Some kind of strange and unexplainable primal forces are at work when the cleavage is exposed. When a man’s eyes make contact, our breath turns to short little panting noises as a pleasant warmth begins to develop in the nether region. Remember the Seinfeld episode where George stares at the NBC executive’s daughter’s low hanging fruit? Jerry says they are like giant and powerful magnets to the eyes with an effect much like Kryptonite has upon Superman.

Once again, it cannot be explained by mere rationale, but when the globes are in orbit, our eyes MUST make contact. Whether they are small and firm, or large, round and jiggly, it does not matter…we HAVE TO look! We HAVE TO. It’s like some unwritten law in the ancient records, scribed on the walls of the Mayan Temples. The luscious valley between the mighty peaks grips a man’s being much like the Sirens who seduced Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Its spell is intoxicating driving a normal man to the very brink of childish behavior, not to mention – utter stupidity (or is that udder stupidity?)

We males have become masters of our craft. We have studied this vertical space of flesh and nothingness and have learned how to catch that sacred glimpse of nirvana at the perfect time. We look the female in the eyes, smile as we talk, nodding as if we are actually listening to a word the shrew is saying. It’s a peek of the holy grails that we are after and nothing will stop our valiant quest. We use cunning and guile to move their attention elsewhere – and the moment their eyes turn, OUR eyes dive in for the kill.

“Oh, look… that kitten must be lost.” We say with an innocent yet sinister glow.

“Oh, where?” she says, as her head moves about.

“Over yonder, in the bushes” you point, as your pupils all but burn a hole into her chest.

“Where?” she asks, “I don’t see a… um, what are you looking at?”

SNAGGED! You have been snagged! She begins to change the subject while awkwardly tugging her blouse upwards. As she continues to talk, you sit there like a fool – a large pulsating letter “L” is emblazoned upon your forehead as the beauty that once was is buried six miles deep in cotton and polyester fibers.

This previous action on the part of the female, I do not understand, as it confuses the male species here and abroad. Let me explain. A woman wears a shirt or sweater that by her choice, is low cut, as her ta-tas are in full display for all the world to gander. They’re swingin’ high and low, loose and free, giving the male populous the joy we so richly deserve. Yet the moment our woman – this teasing harlot – notices where our eyes are fixed, she folds her arms or grabs the nearest Cosmo to cover up those mountains of grandeur. UNFAIR I say!

I, the Zman, speak on behalf of heterosexual men everywhere on this wretched planet. Women, take heed. When you “CHOOSE” to wear a low cut top that exposes your upper region, DO NOT act so alarmed when we men are gazed upon your earthly beauty. Why do you wear such attire if you do not wish for us to stare? Why do you purposely dress so provocatively, yet cover up the moment we sneak a peek? I’ll be honest, ladies… since my early manhood this phenomena has really irked me to no end. You put the sale rack up on display, but when an interested shopper passes by, the curtains are drawn and the shop is closed. Again, UNFAIR I say!

I have to admit that this very horrid plight happened to me only today and I could not go another moment without speaking up for my fellow man. I was taken aback as my character was unfairly thrown into question. This was rude, degrading, and unjust in every way.

I’m telling you, there really was a lost kitten in the bushes. I swear.

- Zman

As my son has just hit 14 year’s of age – on his way to earning his Mancard – I’ve noticed his interest in girls getting more and more obvious. Each morning before school he hoses himself down with AXE body spray, and when mixed with Fritos for lunch it makes for an interesting middle-school aphrodisiac. Plus he’s doing a lot of Myspace messaging back and forth with the young ladies, which I say, “kudos little dude.”

I was trying to remember my earliest feelings for the opposite sex and it was probably in first grade where I sat in front of Kathy Werbin’s house one Saturday morning for about four hours waiting for her to come outside. I remember my heart pounding, wondering what I would say when we’d hook up. (It’s uncanny how woman make guys do brutally stupid shit – even at six years old.) Finally my patience paid off as she appeared from her garage – and man she was hot – even back then I was particular about looks. I remember she was into GI Joe’s and asked me to play. (It’s funny that GI Joe’s were actually dolls wrapped in testosterone so boys would be tricked into playing with them.) But my little heart was soon plucked from my ribcage as she had to go – a play date with Robert Sandler was scheduled and that was the first time I realized what cruel harlots the opposite sex can be.

It was definitely movies and TV that helped to arouse my nubile senses in the early years. I didn’t know why, but at ten years old I couldn’t take my eyes off of Barbara Eden’s stomach when she donned that genie costume. I used to get warm all over when she pranced around her Cocoa Beach habitat. And even at ten I wondered what the bloody hell was wrong with Major Nelson - I mean for crissakes, come on, man! Forget the fact that she was sizzling hot and was sworn to his every command – the bonehead could have anything he wanted – gold, jewels, cars, homes – but it was always, “Don’t use your powers, Jeannie.” What a friggin ass-tro-NOT.

Those cavorting cougars always had me more worked up more than Laurie Partridge or any of the Brady chicks. Girls my own age didn’t do it for me. I can’t explain it, but I always had a penchant for the older gals. Now I know most guys loved Dawn Wells as Mary Ann, but I was always a Ginger guy, and when Tina Louise strutted about in those slinky nightgowns, I was glued to the tube. (And it wasn’t until I was around 15 that I came to the conclusion that Gilligan, the Skipper, and the Professor were all raging poofters.) I’ve never really dug the “girl next door” type, but more the sultry, buxom bombshell. And as a lad, no one had me standing at full attention more than the incredible Raquel Welch. I was just a kid but I had an amazing appreciation for her killer body, complete with swollen appendages. You can blame God or nature, or the earth’s primal forces, but I was not in control of certain bodily reactions when Raquel appeared on a TV talk or game show. I used to scan the TV Guide when we got it to see if the starlet was appearing anywhere. That same era had the likes of Ursula Andress, Elke Sommer and Gina Lolabridgada, Sophia Loren, Brigette Bardot, and Margaret Nolan - incredibly voluptuous goddesses I couldn’t take my eyes off!

The same unexplainable force that changes the tides and pulls plants towards the sun had me more jacked up than ten Milky Ways and a jug of Bosco. I vividly remember watching Goldie Hawn dance in a bikini on Rowan and Martin’s Laughin, and thinking, “Now that sure as hell beats playing with GI Joe’s.”

Even though she wasn’t provocative, I always dug Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stevens on Bewitched. Again, at an early age I recognized her beauty and just being a witch carried a sexiness all of its own. And again, with the ability to have anything he wanted, her retarded husband Darrin suffered from Major Nelson syndrome: “Don’t use any witchcraft to get what we want or need, Sam.” Whether it was York or Sargent, both Darrin’s were most definitely a couple of real “Dicks” when it came to Samantha’s powers.

No doubt today’s TV is a hell of a lot more sex oriented and I realize that my son is subject to those same unexplainable forces that his daddy was driven by. Plus with the internet and its 12,000 naughty sites, my kid doesn’t have to go rooting around my bedroom for pop’s “half-assed” hidden Playboy magazines (sorry dad, but you’ve gotta know I would have found them even if you buried them two miles under the goddamned septic tank.)

Listen, my intent here wasn’t to write a sexist piece and I’m certainly not advocating my kid look at porn or anything like that. I just know at 14 what my son is feeling as I think back to my early days of youth. And there’s no doubt everyone of you guys have similar memories and stories of your own – hopefully to share in the comments section below (and please do so because I’ll most likely need to convince my mother, wife, and daughter that I’m not a raging perverted psychopath, after they read this.)

Glad I could share such nice mammaries.

And hey, if you love the chicks from the sixties and seventies, there’s no better magazine to get your nostalgic dander up than Cinema Retro, published by my good buddy and film (and James Bond) aficionado, Lee Pfeiffer @ www.cinemaretro.com

- Zman

Today, our guest rater is my good buddy Niko, from In the Humidor.com. Let’s get smokin…

ABOUT OUR REVIEWER: Nick Cirksena is publisher/owner of InTheHumidor.com. He has been smoking cigars since the last cigar boom of the 90’s. Smoking everything under the sun has given him a wide range of tastes and experiences. Nick has been running In The Humidor for just about 2 years now and enjoy the hell out of it.

Nick resides in Texas and says that it’s great cigar smoking weather and wouldn’t trade it for anything. He’s happily married to his high school sweetheart and has 3 girls. He enjoys hanging out with the family, cigars, and computers and is looking forward to chatting and getting to know everyone here on Planet Z!

Enshrined in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame in 1972, he was a 15 time all-star, won ten World Series rings, hit 358 homeruns, and was named American League MVP on three different occasions.

But do you know of his son? Well if you follow baseball, then sure you do. Dale Berra was a hell of a third baseman, playing 8 seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and brief stints with the Yankees and Astros. But wait… do you know about his “other” son? Tim Berra went on to play in the NFL for the Baltimore Colts. But I’m talking about his OTHER son! He’s a member of the Metropolitan Cigar Society in Fairfield, New Jersey, the very same cigar club that I am a member of. Larry Berra is just a great guy and if you want to talk serious baseball and get a major league blast of nostalgia while you’re at it, just light up a stoag with Larry and the guy will have you riveted for hours.

“I grew up around many of the legendary New York Yankees, but I never even thought of them as ball players,” Larry says. “They were dad’s friends, and their sons were my friends. In fact, Ted Williams and guys from other teams were actually my favorite players because the guys I saw everyday were really my extended family.”

It’s amazing how a kid in his position didn’t have a clue what sheer greatness he was around day in and day out. Phil Rizutto was Larry’s godfather and guys like Mantle, Maris, Skowran, Bauer, McDoogle, and Howard were like his uncles. “Back then, the players kids were allowed in the locker room and I would talk to Mickey and Roger about school and stuff I was involved in as a kid. But no one loved kids more than Casey Stengel. He’d throw ballplayers and managers out of his office but the player’s children were ALWAYS allowed to stay.”

Larry was a dyed in the wool Yankee his entire life until that day in 1963 when New York management fired his dad – and he hated the team for a very long time. When Yogi coached the New York Mets in ’65, Larry’s allegiance moved cross-town as blue and orange became his favorite new color scheme. His dad coached the Mets for eight seasons, but when Gil Hodges passed away, number eight became Manager of the Amazins and in 1973 came within one game of winning the World Series, losing to an Oakland A’s powerhouse.

I asked Larry if “he” played and I got a “Hell yeah, I played! I was a catcher and when I was in the Florida State League in ‘71, I was the first player to hit a homerun off of Ron Guidry. And I never let him forget it, to this day, either!” Unfortunately, a rainy day and a soaking wet field caused Larry to blow out his knee and give up the game he loved. “My favorite stat of my dad’s is that even though his lifetime average was .285, he hit .320 with runners on base and .330 from the seventh inning on. He could always turn it on at the most clutch moments.”

Finally, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t ask Larry what “his” personal favorite Yogism is. “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

Well said Larry, and I’ll see you for a smoke at the club real soon.

-ZMAN

Jeff Borysiewicz, vice president of the Cigar Rights of America, is on the money when he says that cigar makers shouldn’t pick up the tab for children’s health care.

“Kids aren’t addicted to handmade cigars,” said Borysiewicz, who is also the president of Corona Cigar, an Orlando, Fla.-based manufacturer and distributor. “We’re an affordable hobby. We’re not part of the problem with children.”

Then there are pompous self-proclaimed demi-gods like American Cancer Society spokesman, Paul Hull, who says tobacco takes such a toll on health care, it’s only fair that all companies contribute.

Hey Paul, stop playing God for a minute and answer this… Are you going to raise the tax on candy, soft drinks, ice cream, chips, steak and burgers, too? Between heart problems and diabetes, those industries play a titanic role on health issues in this country, as compared to the cigar industry.

Hull continued with the following agenda-ridden rhetoric, “For the most part, connoisseurs of cigars tend to be in a higher socio-economic class anyway,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine this will have an effect on them.”

Wow… after reading a bone-headed and asinine statement like that, it’s blatantly obvious that the political stooges behind this ill-conceived bill (no pun intended) have no idea WTF they are talking about, whatsoever.

Hey Hull, you holier than though ashole, I’ve got two major points for you…

One is, to suggest that only the wealthy upper class smokes cigars is so goddamned ignorant on your part that I have trouble believing that you actually function in our society.

And secondly, when you talk about the tax increase having no affect on the smokers – what about the tens of thousands of tobacco workers who are employed in the United States, the thousands of shop owners, and the Latin American countries whose fragile island economies rely heavily on cigar sales in the US? The question to you, Mr. Hull, is… What the hell have YOU been smoking?

Both Newman brothers from Tampa’s JC Newman Cigar Company are quoted in the AP article and I have a phone call into them. When I hear something back I’ll post their response into this article.

In the meantime, this is a sad day, as well as another reminder that the intrusive hands of government can rape and destroy the rights of its tax burdened citizens. I can only imagine that General George and his white wigged brothers are rolling in their graves.

Read the AP Article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090401/ap_on_re_us/cigar_tax

- ZMAN

The Spring Issue of Cigar Magazine has arrived and I’m proud as all hell to have one of my finest articles published to date, entitled: The Smoking Life of Mr. Christian.

I’m very fortunate to have met and befriended some of the cigar industry’s biggest names and brightest stars, such as Lew Rothman, Daniel Nunez, Steve Saka, Gene Arganese, Rocky Patel, Benji Menendez, and of course, Christian Eiroa and the wonderful people at Camacho Cigars. This past July I attended the International Premium Cigars and Pipe Retailers (IPCPR) show at the Venetian in Vegas and spent three full days smoking my friggin’ brains out while shmoozin’ and hanging with so many good people. But I was most grateful to Christian, Dylan Austin and the Camacho gang for allowing me to make the comfy leather couch at their booth, my home base for three days.

Each night after the show, Camacho held a private party at the swank V-Bar, and all the beautiful people attended. Of course the million-dollar question is, “How the hell did I get in?”, but for some peculiar reason, the young Eiroa has a soft spot in his heart for me – probably to match the soft spot on my head. Fortunately we talked a lot and I was just blown away by the unbridled passion this man has for his craft. Christian has a tremendous sense of humor and can be a real ball breaker (and it’s most fun when you’re NOT the target), but most of all he’s a true Latin American born gentleman. While he’s great conversationalist and has a lot to say, it’s when you get him talking about blending cigars – then you see a fire in his eyes while turning very serious about the only thing he claims he was born to do.

Naturally when I got back home, I pitched Cigar Magazine on writing an article on the guy who is one of the new pioneers in an industry that so badly needs good people to step up and lead the charge. Not only am I quite happy with this most recent piece, but maybe the nicest satisfaction of all was Christian’s personal phone call to me yesterday, thanking me and the Cigar Mag staff so sincerely for doing him and his father proud. You can only imagine what that meant to me.

So I invite you to get your hands on the new Spring Issue that has some wonderful articles that you can light one up to and relax. My pal Miranda “Maduro Mistress” Osborne has a really nice story on CAO’s cigar dame, Aylin Ozgener. The Connecticut Valley, Then and Now is a wonderful journey through America’s north east cigar country. A Stroll Through Tampa’s Cigar Past is nostalgia at its finest, bringing you the history of our county’s most historic cigar manufacturing facilities. A Brief Recollection of Politics and Cigars waxes poetically about political power and handrolled stogies. The Art of the Cigar displays some beautiful Spring motifs from days past. Our Man in Havana, Simon Chase looks at The Origin of the Churchill Cigar. My bud, Steve Nathan reminisces about Drug Stores from old days who carried the finest and most fragrant pipe tobacco in the land. And the cover story is an excellent one by Frankie Seltzer, about Theo Folz and Jim Colluci, the Dynamic Duo of Altadis. And of course, Lew’s parting words always cap the entire read so nicely.

You can visit the website for a subscription, or go to JR Cigars site for a single issue. May as well purchase some sticks while you’re there. No they didn’t pay me to say that, but it sure doesn’t hurt.

- ZMAN

Subscriptions can be ordered by clicking the link below…

http://www.cigar-magazine.com

Individual copies of Cigar Magazine can be ordered by> CLICKING HERE!

Frosted Flakes), turn on one of three network channels and laugh like a couple of little mo-fo’s until our mom made us go outside and play. Anybody remember Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo Sherman and Mr. Peabody? These were freakin’ classics – long before computers, the internet, video games, or cable and satellite television – and long before political correctness.

In these animated classics, you could guarantee that sometime within the next ten minutes, some person or talking animal was going to completely get his ass kicked. Anvils fell from the sky, trains appeared through living rooms, dynamite blew shit up, dudes fell from twenty story buildings, and shotguns blasts to the face caused heavy gun powder burns at best. Popeye and Bluto unmercifully beat the bejezuz out of one another, the Coyote continually got his balls broken, and Tom the cat was always the unlucky recipient of a sledgehammer to the skull instead of the mouse dinner he had forever dreamed of. And, if you remember, many a character smoked a big, fat cigar.

Afterwards, we’d go out and play football or street hockey, tag, ride bikes, or whatever the hell, and we only came in for lunch and dinner. We rode our bicycles really far to another kid’s house, there were no cell phones to call moms, and the thought of a child predator lurking about was the absolute furthest thing from a parent’s mind.

Damn, those are great memories. I dug my early childhood. And you know what? Those cartoons subjected me to more violence than most Sopranos episodes (although I do admit it would have been pretty sweet to see Yosemitee Sam receive a good old fashioned, Jersey style curbing.) But I never thought about hurting other children, or causing vile mischief. I never wanted to stick explosives in someone’s pants, run them over with a bus, or bash their head in with a wooden club. (And don’t even get me started on the Three Stooges.) And yet I grew up to be a responsible adult, with a wife, two great kids, and a nice home.

Amazing – there were no politically correct do-gooders saving me from myself, but yet I turned out all right. There was no one rating kids shows to make sure that there’s one white kid, one black, one Asian, and one Hispanic in every episode. And cartoons weren’t on from morning ‘til night with their own dedicated channels – completely desensitizing kids where they think that this is the only type of programming on the tube. When I was young I also watched adult shows with my parents like Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts, Mission Impossible, All In the Family and the cast of Norman Lear spin-offs – not ten straight episodes of Sponge Bob Ass Pants, That’s So F@#king Raven, and other PC Disney Dreck.

But I turned out all right. Thank you mom and dad for raising me correctly – but with all the violent programming and un-supervision – I turned out just fine. (I know some of you may be debating that very thought, but I like to amuse myself, so just keep it quiet, thanks.)

OK, so I smoke a cigar or two, yeah, I admit it – picked that nasty habit up from Looney Tunes. But it’s all cool… I’m suing Warner Brothers for two hundred and thirty-million dollars for exposing me to second-hand cartoon cigar smoke.

-ZMAN