With this being the last week of the regular season of Major League Baseball, I welcome you to the 15th installment of the Stogie Press “Last Weeks Cigar Social Media News and Questions”, where Boston Jimmie scours the world-wide web of cigars and summarizes relevant news and questions of the past week. On the following Monday, my friend Kap Kaplowitz then shreds my writing and puts his unique commentary on select news bites from today’s article, during his Kaplowitz Radio Monday cast.
The news this week has been dominated by U.S. Supreme Court news. I will not get political here because this country is divided enough. No matter where you looked there was news coverage and posts on the Supreme Court. It was dominated that on Friday, there was a 7.7 earthquake and a tsunami in Indonesia but that coverage was all but void. To say we were all fixated on the Supreme Court would be an understatement.
Of course if you looked a little deeper you might find some news, as I did when looked through my various feeds. The news is sparse but there were two news articles that were worth mentioning and of course an excellent Question of the Week.
Here are this weeks Social Media Cigar News stories and Questions for the week ending September 28, 2018.
- Box of Stogies Ignites Fire in the Bronx
- R.I.P. Al Matthews A.K.A. Sgt. Apone
- Question of the Week
Box of Stogies Ignites Fire in the Bronx
I came across a New York Post article that talks about a man who walked into a Bronx deli at about 5 o’clock in the morning and asked the clerk if you could leave with the box of cigars without paying for them, with the promise that he would bring back the money. The clerk said he couldn’t so the man left the deli and came back shortly later and doused the front of the store with a flammable liquid from a red jug and ignited it. The clerk was able to put the fire out but what kind of world are we in when a box of cigars is worth committing arson for.
R.I.P. Al Matthews A.K.A. Sgt. Apone
If you are fan of the Aliens movie franchise, then you know who Al Matthews is. He was the cigar chomping “Sgt. Apone”. This brother of the leaf was 75 years when he passed away in his home in Alicante on Spain’s Mediterranean coast last Saturday. Matthews was a real life U.S. Marine who served six years in Vietnam and was the recipient of 13 combat awards and two Purple Hearts.
As an actor, he played numerous roles in a variety of movie box office hits besides Aliens, including Superman III (1983), The Fifth Element (1997) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), but it was his role in Aliens that was his best character in my opinion. If you recall the scene when the crew is waking up from deep sleep, Sgt. Apone emerges, takes out his stogie and walks around the ship shouting orders.
“All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the Corps. A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal’s a banquet. Every paycheck a fortune. Every formation a parade. I LOVE the Corps!”
Here is the clip of the scene:
We loved you Al, may you rest in peace!
Question of the Week
This weeks question of the week comes from no other than Juan Cancel from Cubariqueño Cigar Company (the Protocol Guys). Juan asked the question – What makes a premium cigar premium?
Instead of answering that question directly, he pointed us to his friend Michael Herklots who posted a cool video that explains it for all to see.