times when I was the aggressor in the situation too.
And I mean, I never wanted to be a wrestler or anything, but I do look at that experience as something of a similar nature, I guess. Like I say, most fights that I've seen are glorified wrestling matches with striking involved. Sure. No kicking, really. Knee-ing, but not kicking. I don't think kicking is the most efficient way to take down an opponent though. Unless you're standing and you kick them in the leg.
Yeah, or like some of those crazy karate people who can do the roundhouse and clock you in the jaw and then it's lights out, you know, but you have to be highly skilled to do that. And you have to be, I guess, an opponent who's not ready for it. Yeah, exactly.
And so I guess like, not to defend myself intellectually, because that's the only way I know how, but after Devin and I kind of talked about this, I looked it up and there's actually a book written by a professor who had the kind of the same feelings where he was kind of like, hey, I'm educated and I've never had the occasion or necessity to fight. And what he did is he went and joined MMA, the mixed martial arts, you know, the octagon ring or whatever.
And he wrote this whole book about kind of like how that affected him. And I haven't read it yet, but I did procure it. So I will be reading it at some point. But apparently it's not out of the realm of educated people who have never been in fights to kind of have that kind of evolutionary desire almost. And maybe it's not even evolutionary anymore. Maybe it's just societal pressure.
Or I don't know what it could be, you know, but I'm very curious to hear like a professor or something, you know, because like, I don't want to just go get into like a scrap or like a fight or like turn into West Side Story or some stuff like that. But, you know, the singing and snapping, I don't know, I guess if I have to do that before we fight, that might be okay. But that'd be more embarrassing than anything else. I think.
Well, you can just go and drink at rural bars and wait because there's always guys that want to fight at rural bars. Okay. So you're saying I should wear a Biden shirt and just go and drink at a rural bar. Oh, not a Biden shirt, a fuck Trump shirt. Oh, yep. It's on the Adonkey Kong. Isn't a Kamala Harris shirt the same thing though? I've never seen such a thing, but sure. I've seen the fuck Trump shirts for sure.
Okay. But. So yeah, I mean, there is definitely, there is a definite population of people who enjoy fighting and they're looking for it. Oh, yes. And I don't know if that is just a sort of the alcohol is doing, you know, doing the talking or if you like, they've got something to prove or they're just. It's a subculture of guys that love to just fight.
Well, I suppose you could say like, well, evolutionarily, they're primed to fight, or you could say they've had a bad childhood or you could say they have mean parents or you could say, I mean, you could say any number of things. But I'm not looking to change my entire personality to be one that wants to fight.
It's just one of those things where I've never been in a fight, but it's different because like I've never been in a plane crash and I have no evolutionary desire to be in a plane crash, you know, so. Come paddle fishing. I can guarantee you if you want to fight, you can have one. Am I fighting the fish or what? Cause like fish freak me out man. It's a nightly brawl for sure. Oh, okay. Every night there's always a brawl.
Well, I don't think that you'd really want to get entangled with one of those guys that really, really like to fight and have a lot of experience fighting. You probably don't. Can you just like. And that's the thing, like I don't even, I don't even really want to be in a fight because like, as soon as I'm like, Hey, I really want to get in a fight. And it's like, well, what about my teeth? Or what about my nose? Or what about my eyes?
Or what about, you know, all of the things I need to live and to see and experience life? Like I don't really want to be in a fight, but like, there's this weird thing. Or it's like, I've never been in one. Yeah. And like evolution is kind of telling me like, you know, so I don't, I mean, I don't think that you're alone.
Yeah. And I, maybe, maybe our next business venture is going to be to develop some sort of app where it's a social media sort of situation where, okay, we try to find another person in the same frame of mind as you are, who's also never been in a fight. Yeah. And we could get Sock-Em-Boppers. You guys remember those? Yes. Like they discontinued them. They were on the market for like six months, but they were great. Yeah. So okay. Who is your perfect fighting mate?
Y'all have both never been in a fight before. Only some 12 year old female, you know, like same strength for me anyway. I don't think Mike is down with this. He's not really down with the fighting. I want to get into a fight with somebody who does not have a knife or a gun. And I want to have one. But I want to have one. And I want to have one. But you want to have one. Okay. I just want to have one at the ready, just in case.
Mike's known me a long time and when have I ever been at your place without mace or a long knife or both? Yeah. Or a condom and a bunch of lube. Like, you know, it's one of the four. It's going to be fucking or fighting? Fucking or fighting? What's it going to be tonight? Something with an F. Well, I'm going to fight you until I can fuck you. That's the thing. Could be falafels. Could be falafels too. We don't know. Oh. Fajitas.
There's always a big thing where it's like, I'm going to get naked before I fight. I mean, it's really the best way to avoid a fight. It might be a good way to avoid a fight. Yeah. I only fight in the nude, like completely nude. So if you want to come at me with my dick out, then maybe you got to reevaluate your sexual preferences, which is probably a good diss for people who like to fight. Because they're probably like the uber ego male type. They have no sexual masculinity. Yes. Small member.
Well, you know, they're raising a child that's not theirs. Just put it that way. There you go. Indeed. So I think the disclaimer at the end here, if you've listened to this entire podcast, this episode, we do not condone fighting and fighting is bad. There might be some kind of innate drive within each of us that wants to fight.
But you know, I've gotten a lot of satisfaction in my life of not having to get to that point and to either like diffuse or antagonize a situation with words and logic and brain power and kind of have that kind of control over it. So I mean, there is some satisfaction there.
It's not the primal satisfaction, you know, from the evolutionary standpoint, but it's certainly a lot better to not have to get into a fight because if you get into a fight, not only is there all the physical stuff, but then after the fight is done, you've got all of the legal stuff, right?
Like the person, one of the two, whoever's been involved in the fight could choose to charge the other one with assault or battery or any number of things, you know, and you just don't know how deep their daddy's pocketbook is. You know, so there's just a whole lot of things to dissuade people from fighting and fighting isn't really the answer. Fighting is just a weird thing, right?
Like it's just like, I know, like I don't want to be in a fight and I don't want to be the guy that gets into a fight, but sometimes fights happen. So it'd be nice to know before going into a fight that I can handle myself in a fight. I don't know. It's like a weird, you know, weird thing, but yeah. You know, like Mike said, just get on top and top them till they tap out. So that's what you said, right? Top them till they tap out. Top them till they tap out.
What if they're a power bottom though? Well, you know, that's where the lube and the condom comes in. So long as somebody taps out, I guess it's okay. So I don't think I'd make it in prison. I mean, if you go to prison, you have to fight. I mean, that's pretty much a given, right? No, not if you're the supply guy. If you can get them cigarettes and stuff, right? But it takes a while to get to that point, I feel like.
I mean, I kind of like watching those shows, those like locked up abroad and locked up ... Can you watch, what is it, 90 Days In? Did you watch that one? They apparently take real people and put them in prison for 90 days. So I did watch... They're 60 days in? I did watch... I only watched the first season and it was like super lame kind of. Yeah, I thought, to be honest, I didn't know if I really bought into it. You know, that it was actually real.
Because apparently the prison guards didn't know that they were there for a TV show, but the warden did or something, like the head honcho did. So... Well, and they weren't... I mean, I don't remember seeing any physical altercations in it. They got into some fights in the first... Did they? Okay. Maybe I just watched it. But then it's kind of the thing where it's like you read some of the stuff about those reality shows and it's like everything's staged.
You know, or the crew, because the crew's there, right? They set up extra cameras in the... Right. And I can't remember what the place is called, like the wing that they're in, or you know. So it's not like people are unaware of what's going on. I mean like the last... Okay, it wasn't this show. It was another... It was a locked up show. And they were just discussing how somebody knew... It's like you got a target on your back instantly.
And so it's like you need to establish... It's that raw pecking order. And so unless you're in a gang, you're going to have to fight. At least at first. And the 90 days in or whatever, the one guy, he got in there and he was thinking the whole thing was a huge joke. And he was like, hey, do we get ESPN on the TV in the break room or whatever, in the rec room? And you could tell all the other inmates didn't like it, but I don't think he was in maximum security.
So you're not going to get the same kind of like... Yeah, people there on drug charges. Right. Right. They're in there. And you got some gang activity, but I think if you're not in the full on maximum security, you're not getting the murderers and the gang violence people. I don't think. I don't know. I've not been to prison. That's probably true. My brother's a prison guard. The white... But I don't know a whole lot about... My brother is a prison guard.
Okay. Yeah. I don't know if he's going to be in prison. No. My dad retired from the prison. He started out at guard and retired as like a senior case manager or something. I remember one night he got home and he had to have a patch over his eye because he had to break up a fight between inmates where they tried to attack a fellow coworker or something and he was trying to break it up. And then he was on riot squad for a while too, but he was in maximum security.
He was... I mean, that's where he worked. He was at the maximum security one. So I think probably the level of security the prison is kind of dictates what sort of inmate population you have. So it probably gets worse the more severe the security level is, I would imagine. If I got sent to prison, I would immediately become a transgendered woman for sure. You would have to. A non-transitioning transgender woman. A non-transitioning transgender woman. Yeah. Respect my rights.
So I feel like Mike's been done for a little bit with his cigar. I have been done for a little bit, yeah. But that's okay. I'm just about done with mine. Deb's got a little bit left. But do you want to give any final thoughts on your cigar there, Deb? Being that it's the first cigar that I've smoked in about 20 years or so, I would say that I enjoyed the experience. I don't have a lot to compare it to, but I do enjoy the peppery taste to it. It is a smooth cigar. I'm liking it.
I'll smoke another cigar after this. So thanks, fellas. Yeah. And for any of our listeners, this isn't really a cigar that you would give to somebody who hasn't smoked in a while or has never smoked a cigar. This isn't really like your starter cigar. But Deb has smoked previously. And just from talking to him, I figured he might be okay with this one. So I'm glad to hear that you liked it. I liked this one. The second one that I smoked of this brand better than the first one.
I wasn't too impressed with the first one. But when we're on the podcast here, I tend to give a little more thought to the actual cigar. Right? So I think more about it and I try and taste more of it so that I can try and talk not like a complete person who doesn't know what he's talking about, which I am most of the time. But I guess for me, I would say that it's a good cigar. I think it's a fairly cheap cigar. So it's not a bad for the price. It's a good experience.
It's not on my top list of like greatest cigars ever or even preferred cigars. But if somebody was like, hey, do you want to smoke some Buffalo Traces? Yeah, why not? Yeah, it was good. It was dark. Even throughout peppery. A little sweet. Yeah, which is something to be said. Yeah. It's good enough. It's not terrible. It's a promo cigar. So yeah, especially if you consider it against like this is basically, I mean, it's not the whiskey people doing it, but they commissioned this cigar basically.
Right. So it's, you know, it's a tie in with their whiskey brand. And it's a lot better than a lot of other tie ins, I'm sure, you know, or other promotional things. Like this was actually a good cigar. Yeah, it wasn't bad. Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, thanks for being on the show, Dev. Super nice to meet you, Mike. It's nice to talk to you. Hopefully we don't get into a fistfight when we meet in person. And if we do, hopefully the three of us are on the same side.
Yes. Because then you can top them, Mike, and then Dev and I will high five behind you. Right. Well, you know, I don't know what Dev looks like, but I'm guessing if we were to go out in public, nobody would try to start a fight with the three of us. So no, even even with your pink bowling bag, nobody even especially with the pink bowling bag that freaks people out. He's very comfortable with his sexuality. Yes. I know if you're top a stranger in a bar fight.
Yes. The fat white guy with a beard and long hair and a pink bag. Nobody fucks with that guy. Smoking a cigar, cigar hanging out of his mouth. Pink bag. Whiskey in hand. Yup. Come at me, fuckers. So I would agree. I don't want to fight against you. Fighting is bad. Peace and love. Cigars and whiskey and bromances all around. Or them manses, however you feel. Yes. All right. Well, I think that's about it for the show. All right. Sounds good. Thanks again, Dav, and we'll catch you next week.