Cigar-lover Kinky Friedman stands tall (or at least leans back and lights up) against PC culture.

Kinky Friedman is a laid-back sort of cat -- mentally, philosophically and at this moment physically, his chair so tipped-back he's almost parallel with the floor. Balanced in his impressively mustachioed mouth (and burning hotter than a stretch of El Paso asphalt in mid-July) is a cigar from his eponymous brand. "If I ran for governor again and won," he says, pausing to loose a truly impressive cloud of carbonized tobacco, "first thing I'd do would be get rid of that un-American smoking ban."

Friedman, it seems, thinks no small thoughts. And why should he? The combination country-music singer (who once toured with Bob Dylan), mystery-novel writer, Texas Monthly columnist and onetime Lone Star State gubernatorial candidate is equipped to unleash biting, poignant insights at the drop of a ten-gallon hat.

"Always remember," he wrote a few years back, "only two kinds of people can get away with wearing their hats indoors: cowboys and Jews." Or both, in his case.

Speaking of which, the cigar he's smoking is called the Texas Jewboy, after Friedman's second country-rock band. It's a torpedo, and the name makes it pretty much a guaranteed conversation starter (or a guaranteed brawl-sparker, if you light up in a crowd that doesn't quite get the joke). He's been a die-hard puffer, if you believe the legend, for 61 of his 63 years -- ever since his somewhat perverse Uncle Eli decided that a stogie would make an ideal pacifier.

Given all that, he's more than happy to be a pitchman for his own cigar line, which he started "to break me of my nonstop Cuban habit." Made by Nestor Plasencia in Honduras, the cigars include The Governor (a massive toro gordo), the Kinkycristo (another torpedo), The Willie (a twist head and shaggy foot—squint and it kind of looks like Friedman's good buddy Willie Nelson in profile), the Utopian (a toro), the Kinky Lady (Lonsdale), and the Kinksters (robusto, in bundles). Tobaccos hail from Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, blended for a slight spiciness and full-bodied flavor.

"Closest I've come to a Cuban," he says of the sticks.

The cigars aren't his only new baby. His own version of the Never-Ending Tour remains never ending, and he just released another book, subtly titled, What Would Kinky Do? How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World. It's a change of pace from his mystery novels, wherein characters triumph via homespun wisdom and high-quality whiskey.

If only life's bigger issues could be solved the same way. Friedman ran for Texas governor in 2006 as an independent, earning a respectable 12.6 percent of the vote. Now he's contemplating another run at it, this time as a Democrat. Near the top of the election agenda: ensuring a Kinkycristo could be lit in an Austin bar without worrying about a fine.

kinkycigars.com

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