From: ?????????????????? (Tyler Weaver)
Subject: Joe Bob Briggs on cigars

 (For inclusion in the Pipes Digest.  JBB is a syndicated columnist. 
  Reprinted here without permission.  Check it out. --Tyler)

Joe Bob Briggs  "Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, TX" 
  from the Dallas Observer 12/15/94

  I just got kicked out of a hotel bar for smoking a cigar.  I don't mind
so much gettin' kicked out, 'cause it was a 15-dollar Bolivar and I
managed to save it without havin' to smush it out in an ashtray.
  But what bugged me was this: THERE WAS NOBODY IN THE BAR!  And I was 
in the SMOKING SECTION!
  Am I the only one, or has anybody else noticed that cigar-smokers are
just slightly above heroin addicts in terms of social respectability?
  People complained about the smell as they were walking by on the Midway!
If they hated the smell, then they hated the smell of the finest tobacco
in the world.
  It's also interesting to me that, the more expensive the restaurant, the
more they LIKE cigars, and the cheaper the restaurant, the more they HATE
cigars.
  You can still smoke cigars in all the restaurants of the Plaza Hotel in 
New York, but you can NEVER smoke a cigar in the smoking section of a
McDonald's.
  Anyhow, here's my point on this.  I don't mind being considered the scum
of the earth for cigar-smokin', but I'd like to point out a couple things.
  Numero Uno, it's the CIGARETTES that smell bad.  And the reason they smell
bad is that most of what you're smelling is PAPER.  People are burning paper.
A cigar, on the other hand, is one hundred per cent tobacco leaf.  Cigarettes
were invented in the 1890's as a way to sell the WASTE PRODUCTS from cigars-
the part left over- the SMELLY PART.
  Numero Two-o, when people say "How can you put that poison into your body?"
they're missing the point again.  A cigar is something you taste, in your 
mouth, like cognac.  A cigarette is something you draw into your LUNGS, to
get a rush, like opium.
  Numero Three-o, when people complain about cigars, they're not REALLY
complaining about the particular cigar you happen to be smoking.  They're
really saying, "You're a disgusting human being for havin' that thing at all."
In other words, it's not the cigar that people hate.  It's the guy that smokes
it.
  I don't know why this is, but, believe me, I'm a veteran of the tobacco wars.
It's true.
  Speaking of American traditions under attack, The Tall Man is back in
_Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead_...


~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U ~\U