How many weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations, or conventions have we all attended? A hundred? At every such affair, whether smoking is allowed inside or whether you have to step outside, the majority of people are smoking cigarettes, while just a handful will fight up a cigar. Yet, even if the smoking crowd were numerous enough to fill Yankee Stadium, you will never ever, ever find cigarette smokers in heated debates about whose cigarette is made better, tastes better, costs more, costs less ... BUT ... cigars are a different story!

Cigars are all about passion and individuality. Cigarettes are not. There are no vintage cigarettes, any no oily cigarette wrappers; frankly, there are no elements of individuality involved in cigarettes at all. There's no arduous hand labor, no family heritage, no history. There's no nuthin' about cigarettes that makes any one of 'em any different than the next billion that are pumped out of stainless-steel machines the size of locomotives.

People light up a cigar as a form of relaxation. People converse about cigars because it's a hobby In fact, cigar smokers and cigarette smokers are just about as different as people can be. A cigarette smoker may "walk a mile for a Camel," but a cigar smoker is not gonna walk a mile for anything, unless you put a gun to his head. A Tarryton smoker "would rather fight than switch," while a cigar smoker is just "chomping at the bit" to try the next "Super Premium, Mongo Calidad" cigar. Cigarette smokers don't save certain "limited-production" cigarettes to pass out to friends; they don't "age" their Marlboros to see if they taste better next year, they don't comment on the texture of the wrapper, the color of the ash ... but we do. When's the last time a friend of yours came up to you with a big grin on his face and said, "Hey Joe, I just had a baby girl, 6 pounds 3 ounces ... have a cigarette?"

Well, if you want to talk about cigars, something revolutionary has happened. Now you don't have to wait for a chance meeting on the sidewalk outside a theater or banquet hall ... you can talk your heads off about cigars all day and all night on the Internet. There are virtual armies of "cigar crazies" just waiting for people like you to sign on to bulletin boards and chat rooms that are singularly devoted to the love of fine cigars and, due to the worldwide nature of the Internet, they are smokers from all over the world.

Now, before I give you the addresses for these Web sites, I have to warn you: most, if not all, the people who write or respond to messages on these bulletin boards and chat rooms, are not playing with a full deck. Many of them are: (a) actually at work (and sneaking onto the cigar bulletin boards when their boss ain't watching), (b) incarcerated in homes for the mentally disadvantaged (formerly known as loony bins), (c) cigar retailers (known as "Spammers") surreptitiously posting laudatory remarks about their own products, or derogatory remarks about the products of their competitors, (d) self professed experts, freely dispensing erroneous information garnered through the purchase of a single cigar, or (e) self-professed experts, freely dispensing erroneous information garnered through chatting with someone, who knew someone, whose brother-in-law worked for someone who happened to purchase that same cigar four years ago, in a gas station in Altoona, PA.

Finally, before entering any of the bulletin boards or chat rooms, you need to know about "Flamers." These are people who take particular delight in posting numerous insulting, derogatory, and off-color remarks that are specifically designed to anger people into posting equally incendiary responses. Furthermore, the Internet is anonymous in use - you pick a "handle" to call yourself by in all your correspondence. Let's say your name happens to be John Meuhleinschlanger (which just happens to be the name of a guy I was in the Marine Corps with) - you might call yourself "Mule." Because nobody knows who Mule really is, you're free to say anything you please without anyone knowing who you really are, where you work, or coming over to your house to break your nose.

Anybody can be anyone they wanna be on the Internet, and I have seen many posts from people who claimed to be me or some other well-known person in the cigar industry. Once you reply to a message on a bulletin board, your reply becomes part of a "thread" (a series of posts related to the original topic message).

However, in most cases, the threads quickly degenerate into conversations that may have nothing to do with the topic, or are interspersed with related and non-related posts. For example, you will post a new message, or "thread," which merely says:

From: Mule@aol.com: "My tobacconist just got a new Dominican called Montecristo Fer de Lance. It's supposed to be even better than the Cuban Montecristo. Has anyone had one, and what do you think of it?"
Then you get answers like this:
From: CigarDr@ mindspring.com: "A wonderful cigar, l smoked it down to the nub."
From: Willy@ethernet.com: "It was good, but your momma was better."
From: Liebowitz@aol.com: Vat means nub? Mein cigars are all mit out nubs."
From: Jose@nic.net: "My fambly bean een deh tobaccos beezniss for 40 generation... een fack, we are de ohlest growers uv cigar leafs in de worl. Eef ju ard reely interressed een fining de bess cigar nubs, den ju chould esstop by our Web Site at www.havanub.com. "
From: Nerd@aol.com: "Arnazon.corn has some great books on early 20th century nubs."
From: Horny4U@earthlink.com "An Amazon lives in my building. She's got the best set of nubs anywhere."
From: Pierre LePue@aol.com: J’aime les nubs. Le plus grande, le meilleur.
From: Redneck@piggypowercom: "What's a froggy know about subs? We invented the sub right here in Bentonville, Arkansas, fer cryin' out loud."
From: OFlynn@blarneycom: "There were pubs in Ireland, before the first pilgrim landed at Little Rock, you horse's ass."

Sometimes "threads" will go on for hundreds of posts, meandering from subject to subject, or frequently disintegrating into "flame" wars, when someone happens to post something that another deems to be offensive. Nevertheless there is much to be learned on the bulletin boards. Be forewarned, however: participation in bulletin boards can be habit-forming, and you will soon acquire a compulsion not only to read other people's posts, but their responses to your posts as well. As a general rule, the further into the early morning hours (like 3 AM) posts are made, the more absurd they become, as people's minds turn into mush.

Nevertheless, these bulletin boards are one of the best things in the cigar industry because they're free and they're fun, and they are available 24 hours a day, every day.

Well folks, it's 2 o'clock in the morning and I gotta get to bed, but first maybe I'll check a few bulletin boards to see what's goin' on. These are the best and most active bulletin boards I've found: alt.smokers.cigars, www.jrcigars.com, www.smokemag.com, www.cigargroup.com, and www.cigarfamily.com. These five boards probably contain 90% of the posts made concerning cigars.

And let's not forget smokemag.com, which is now including LEW'S NEWS, where I attempt to help real "cigar crazies" keep up with the latest happenings in the Cigar Biz. The nice thing about the Internet is that it can change every day, while magazines like this can only change four times a year.

See ya' next issue ...