So here are some whoppers for you to indulge yourselves with. I will warn you, some of these stories may be true, although most of them probably aren’t. All of them, however, did include a cigar. More examples of how cigars have changed history.

• Late September 1998; I am sitting down smoking a Montecristo White Churchill at home, while deep in thought with my studies, when my friend asks me a question about forecasting the financial movements of the Pacific Rim Economy over the next 6 months. I don’t recall his specific question, but its answer eluded me at the time. I looked at him and said, “I don’t know off the top of my head, but let me Google it,” making me the first person to use “Google” as a verb.
• A couple years ago, my boy Macklemore and I were at another friends penthouse apartment in Brooklyn. Everyone was smoking La Flor Dominicana Airbender Chisels. As always, the party “got jumping” pretty good. I looked at Macklemore and said, “Woah, I don’t know if the ceiling can hold us!”
• While smoking a Perdomo Champagne Noir Robusto, as is my weekly ritual every night that I watch Game of Thrones, having not read any of the novels and with no prior research, I have been able to predict who was going to die in each episode before the opening credits ended.
• Several years ago I smoked an Oliva G Toro and while smoking it was able to beat “WATSON” in the preliminary rounds of Jeopardy. Because it was the preliminary rounds, they were not aired on television but I think NBC was pressured by IBM to keep me off the game show.
• Late one night after smoking several Casa Magna Robustos, knowing I had to work very early the next day but being faced with the dubious burden of hosting a keg party, I decided I would pull an “all-nighter.” I opened up the case of Red Bull that I had purchased to get me through the next day and starting mixing it with a then not as popular German spirit known as Jagermeister and the Jager-bomb was created.
• I once shook hands with Wayne Newton while I smoked a Romeo y Julieta, who had shaken hands with Bob Hope who had shaken hands with FDR while FDR smoked a Romeo y Julieta.
• I once met a man who told me that he had found the fountain of youth and unlocked the secret to live forever. “Every cigar you smoke, you live one more day” said the 87 year old man. That was the first time I met Avo Uvezian.
• Once while smoking an E.P. Carrillo New Wave Connecticut, I rode a mechanical bull as Ernesto Carrillo watched. His face stayed unsympathetic and stern the whole time.
• Mick Jagger once told me that while visiting Esteli, Nicaragua, he and a few friends after a long night of drinking and smoking cigars broke into a chicken coup on a drunken whim. The next day he was inspired and perfected his trademark chicken dance.
• I once met Joe Perry outside of Boston. I was standing up against the wall of a shopping plaza smoking a Rocky Patel 1990 Petite Corona. I asked him if he was related to Steve Perry from Journey. He told me he was not.
• The first time I ever smoked anything, it was underneath the stairs in the back of the Hampton Beach Casino Ball Room with the band “Bad Company”
• I have been to two Super Bowls in my lifetime. The first was Superbowl XXXVIII where I met Justin Timberlake. He had come up to me before the game and wanted to know what cigar I was smoking. I gave him one of my Ashton VSG Corona Gorda’s. We got to talking about the meaning of life, as you usually do when enjoying a cigar with great company. I told him that it is always important to stay spontaneous. Then In Super Bowl XLVII while sitting in a luxury box, I saw they had the old time lighters like you would see in a 1980’s Cadillac. I needed a light so I pressed it in and then everything went dark.