CigarFox

The Triple Crown, like so many of our best traditions, wasn’t created, it grew into being. During the late 1800’s three different tracks created races to test the new crop of three year olds. These three races, the Belmont Stakes, the Preakness and the Kentucky Derby were held in the same year for the first time in 1875. It wasn’t until 44 years later that Sir Barton (1919) became the first horse to win all three. The term, Triple Crown, wasn’t coined until 1930 when Daily Racing Form’s columnist, Charles Hatton, used it while covering Gallant Fox’s winning efforts.

In the 131 years that have passed only 11 horses have managed to accomplish what is arguably the most difficult feat in sports. Compared to the Triple Crown, no-hitters in baseball are an everyday occurrence; back to back championships in other sporting events, a dime a dozen; there have been more solar eclipses in our lifetime than Triple Crown winners and each year more people are struck by lightening than the total number of Triple Crown winners in history.

Some of horse racing’s most legendary names failed to capture this event. Man o’ War managed only 2 out of the 3 legs (did not start in the Kentucky Derby); Seabiscuit, after losing 17 straight races as a two year old wasn’t even considered (although he did later beat 1937’s Triple Crown winner, War Admiral in a match race); Cigar never competed, starting his great winning streak late in his fourth year.

What makes this event so difficult to win? Several factors have to be considered. First there’s the age of the horses. Triple Crown races are limited to 3 year olds, juveniles, all of whom officially have their birthday on January 1st of each year. By the first Saturday in May (the running of the Kentucky Derby), though most of the contestants will have actually reached their third birthday, they won’t realize their full growth and potential until their fourth or fifth years.

Another significant aspect is the shortness of time between races. Most stakes graded horses of today run with 30 to 60 days off between races, but Triple Crown contenders must run 3 grueling races within the span of 35 days. Notably Sir Barton, the first Triple Crown winner, won the Preakness only 4 days after winning the Kentucky Derby while today’s challengers do have 14 days between the two races.

Perhaps the most important factor is the distance of these races, the Derby is a mile and a quarter (10 furlongs), the Preakness, a mile and three sixteenths (9.5 furlongs) and the Belmont at a mile and a half (12 furlongs) is the longest of the three. The horses that survive their attempt at the Triple Crown will seldom, if ever, compete at these distances again. And yes, survival is a consideration. Many Triple Crown hopefuls are never able to compete again after the Belmont, even potential superstars such as Smarty Jones in 2004.

Will Barbaro be the next Triple Crown winner? He has the breeding and the talent, but as of this writing twenty horses have won the first two legs of the Triple Crown only to fail at Belmont. Twenty five more have won two of the three races, but maybe this year…

The Triple Crown stands as the ultimate test of greatness, and that’s why on the first Saturday in May each year, America’s thoughts turn to horse racing and the hope of just one more Triple Crown winner. Because we do, after all, need another hero.

Triple Crown Facts:

The Belmont Stakes was first run in 1867 for $1,850.00 at the Jerome Park Race Course in New York, and was originally a mile and five eights, but has also been run at a mile and one eighth and a mile and three eights before settling at a mile and a half in 1926

The first Preakness Stakes was held in 1873 with a prize of $1,850.00 at Pimlico Race Course in Maryland at a distance of a mile and a half, but has been run at six different distances between a mile and a mile and a half before stabilizing at a mile and three sixteenths in 1925

The first Kentucky Derby was in 1875 for a purse of $2,850.00 at the Louisville Jockey Club Course, later renamed Churchill Downs, at a mile and a half, but was shortened to a mile and a quarter in 1896

Since 1875 there have been 5 years when it was not possible to have a Triple Crown winner:

In 1890 the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness where on the same day at the same track
In 1911 and 1912 the Belmont Stakes was not held
In 1917 and 1922 the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness where held on the same day

Only Triple Crown winner to directly sire another, Gallant Fox (1930) sired Omaha (1935)

Only two trainers have trained more than one Triple Crown winner, James Fitzsimmons – Gallant Fox (1930) and Omaha (1935) and Ben A. Jones – Whirlaway (1941) and Citation (1948)

Only one jockey has ridden more than one Triple Crown winner, Eddie Arcaro – Whirlaway (1941) and Citation (1948)

No filly has ever won the Triple Crown

Number of living Triple Crown winners – none, Seattle Slew (1977) passed away in 2002

Number of Triple Crown winners to win the Breeders’ Cup – none, Last Triple Crown winner Affirmed (1978), inaugural Breeder’s Cup 1984

About the Author:

C Wayne is the Executive Vice-President of Picks and Plays, Inc. and an author and lecturer on gaming and handicapping. You are invited to visit
http://www.picksandplays.com
and receive free membership and the free daily report from the home of ‘The Best in Handicapping’.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – The Triple Crown – Horse Racing’s Ultimate Challenge

Cigar Rollers, Arthur Avenue Retail Market, Belmont, Bronx

Perhaps it’s because there’s a close cultural connection between great music and smoky bars. Anyone who knows anything about jazz knows that its truly legendary improvisers – Coltrane, Bird, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie – cut their teeth playing in bars so smoky that it’s a good thing everybody was too busy improvising to need sheet music.

Or maybe it’s because both cigars and music are contemplative pleasures. A casual smoker can get a quick tobacco-fix from a cheap cigarette, just as a casual music listener can enjoy the background hum of pop songs on the car radio. But to really enjoy a great performance, or a good tobacco, sitting still and paying attention are necessary.

In any case, music and cigar smoking seem to belong together, and some of the most famous musicians are (or were) cigar devotees – just as, it turns out, one of the most famous of cigar devotees is also a musician. Avo Uvezian, the maker of Avo cigars, is also a respected classical and jazz pianist, a Julliard graduate, and even the one-time official pianist of the Shah of Iran. After a successful musical career based first in his native Middle East, and then in the contiguous United States, Uvezian moved in the 1980s to Puerto Rico, where he opened a restaurant and bar and dabbled in cigarmaking. After customers at his Puerto Rico restaurant told him how much they enjoyed some cigars he’d had rolled himself, from a blend of tobaccos he hand-picked, he opened his own Dominican Republic-based cigar factory, working with noted cigar maker Hendrik Kelner. Now his company makes three million cigars a year, and Uvezian himself still makes music – his first CD, Legacy, was released in 2004.

For another example, consider the great trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, who smokes, by his own estimation, four or five cigars a day. Music allowed the Cuban-born Sandoval to rise to fame in his native Cuba – and to defect from that country in 1990, during a long stint playing concerts in Europe (he now lives in Florida). Sandoval has played the horn for Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, Gloria Estefan and Johnny Mathis, Michel Legrand and Frank Sinatra. His technically flawless playing has resulted in his being the kind of musician whose work is often known by people who couldn’t name him – he is brought in as a session musician by some of the world’s finest and best-known (see above), and he often scores movie soundtracks. As his work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Leningrad Philharmonic prove, he’s even proved able to handle the rigors of classical music as well as jazz – sometimes doing both in the same concert.

The cigar-music connection is especially strong in Cuba, known as one of the world’s cigar capitals. Both cigars and music are staples of island life (the cigar remains one of the island’s most prominent exports), and the strength of both in Cuban culture depends partly on the nimble and intelligent blending of elements from everywhere – wrappers and fillers from different parts of Latin America, rhythms and melodies from the African coast, South America, US pop, Western European classical, etc. In other words, Cuban cigarmaking and Cuban music have both survived, and flourished, by mixing and melding.

For generations, cigar rollers were entertained by the sound of paid musicians or by music from the radio. (This tradition continues even now in the Dominican Republic, where workers at the Arturo Fuente factory, among other places, are treated to the work of performing musicians.) With this tradition in place, it’s no wonder that some of Cuba’s music legends got their start as cigar-factory entertainers; and since tobacco smoking has been a part of Latin American life far longer than it has in some other places – Columbus’s sailors noted it being smoked in what is now modern Cuba in the year 1493, so there’s many more centuries of lore to draw on its psychological and emotional associations are deeper and richer, providing better material for songwriters to mine. Thus famous Cuban songwriter Beny More, himself a former entertainer for the cigar-factory workers, touches on the song in a number of his classic compositions.

About the Author:

CigarFox provides you the opportunity to build your own sampler of the finest cigars that include cigar brands like Montecristo, Romeo & Julieta, H Upmann, Macanudo, Cohiba, Partagas, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1200 different cigars! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Cigars And Music: A Natural Combination

Premium Cigars – manufacture and visit to Fuente factory

chalumeau à eau !

Doug Barnhart, Smokehouse Master of Cigar International’s Freedom Event, reviews Lars Tetens ChBEz

guns held high 433

Wherever you go today, you will face a constant attack of pollution; not only from air, but also from water and noise. There are almost as many types of air pollution as there are potential solutions. No matter what type of air purification system you’re looking for, you should know that there is not one product on the market today that can solve every problem.

In order to find out which type of air purification solution is the most suitable for you. It is therefore necessary for you to understand all these five typed of air pollution first.

1. Radon Gas Pollution: Radon is a completely odorless, tasteless and colorless gas, and is the heaviest of all known gasses. It is caused by the radioactive breakdown of uranium inside the earth. When radon is cooled below freezing, it turns a brilliant phosphorescent shade of yellow, which turns orange-red as it gets colder. Radon is also the second leading cause of lung cancer. Smoking exacerbates the affects of radon. Radon is found all around us, in our homes, our yards and the world around us.

Recommended Solution: The best solution to this form of pollution is to first of all test your home (a simple test is available at most hardware stores) and then to seal all cracks and openings in your home’s foundation. If the problem merits it, you may need to have a certified contractor install a ventilation system inside your home.

2. Chemical Fumes and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). This type of pollution comes from chemicals like benzene and formaldehyde, the chemical fumes that are constantly seeping from carpets, upholstery, furniture, draperies, household cleaning products, beauty products such as nail polish, removers, etc. They also come from cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke, building construction, etc. Many of these chemicals have been identified as carcinogens.

Recommended Solution: Currently the best solution on the market for this type of pollution are products that produce catalytic oxidation.

3. Microbial Causing Pollution. Microbials are microscopic bacteria, fungi, mycotoxins created by a fungus, mildew, mold spores and viruses. They can be as small as .001 microns. Microbials love to live in warm, damp places, or under your carpet, in your walls and in heating and air conditioning ducts.

Recommended Solution: Currently the best solutions on the market for this type of pollution are those that produce oxidation, which kills microbials.

4. Odor Causing Pollution. Odor comes from many different places – food, animals, human bodies, cigarettes, cigars and pipe smoke, sports shoes, clothing and equipment, etc. Although not necessarily dangerous, if you’ve ever walked into your teenage son’s room after he’s come back from a football game and taken a deep breath – you know it can be very unpleasant!

Recommended Solution: Currently, the best solutions on the market for this type of pollution are odor sponges, ozone and oxidation.

5. Particulate Causing Pollution. Particulates are those little floating things you see when the sun comes shining in through your windows, and include dust, dust mites, dust mite feces, pet dander, skin flakes (what dust mites eat), pollen, smoke particles and allergens.

Recommended Solution: Currently the best solutions on the market for this type of pollution are infiltration and negative ions.

With this basic understanding about pollution you are now ready to make that all important decision about which system is going to be best for you. The choice is yours!

About the Author:

Dr. Drew Henry maintains a number of air purifier websites, including Air Purifier Secrets and Air Purifier Information Now. Please visit his websites and find many interesting articles about air purifier.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Air Purification

Smoking Ventilations Systems, Anti Smokers lie!

FRANKEN-TAR Guitar

Cigar smoking enjoyed an abrupt, and steep, spike in popularity during the 1990s, after years of decline. Cigar bars and shops sprang up even in midsize towns and cities, while profits experienced heady growth. But during all the years between the industry’s heyday and this 1990s revival, these fictional cigar smokers from stage, screen and literature never stopped puffing away.

James Bond
This tuxedo-clad, luxury-obsessed, cynical secret agent first appeared in Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel Casino Royale, in which the young Bond, a recent addition to the “00″ (double-o) ranks of the British Secret Intelligence Service, proves his mettle by winning a high-stakes game of roulette against industrialist/rogue villain Hugo Drax. The success of this novel led to a long-running film series, television adaptations, many Fleming-penned sequels and – after Fleming’s death – various new sequels by such authors as John Gardner, Charlie Higson and even Kingsley Amis.

Perhaps his biggest mark has been made on the medium of film, where his adventures have been followed by millions who’ve never read the Fleming novels or their offspring. Sean Connery made the character an icon in such films as Dr. No (1962), Goldfinger (1964) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971), with his old-blooded suavity and crackling, slightly Scots-inflected accent (“I’ll play yer game, y’rogue”).

Bond has been played with great deftness and assurance by actors Timothy Dalton and Pierce Bronson as well, though Roger Moore, with his painted-on hair and flippant manner, kept the role the longest (from 1973’s Live and Let Die all the way to 1985’s A View To a Kill).

Most recently, Daniel Craig has injected the role with a new pathos and toughness, in 2006’s Casino Royale, perhaps the most critically-lauded Bond film yet. (But spare a thought for poor George Lazenby, who essayed the role in 1969’s From Her Majesty’s Secret Service – this writer’s personal favorite.)

Bond is a heavy smoker, and a discriminating one. He smokes both cigars and cigarettes, preferring a blend of Balkan and Turkish tobacco with a high tar content. (Recent Bond movies have curtailed this habit somewhat.)

Holden Caulfield
Like so many precocious adolescents, Holden Caulfield enjoys a good cigar – besides the taste, it’s a rite of passage for a soul that seems irretrievably trapped in transit. In J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye – for many readers, the great American novel of adolescence, though it had and continues to have its detractors – Holden runs away from his boarding school, Pencey Prep, condemning what he considers its “phoniness,” and spends a memorably disjointed weekend in New York City looking for something worth hanging his life onto.

He visits old friends, tries (and fails) to lose his virginity, drinks himself into semicoherence, and is hit on by one of his old teachers. Along the way, he treats readers to his reflections on the dishonesty, image-consciousness, and hypocrisy of adult society, sexual politics, and popular culture “I hate the movies!” while displaying, and rebuking himself for, some of these same traits. (“You’re always saying ‘Glad to’ve met you’ to people you’re not glad to’ve met at all.”) He washes away obscene graffiti written near the site of his old elementary school, and wishes that he could rescue his younger sister, Phoebe, from society’s various affronts to childhood innocence; but, finally, he realizes that nobody can scrub all the dirt from life, and it’s foolish to try.

Perry White/J. Jonah Jameson
What would a superhero be without his secret identity – and without the cigar-chomping editor-in-chief who makes that secret identity’s life painful? Perry White, the larger-than-life editor of the Daily Planet, first appeared in the seventh issue of Superman (1940), and has bedeviled the existence of Clark Kent (that paper’s mild-mannered reporter) ever since. He is rarely pictured without his cigar. He is also a fan of Elvis.

J. Jonah Jameson, editor of the New York-based Daily Bugle, is just as crusty in his demeanor as Perry White, but, as the editor of a Rupert Murdoch-ish sensationalist tabloid, his sense of ethics don’t match those of his Daily Planet colleague. When Spider-Man begins his New York crimefighting career, Jameson wages a smear campaign against the hero – not knowing that one of his many underpaid freelance employees, photographer Peter Parker, is Spider-Man’s alter ego. But Jameson has a good side – as a young reporter he waged similarly tireless campaigns against organized crime and in support of civil rights.

About the Author:

CigarFox provides you the opportunity to build your own sampler of the finest cigars that include cigar brands like Montecristo, Romeo & Julieta, H Upmann, Macanudo, Cohiba, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1000 different brands! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Four Famous Fictional Cigar Smokers

BluesBeaten Redshaw – “All My Life” on the Diddley Bow – UK’s first ever Cigar Box Guitar festival!

Coloured Cigarettes in Berkshire/Online…?

Ok, so not long ago, my friend got some coloured cigarettes for her 18th birthday. They were the Sombranie Cocktail ones. I’d quite like to buy one of my friends in Devon some, but I don’t really fancy purchasing them online, as I know it can be a little dodgy, so was wondering if there were any shops in Berkshire that sold them? If not, can anyone recommend a reliable site? Thanks!

Just look for a local tobacconist – they all do them!

“Pained and Painted” — Spoken Word by Clint Catalyst