Smoke and Steel x The Burnable, good fucking god….

Some pairings are iconic. Wallace and Gromit, bacon and eggs, Jack and Coke, Hall and Oates, cocaine and waffles, peanut butter and naked ladies… sorry, I started Talladega Night-ing there. But one pairing that might top them all? Smoke & Steel and The Burnable.  Ok, probably not.

So what is Smoke and Steel? It’s a podcast brought to you by the good folks at Stogie Review. In their own words:

Smoke and Steel is what happens when a group of cigar-smoking degenerates grab a mic and let the conversation roll. Born in a garage, raised in a lounge, and fueled by good cigars and unfiltered stories. This podcast is part hangout, part therapy session, and part ‘what the hell did he just say?’ We don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we don’t expect you to either.

Expect real talk, ridiculous laughs, and the kind of banter that usually stays behind lounge doors. Sometimes it’s deep, sometimes it’s dumb, but it’s always real. Hosted by a rotating crew of misfits from all walks of life.

I was introduced to the podcast by Kyle and Big Rob from the LA Cigar Collective. Kyle is friends with Eric from the podcast; they’ve known each other for years through other cigar-related Discord groups. As a result, the guys from LACC were early guests on the podcast and have been on several times since. Over time, I got to know the guys from Smoke and Steel, and we started to talk about me coming on for a guest episode. This would’ve been virtual, as Smoke and Steel is filmed in Gilbertsville, PA—not exactly around the corner from New Orleans. We had a brief taste of that when I joined their “Viewer Appreciation” episode on Cinco de Mayo.

But as luck would have it, a scheduled work trip brought me to New Jersey. I reached out to Eric and asked if they’d be willing to do a Thursday episode, as that would work perfectly with my schedule since it was still a 2 hour drive from my client’s location. The guys were happy to oblige, and we put it on our calendars. Sweet!

But you know I’m a little fucking extra sometimes (okay, all the time), and I decided to do a couple of things in an attempt to make the episode more memorable.

First up: Smoke & Steel Bingo Boards.

Ironically enough, I had already been working on the idea, but Walt made an offhand comment on one episode about how often the guys repeat themselves and how somebody should make a Bingo board out of it all. Fucker! GET OUT OF MY HEAD. But I was still going to do it. I scraped roughly 40 episodes’ worth of transcripts and fed it all through Gemini to create a master list.

This is what we ended up with:

I took all those different statements and put them into six different bingo board layouts. Want to play along? I’ve uploaded them here, so feel free to play Bingo with any episode!

I took all those different statements and put them into six different bingo board layouts. Want to play along? I’ve uploaded them here, so feel free to play Bingo with any episode!

Second: Fuck those guys right in the mouth!

They’ve done some blind tastings before, and since I like to play cigar reviewer, it seemed like a great opportunity to prank everybody with something I knew most of them would absolutely hate. 😂

While I enjoy a cigar with a sweet tip, I know it’s a profile most of them despise. So I went into the reserves and pulled out some Drew Estate Deadwood Girl With No Name cigars. Now, you might not know that there are a lot of retailer-specific versions of this cigar out there, and Drew Estate used three different wrappers. The JR Cigars version is a 5” x 50 Robusto with an Ecuadorian Connecticut Shade wrapper. PERFECT.

The only thing left to do was to mask the identity of the cigars so they wouldn’t know what they were smoking. I could’ve just trimmed the bands off and brought unbanded cigars, but I decided to take things a step further and printed out some custom bands to affix to them. It’s pretty easy to do once you think about it. I just used a little Scotch tape on the outside of the band, which isn’t the prettiest, but it’s totally functional.

Overall, it was a blast. And other than the funky taste I left in the guys’ mouths (HAAA!), they had a lot of fun, too. To make it up to them, I also brought a nice selection of extra cigars for them. I said whatever they didn’t smoke, they could use to seed their next box pass. Those greedy fuckers took ALL OF THEM, lol. I can’t blame them; it was a solid mix with some real stunners in there.

I’ve already ruined enough of the surprises from the episode, so I’ll leave the rest for you to watch!  If I haven’t scarred them for life, maybe they’ll have me on again!