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Transcript
Hello and welcome to Erasable the Pencil podcast. This is episode number eight. I am Johnny Gamber on hosting duties this week, and I am joined by two of my pencil heroes for our pencil hero. Episode number one, Tim Wasem and Andy Welfle. How are you guys doing?
Hey, very good. How are you?
Well, excellent. So today, after we do our many, many, many fresh points and probably talk for a long time about the new field notes that everyone's very excited about, we're going to each pick one of our pencil heroes and talk about why they're our pencil hero. And I don't know if we're going to read little passages, but I have one for Hemingway. Do you guys want to say who your heroes are as a little preview?
I don't think.
It's probably not much of a surprise to people who've heard other episodes, but my pencil hero is. I had no choice other than John Steinbeck, my pencil hero. I couldn't. There are other people I have in mind that I'll do for future ones, but I couldn't in good conscience not do John Steinbeck for the first one, the class of June 2014.
How about you, Mr. Andy? So mine, I took it in a slightly different direction. I actually picked the guy who first kind of like talked me into blogging about pencils, and that's Don Bell. And so I was just going to tell a couple little stories about him. He ran the Pencil Things website and I actually haven't heard from him in like almost two years, so I hope he's all right. But anyhow, so that's somebody I know personally, but eventually I'll do like a literary hero, somebody like that. Excellent.
And like Tim, I would not be able to sleep tonight if I didn't do my big hero. That's Ernest Hemingway, which I think I mentioned that once before. That's the guy that got me into pencils.
As Tim said, it's for Father's Day. You have Papa for Father's Day.
Yeah.
Even though he was a terrible father.
He had some cats, though. He was a good cat dad.
Yeah.
The six toed guys.
Yeah. Say he loved him so much they had six toes.
Yeah.
That is love. Okay, before we do our fresh points, I thought I would spring something on you guys that I didn't tell you about ahead of time. I was wondering what sort of pencils is in your. What pencil you have in your hand right now or the last one you just used and what you were writing on with. This is sort of like a voyeuristic thing.
Well, I'll go first. Sure. I have a few. I have three set up in front of me. I am writing with. I talked about it a long time ago but remember when I broke that Black wing and so I was writing with it from the other end, the Black wing. So I got that. I have a mono 100 HB that I've been using a lot over the last couple days and then I have one pencil that I'll talk about in my fresh points but it is a DC find pencil I bought on my trip to dc.
That's cool.
I am writing on one of my guilty stationary pleasures which is the cheap yellow legal pad which I love. So it's an Office Depot brand this time but I've got some, some up and up Target brand ones that are pretty fantastic too.
Hey, they're easy on the ice.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's me.
I actually have a couple I was just holding. I'll talk a little bit more about it in the freshpoints but a guy named Dr. Hans Noodleman who I have been in kind of email contact with a little bit, I think I may have copied you guys on it, sent me some really cool old walled pencils. They make a bunch of different bike parts and he bought a huge lot of them on, on ebay and I actually he sent me one of, one of the Wald pencils and he gave me a bunch so I'll be sending a couple to you guys too. And I. And he also sent me one of those. Oh, they're from Jetpens. They're the, the Nanodia pens. I think it's a. Is it a Mitsubishi pen? Yeah, it's a Mitsubishi and it's, it has that like, like the Nano, like diamond decors or whatever they are. It's probably a gimmick but I'm just about to sharpen it up and give it a try tomorrow. So that's the other one I have in my hand. I'll have a link to it in the show notes. And by the way, Johnny, where can one find the show notes?
One can find the show notes at Erasable Us eight.
Yes, Lucky eight. What about you, Johnny, what do you have in your hand?
Right now I am sitting here sniffing a micegrave My palace. Those sort of. They're, what do they call them? A junior jumbo or a semi jumbo pencil. They're sort of halfway between fat and thin. They're very, very fragrant. Yeah, very hard for the. They're sort of like a laddie. But then the Lead is a lot harder.
Are you getting high? Yes, super high from Cedar.
I hope no one can tell. I have a little tiny pocket notebook from Wright Pads in Baltimore that is stamped with cool Civil War era
aged
letters that I got to use. Went down there one time, which is very cool.
That is cool.
I'm bragging.
I live in Baltimore. All the cool places are by me.
Yeah, I go out drinking with the stationary dirts.
I drank Blackwing beer.
Yes. That is like the unofficial beer of the Baltimore stationery geeks.
They need to have a special Palomino Blackwing edition. They need to see them with Charles. Charles, if you listen to this podcast, you need to talk to the Blackwing Brewery guys and make a. Make one that looks like a feral or something like that.
It's Union Brewery. Oh, Union Brewery.
Okay.
Yeah.
Also we have a little giveaway this. Or not a little giveaway. We've got a very nice giveaway this week from our friends at Word Notebooks. They have some really cool. I don't know if they're like seasonal or just periodical releases. And the newest one is called the Indigo series, which is three different books of the same blue and they're very, very pretty. And they sent us five sets that we're going to give away next week and we're going to tell you how to win them at the end of the podcast.
So I know nobody's going to be skipping ahead, but yes, you have to
listen to the whole thing.
Dr. Claw speaks.
So do you guys want to move on to our fresh points?
Sure. That was a little Shredder esque too.
Turtles.
The Turtle Kids Gadget.
All right, so I guess I'll start the fresh points out. This is Andy. I'm here to talk about the new field notes book, but not the one that you guys think. I'm not going to talk about the arts and sciences one because Johnny's the only one who actually has one in his hand right now. So, Tim, you don't have a new Fields Notes field?
I haven't ordered any yet.
Okay, I haven't either yet. Yeah, I actually just today was looking on in the Field Nuts Facebook group, which this is like maybe the third time in the row. I think I promoted this group. It's seriously the best reason to be on Facebook. They are very active, they're very knowledgeable, they're very interesting. Field Nuts on the Facebook group. They also have a website, fieldnuts.com but anyhow, they link to a. It's called Kohl. It's a. It's a headwear company. They have hats. They do a partnership with Draplin Design Co. And they have a new USA kit. And it comes with this like denim baseball hat with this really cool, like thick lines, 1970s looking kind of USA patch on it. And it also comes with. And you can also buy it separately if you don't. If you didn't want to buy the hat as well, you can buy three packs of these special DDC field notes. This US I say edition. It has the bottom third is red and white stripes and the top two thirds is like, like a blue, like a rich blue. And it's super cool. It's very kind of like. It reminds me, I don't know if anybody watched any of the World cup going on today, but some of the Americans were painted up that kind of look like this field notes, which I'm
sure like they're, they're uniforms too.
It does, it does. Yeah. It's just, it's very bright. Every year for fourth of July, my wife likes to buy something kind of like, you know, some American flag looking gaudy thing. I told her this year she needs to buy and she'll admit it, she likes to buy gaudy things just for, just for the 4th of July. I told her this year she should buy these field notes because they are really cool. And they're $11.95 for three of them. And the link is in the show notes, but they only made 5,000, so. So apparently they're going pretty quick. So that is this new field notes that I just today found out about.
That's really, really neat. Sorry if I missed it, but did you mention what is the print on the pages inside?
Oh, the ones that they.
Oh, here it is.
I believe they're graph paper.
Yeah.
Grid printed in a fine mist of coal. XDDC usa. Brad Blue ink.
They're. They're very descriptive. So I know, Tim, that you're. You're over.
Over the grid, but maybe a little hyperbole, but.
Yeah, no, I understand.
I am, I am over. I am, I think over the grid, but I'll get to that hipster.
Did you guys order some?
I didn't order this. I don't. Guys, I have so many field notes. I have so many little notebooks and actually I have a pile of non field notes paper in front of me. Actually that kind of leads into one of my other points which is just that I have so, so much paper. I have like four views kind of stacked up of things that I need to do. I Think what I'm gonna do on Woodclinched is have just. I think I'm gonna have July be paper month and just, like, do a bunch of notebook reviews because I have this word notebook that I just kind of tapped into. I just filled up my. My last field notes. Not my last one, but one of my field notes I have that. I have something from SL is made by the tiny toe press. They sent me these, like, little tiny notebook. That's really cool. Plus this other one that has a hex grid on it. I was talking about it on Twitter with Heath from pen, paper, ink, letter. A little bit. And it has a hexagonal grid, and I have zero idea of what to do with it, but it looks cool. So I'll wait.
Like honeycomb?
Yeah, like a honeycomb. Basically, I'll post a picture. It's super weird, and I have no idea what one would do with it except, like, map, like a settler of catan board or something like that.
That's a great, perfect idea. That's what they're meant to do.
Exactly.
I think you just solved it.
I think I did. So they should team up with settlers of catan. But anyhow, I have these. I have, like, these other cool little ones that Jetpens sent me. There's a tidbit notebook, and these. It's the pocket department of the Princeton Architectural Press Company. They make these little notebooks that are really neat. So I have so many things to review. So I think I just don't need to buy any more field notes. I think I'll get the new arts and sciences one. And I do love this American flag one. But I don't know, guys. I don't know. They're just. It's so easy to spend your money.
Yeah. Tons of them.
Yeah. And I can't talk, like field notes. I can't talk Kudal into just being like, hey, I'm a really important pencil blogger. Send me some free stuff. They don't fall for that. So, yeah, so there's that. Yeah. So I did just switch to a word notebook. I took about six pages of notes on Saturday. Kind of the first thing I did. It's really nice, Johnny, you write. The paper is really nice.
Love it.
Yeah. And I've sort of been trying out these little, like, bullet point things on the side. I haven't really used it as a to do list really, but I've used it as kind of bullet points. And it's. It's pretty easy to do. It kind of saves me some space Yeah, I like it a lot. It's. It's. It kind of bent in a weird way that my field notes didn't bend in my pocket. But we'll see how, how that goes as time goes by. I've got.
I got a set of. I'll just join you on that while you're talking about it. But Word Notebook sent me a pack two of the Indio. And I just love them. They're great. I think, Johnny, last week, I think when I was listening to the episode that I wasn't there for, you were talking about how you thought it was the best or it held. What did you say? It took more graphite than Field notes did, or something like that. I don't forget how you said it.
But.
But it doesn't, you know, it doesn't dull your pencil. Like, I love Scout books, but sometimes if you use a black wing in there, you're gonna get like a word like hello, and then you have to sharpen it again.
Yeah, that's.
These are a good medium.
Yeah, I think you hit it on the head there because I noticed that right off the bat. And I've used. I used mine about four pages so far. And yeah, I really love it. And I can talk about it a little more later, but I like the little checklist. I mean, it's. When I first saw it, I was thinking, well, that's sort of limiting, but not really because you don't have to use it. So on some pages I've used it, on some I haven't, and it's really handy. I even like their little notation system, bullet point, important in progress, complete, and all that stuff. So that was really helpful.
I was definitely referencing that a lot.
I like the. It's got a nice heft to it. Like, it's just a touch bigger than a field note, like, as far as weight goes. And so I've got it in my Davis leatherworks case and it just feels right in there. So I'm. I may. I mean, of course, like I said, I'm only four pages in, but I've loved it so much right off the bat that as far as quality and as far as fitting what I like to carry around for kind of random notes for a brain dump notebook, I may even like it better than Field dense, But it's only been four pages, so I'll reserve total judgment. But I've just really. I really. Yeah, I really loved it so far. I'm really, really appreciative of them sending those because I've been Wanting to try them for a while.
Absolutely. Yeah. They sent me a couple of the logo stickers, too, and I'm definitely gonna stick one on my laptop. They're really cool.
Yeah, I put one on my Nalgene at the water bottle thing.
Cool. Sorry.
Everyone in Tennessee has Nalgenes, and so I take it for granted, but, yeah, those, like, big, chunky plastic water bottles. And I slapped a. I have a Word Word notebook sticker and a Don Paper sticker and a Goulet pen sticker on there right now.
Oh, cool.
It's got a theme, for sure.
Yeah. So. So, yeah. And I was also going to mention, in case you all have not listened to it, you know, we had Heath. Heath Cates from We the People on last week or last episode in. In Tim's absence. And Tim, we took a vote. We voted you off the island. We're just going to have Keith. Keith do it now. Yeah, yeah.
People don't know this, but I just. I just forced my way back on Skype call.
Yeah, he's standing over my shoulder right now.
I've got a gun to his. I have a really, really sharp black wing, dude.
Really, really sharp. One false move and I've got lead poisoning. Bury it.
To the feral.
Up to the feral. No. So he. He just released his. His podcast about pencils.
He.
He recapped a lot of the. A lot of his posts and a lot of the stuff we did on the. On the. On the blog for the week and had some other good, good points, too. So a link to his podcast is in the show notes. I don't know how he does it. He, you know, he's all by himself up there and he talked for over an hour about that. And, you know, he had. I mean, he had a lot to say and he went through it really well. But, like, man, I would just go, like, I would get Cottonmouth, like, really quick if I were in his shoes. Yeah, so. So, yeah, the other thing I wanted to mention is that I did get that email from Dr. Hans Noodleman, and I'm not quite sure if that's his real name or if that's like a nom de plume. Nom de pencil graffit. So we talked last week about bicycles, I think, and I said, he goes, I heard you mention that every member of the Erasable Team likes bicycles. I grew up in my father's bike shop from the early 1970s to late 1980s. Just a couple of weeks ago, while looking through a box I had in storage, I came across an Old pencil. I immediately recognized it as a pencil that had been in my dad's bike shop. It was an advertising pencil for the Wald company, which is perhaps the oldest bike parts manufacturer in the country and still going strong. I figured that the pencil dates back to the 1960s. It was in pretty rough shape, well used and missing its eraser. I sent a picture of my find to a couple of pencil loving friends. Within five minutes I got an email response telling me there was a guy on ebay selling the exact pencils. He had hundreds of them in new condition. So much for my rare find. But I went ahead and ordered a big box of 200 new old stock walled pencils from the ebay seller. I'd be happy to send a few your way for yourself and your erasable partners if you'd like. And so, so I responded like, yeah, that would be super cool. So yeah, he sent me a bunch of these pencils. They're really neat. They have the, yeah, they have the walled logo and kind of a red and it has that kind of. Oh, I can't think of what this, this is called. Like the, it looks like little like a pebbly surface that when you, when you're engraving a metal that you create or when you're casting it kind of looks like it has that texture on it, but it doesn't and just has some, some big old, big old type that's really neat. So I'll be sending those, those things along in your, your next package. And thank, thank you for. Yeah, we have some really great listeners. Like I've. This is, you know, not the first correspondence I think that we've had with our listeners. Yeah, the other. I was going to mention a couple other pencils that I have. I don't really know how they are in line in terms of performance, but in terms of design, they're really, really neat. There's one called the Perfetto pencil. And did you guys see my link for this? I had it in show notes. It's a design, it's by. Designed by Louise Fili is a graphic artist. And they're just really neat like black and red pencils and they, they're kind of like. It's kind of those pencils that have, you know, a black graphite on one end and a red graphite on the other end and they kind of alternate in, in you know, shape and size that, in colors and it just is a gorgeous case. I have a friend who's getting. Buying some of that and they were asking me, you know, what I, you know what I thought of the quality and I've never used them, but, you know, I've seen them before and they just look gorgeous. So I would love to. Yeah, I'd love to get some of those and put on display.
Great.
Yeah, so I have those in the field notes if anybody wants to take a look. Also have one. I found one. There's a little boutique here in Fort Wayne that just opened and I probably had like six Facebook friends of mine send me this link. They're selling pencils made by Hester and Cook. And my guess is that they're, you know, produced by, you know, some other company and they just kind of put their branding on it. But they're really neat. They have these assorted pencils, pencil packs. There's a carpenter pencil. There's like a wax pencil, a bridge pencil. So it's really thin. A jumbo hex and a jumbo round pencil that all come together in this really gorgeous design case. That one's 13 bucks. You can also buy a set of carpenter pencils. They're dual tipped. They're red on one end and black on the other end. That's also $13. And then you can also buy just a set of nine bridge pencils. So they're those really long skinny ones.
So.
Yeah, they're from Nashville. I don't know. Yeah, they're. Well, I guess Nashville's a little bit away from you, Tim.
Yeah, it's about five hours.
Yeah. Yeah. Tennessee is a wide state. Yeah.
If you turn Tennessee straight up on its edge, like, and put the. From the point if, like we're at the, the eastern side of the state, it comes up to a point that's like where I live. If you take the bottom of the state and then turn it straight up so it's vertical. It would touch Canada. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's crazy.
Thanks.
Huh?
Yeah, it's so. Yeah, these are really neat. I don't know. I have no idea what the pencil factory is. I don't really know much about Hester and Cook. Looks like they, they're a design company, but yeah, they have some cool stuff. I have a link to that in the show notes too, in case anybody wants to see that.
What does bridge style pencil mean?
I assume it has something to do with, with bridge, the card game.
Yeah, it's like a size of pencil.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, you know, I've always sort of known them as like telephone dialer pencils. They're those really, really skinny ones that they're just like the regular pencil length, but they're probably, you know, like 2/3 of the diameter of a regular pencil. And I'm not 100% sure why they were that skinny when you played bridge, but I believe that you, like, you use it to kind of keep score or keep tally when you, when you play with it, when you use it. I'll look that up and see if I can find a reason why it's skinny. And put that on, put that on in show notes.
Cool.
Yeah, so, yeah, that's really neat. And my last point. Yeah. So on the same day a couple weeks ago last week, Johnny and I posted a review of the very same pencil. It was the Montverde Multi Tool mechanical pencil.
And mine will be up this week.
Very cool. That's hilarious. I'll put that in the show notes, too. But it's, it was, it was funny. First of all, I think it was funny that we all picked the same pencil in the same color to try and review. But also it's just a really interesting thing to do. Like, it's probably one of the hardest reviews I've had to do just because, like, it does so much, so many different things.
And.
Yeah. And I think at least Johnny and I came, I think, to about the same conclusion. I don't know if you read them, Tim. I don't know if you want to
jade your review, but yeah, I actually avoided it because of that. Yeah, I wanted to wait, but.
Yeah. So we won't go ahead.
You can go ahead and talk about it.
Oh, well, I was just going to mention to say that it was. I mean, not only was it harder to review it because it wasn't because it was a mechanical pencil, but also because it was a screwdriver and a stylus and all these other other things too.
So I fixed my screen door with it.
Hey, there you go.
That's. I tightened my, my eyeglasses with it, so. So I'll reserve, you know, judgment here. But it was, it was a fun thing to try to try to write about. I. And I also figured out how to combine one of my other loves, which is animated gifs. I managed to get that in there, too.
I love that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
That was fun. So, yeah, that's. That's all I. I really had for my fresh points.
You want to go next, Mr. Tim?
I'd love to. So I was going to talk about word notebooks.
Which one are you using, Tim? I have.
Do they have names? I don't think so.
There's The.
I have the one that has the. It almost looks like a constellation where there's, like, the dots and then the dotted lines.
That's the one I'm using.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been using that. And like I said, I've been loving. Feels really good in my Davis leatherworks case. And I don't know if you guys have seen these, and I think, Johnny, you might have talked about this before, but I've really been jonesing for a field notes cover wallet. Have either of you ever used one of those?
I have one.
Oh, you have.
Is that the one that Cody made you?
Yeah, I have one that's made of red cordura.
It's really, really pretty awesome. Yeah, I've been really wanting one because I hate wallets. I hate carrying wallets, and I also hate when my pockets are full, but because I'm such a, you know, an obsessive pencil, pen, notebook carrier. And then I also, unfortunately, have to carry a wallet, my pockets are always stuffed full of junk. So I really want to try out one of those. And I was thinking about that with this, that I'd really love to be able to carry this nice little lined notebook around and have my debit card and ID and stuff, maybe even a pen holder. I know that field notes sells one, but it's really expensive, kind of crazy expensive. Yeah. So I might hunt around for a different one. Yeah. So I really enjoy that. I just want to say thanks to the folks at Ward Notebooks again for sending that, because I really, really appreciate it and I've really enjoyed it for these last couple days. I have kind of two points I was going to talk about that just happened to tie into my hero, my pencil hero, which maybe that's a sign of how much of an influence he has on me in my pencil life. But I've reworked my daily carry of pencils, and I really like it because I was. I'll talk about this again when I'm talking about John Steinbeck, but he used to start every day with a certain number of sharpened pencils that he would sharpen along the way. And it just kind of got me thinking that I'd been carrying. I don't know if you all remember my Instagram pictures, my post where I showed that monsters case. You remember that?
Yeah.
Metal case. So I've been carrying that, and it's just got kind of one of everything in there. I just got to noticing after a while that I've been carrying all these pencils and I've been using Certain ones a whole lot. And other ones had just been sitting there unused, like, the whole time. Like, ones I just didn't even want to use, you know. So I went through and I made a new arsenal, a new carry that I'm going to take around with me. And, you know, Steinbeck had certain pencils that he liked. And he had them all of these sharpened and ready to go. And so I outfitted my case with three Palomino 602s, three Palomino HBs, three mono 100 HBs, three pearls and three field notes pencils. Kind of like all my favorites right now, and several of each. So I can just have them all sharpened and I can rotate through them and interchange. And there's no pencils that I'm just never gonna use. Some of them I even liked, but I just been carrying around and didn't. Just didn't find myself picking up kind of like the General's layout. I had bought some of those or a couple of those. And then Johnny sent me another one. And I really love that pencil, but I just never pick it up for some reason, just things like that. So now I feel like I've reworked my pencil carry so that I've got stuff that I'm going to use all day. And I feel like they're all of a quality that I can just pick one up out of the case and write. And I don't have to deliberate too much, which has been really nice because over the summers I get to do more of my own writing. And I do it by hand. And so I can just kind of scroll, you know, roll through those pencils. If one dulls down, then I can move on to something else.
Do you find yourself carrying it places, or is it just mostly at your desk since you're not going to school?
I carry it places because usually when I get a chance to work on my writing, my wife will have our son. I'll step out of the house and go somewhere else close by, to a coffee shop or something. And I have one of those. The Doan Paper Mountain Briefcase Atopa Designs bags, which is awesome. I love that thing. So I carry it in that. That's usually what I do. All the pencils. The pencils I use at home are in my Dudek Groove, which is right here in front of me. But, yeah, so that's. That was influenced by Steinbeck. The other thing that he influenced. And Andy kind of hinted at this earlier because of a tweet I put out today where I realized that I think I'M over graph paper. I don't know what brought it on, but I. For the longest time before I really got into pens, pencils and nice paper and stuff like that, I was always a line paper. Just because you really don't even think about there being an option for the most part, because that's just what I would buy, you know, buying the Mead notebooks and things like that for school. But I then switched completely to grid because I was like, oh, this is cool and new. But now I am kind of coming back and even coming back even further in the opposite direction. As I said to Andy earlier, once I went blank, I couldn't go back. I love blank notebooks. I don't like being limited by any sorts of lines. And I should clarify a little bit because when I'm saying this, I'm talking mostly about full size notebooks, larger books that I'm writing in or journaling in, things like that. They have to be either blank or lined sometimes, but I really like them to be blank if possible. If it's a pocket notebook, then I can deal with the graph because I'm just kind of jotting down notes, which that's fine.
I was going to say my trouble with blank notebooks is I don't know if it's a product of me being left handed or if it's just me being a sloppy writer. But I cannot keep a straight line without some sort of a line or a grid there. So I just hate the way that it looks when my hand starts to kind of slant down the page.
Yeah, I think I notice the same thing when I'm writing in print. Do you write in print?
No. Well, it's kind of a messy cursive print hybrid.
Okay. I guess it makes sense with left handed that you might like tilt down because when I write in print, I kind of wave. My words kind of go offline. But I write mostly in cursive like 90% of the time. And when I write in cursive, I notice that I write in nice straight lines. But if I write in print then I kind of. It's easier for me to get offline.
Yeah. Anna wrote something on her blog recently about how to make a blank notebook with lines. And you know, she had like a template to print off and put behind the page so you could see the line through it.
Oh, yeah, I've seen people do that with the. Oh, what's the name of that paper? It's that Japanese paper that. Oh, the Tomoe River Paper Pan Addict podcast talks about. Yeah, yeah, Tomoe River, I think they
said it was called.
But we all want it to be called Tomo because that sounds way better.
Yeah, I have, I have a, like a really nice like stationary set that has. They call it a guide sheet back there. It's also kind of functions as blotting paper as well.
Nice.
So, yeah, I'm sorry I kind of disrupted you.
No, that's okay. That's what we're all about. It's conversation. But my favorite. We've never talked about this, and I'm going to pose this question to you. All right now, I know this is kind of running long at the beginning, but my favorite all time favorite Field notes edition is still my favorite, but it's a graph edition. My favorite favorite is the County Fair edition. I love it. That's the one I've bought several times. I love carrying them. I love how they age. I love the color of the grid and the way they sort of form to my butt and my pocket and all that stuff. So that's my favorite and it's a grid and so I'll still use that, but just with big notebooks. I'm noticing myself going back to blank, especially the big Piccadilly's and Moleskins and Rhodia and stuff like that. But what's your favorite? I'm curious what you two would pick as your favorite field notes.
Johnny, do you have one that's tough?
Probably the American Tradesman from the summer 2011. Just because that was the first time I got a subscription for Father's Day. And I mean, I blew right through them. I have two that aren't written in and one that's written in a little bit that I bought when we bought our house two years ago for home projects. But I'm not using them for home projects because the paper is too small. But those are my favorite. I thought the covers were just gorgeous and the red ink inside was cool. And of course they came with carpenter pencils and directions for carpenter pencils. So that's just dicing on cake. Perfect.
I think mine would either be the drink local one that I just finished. That cover is really nice. Yeah, it held up really well too. It's probably either that one or the. Oh, what's the name of it? It's the one. It was the first of the colors ever. Like the color subscription one. It's the. It's like evergreen or butcher blue.
Oh, oh, the subscription Craft green.
That's the one. Craft green.
It's the balsam fir one.
Yeah, it's the one from winter of 2010. Yeah, I like that one a whole lot. I just like the, like the feel of it. Yeah. And this just, they, they did a really kind of heavy silk screen of the field notes on the front of it. So I, I have a couple of those left, which I really like.
Yeah.
So probably one of those two. I also, I have a America the Beautiful set in here that I have not used yet.
That's my second favorite.
Yeah, I, I, I haven't used them just because I don't want to get these covers, like, torn up because they're just gorgeous. But I know eventually that's inevitable. So this is, this is why I, I don't need any more of them because I have so many. The colle me just wants to keep up with everybody and, you know, just hoard one away to sell later to build value and another one to use. But, but dang, I just don't go, go through them fast enough to keep up.
Yeah.
Oh yeah. I use like one a week. I think I have a problem.
That's impressive.
Sometimes more.
I'm proud of that. I think we should do an episode where we, you know, where we kind of talk about something like that. Because I like, I have no idea how you would do that. Like, I don't know if it's because I write really, like, small and in line and fill up a page and everything or.
Yeah, I want to know what you write.
Yeah, we should do an episode where we just kind of go through like, you know, obviously not anything you don't, that's secret and you don't want to go through. But we go through like our secret.
We go through our journaling hack, monitoring our Skype.
They're not monitoring our field notes.
That would actually be really interesting to go through and have everybody kind of walk through and say some of the things, the kinds of things that make it into your field notes. Yeah, I'd like to hear from listeners too. Is the kind of stuff that they end up putting in their field notes and pocket notebooks.
Absolutely.
There's a really good post. I'll find it for the show notes, but you ever read the blog the Art of Manliness?
Sometimes.
They had one post a while back that was the pocket Notebooks of 20 famous pocket notebook users or something like that. And that's fun to look through because there's pictures of Mark Twain's pocket notebook and George Patton's pocket notebook. It's really, it's a neat post, kind of. You get to see into what they used him for. But my last point. I'll hurry with this one, but. Oh, by the way, the reason that one was inspired by Steinbeck is because of the way that he wrote notebooks, which was this very small, small writing, and wanted to be able to fit as much in as possible. But I'll talk about that later. My last point is I went on this trip to D.C. with my 8th graders. It was a great trip, loved it. And I had said on the podcast that I was going to start looking for. When I was there, I was going to look for some souvenir pencils. And that was the thing I was going to do as I went. But a few things happened. First of all, I did not have time. And I realized quickly that with 150 eighth graders, they weren't going to stop at every gift shop, or they would all be broke after the first gift shop. So we didn't actually even go by many gift shops just for that reason. Like at the Capitol, I really wanted to go in and see if I can find something, but they don't even let the kids go. They're like, nope, you're fine. Keep going. Like you're not. Like, there's. There are certain ones that we stopped at, but a lot of them where we just needed to keep moving because we moved fast on that trip, like, went. And we were just moving and moving and moving. So. Yeah, so that was. So I didn't get many. I got a couple. I got a couple at Monticello. And I've got. So I got. I think I actually found the same pencil you talked about, Andy, that has the faces of the presidents.
Yeah.
Johnny, do you have one of those? No, I'm gonna send you one because I got an extra one. And then I've got a pencil for both of you from Monticello as well. And this is my favorite. I'm writing with this right now, but it's just a jet black pencil with a black and white eraser. And there's a huge quote from Thomas Jefferson. It says, I cannot live without books. And then it's from a letter. And then below it says, it's from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams in 1815. So that's cool. It's a really nice pencil. It writes like a 2B actually. It's very dark. A really nice pencil. And I actually looked on their website and might order some more, but I'm gonna send you both one of those. But the other thing that happened. Yeah, of course the other thing happened. When I was on the trip and we were at some of these museums, I realized really quickly that I am not a pencil collector. Because there are some of these places that we did get to go in. And I was like, oh, where are the pencils? And I hunted them down, went straight to them, saw them, and I just thought, nope.
Yeah, some of them. It's just like, they didn't even try.
Not gonna buy that.
Yeah, they're just like, kind of crappy. Like, foil stamp things.
Yeah. I mean, like the Air and Space Museum. I was like, oh, surely they'll have some cool pencils. The only one they had here at the Air and Space Museum, the only one they had was, like, bright pink or bright orange or something.
It's one of those mood pencils they have there.
Yeah.
It's like, why would I want to buy this? So I didn't end up buying hardly any, because the ones that I did find, I was kind of like, meh, I don't know. I did buy. It's not pencil related, but I did buy my first space pen at the Air and Space Museum. I got a Smithsonian Institute space pen. Yeah.
Is it a little bullet space pen?
Yeah.
Those are cool.
And I bought a clip on Amazon, so I've been. That's the. The one pen I've been carrying. It's actually in my pocket right now.
That's a good pen. Yeah.
Yeah. But that's all I've got. Sorry, I think I ran a little
long there, but me, not at all.
Okay, Johnny, the big reveal.
I am gonna brag about the field notes that I'm holding right now, because. Looking at these things, I like. I feel like a little kid. Because they increase their font size so the books look exactly like the regular ones. They're just kind of bigger, so they make your hand look kind of small. But I feel like the quality control of these is a little better than the last couple years. Usually if I get a pack, something's got a bad corner or something like that, I don't really care because I just use them anyway. But these are, like, perfect. And the stamping is done really, really nicely. The. The logos they came up with, one for Arts and one for sciences, are really cool.
I love those buttons.
I resubscribed just to get those buttons.
$100 buttons right there. $50 each.
I took off for a year. And during that entire year, I bought two sets of everything. So I should have just subscribed and saved myself the trouble.
Yeah, but.
And I didn't get the Six pack holder, which was really cool.
Yeah.
But one of the cool things they did was they changed the belly band. Sorry. So it has usually they put like a little graphic of the page layout. So it has one of each page layout. And instead of saying memo books, it says notebooks, which I thought was pretty cool because obviously these hold a lot more. Another thing is on the website, I feel like the. The color of the arts notebook looks like the Red Blooded and Fire Spotter. And it definitely doesn't real life. It's almost like a little more purple. Yeah.
Also like a magenta or something.
Yeah. What do they call it? I find it.
They said something about wine, I think, or Merlot or something like that.
So they call it chili.
Huh.
It's Mohawk, 110 pounds.
That makes sense.
That's cool.
So what. So what seems to have been pretty highly contested on the field nuts discussions is whether or not it'll fit in your pocket. And I think a lot of depends on what kind of pockets you have. Yes.
In the summer when you're rocking those cargo shorts.
Cool.
I mean it's a little worse for the wear, but so what? They're field notes.
Yeah.
And they're a little harder to open because they have more pages and the COVID is like a lot stiffer than you think it was going to be for 110 pound paper.
I didn't realize they had more pages.
These have 64.
And that makes sense because allegedly like you know, one of the pages in the spread is not for, you know, writing, it's for like diagramming or something. So I guess I could see that.
Yeah. They put a lot of really cool like arts information in the art one. I don't want to give away too much if you're still waiting for yours, but there's like a little thing in there that tells you about artist brushes. That's pretty cool. The science one has a periodic table in there. Of course.
That's a great idea. And apparently you can get a prize if you solve a particular math problem.
Yeah. I think I should get a prize for guessing the theme.
I think you should too. I was completely in the dark and Johnny was like, I bet it's like arts and sciences and like, okay, whatever.
And before I sleep on the couch, I have to admit that my wife figured it out, not me. I totally took credit for it.
Well, you'll split it up.
I showed his videos. I'm like, what do you think this is? She's like, and sciences. We were joking. How many PhDs does it take to figure this out.
2.
So Aaron Draplin or Jim Kudal, if you're listening to this, you can send Johnny Gamber a special prize for having correctly guessed this. I know that Aaron kid's gonna steal them. Yeah, I know that Aaron reads, reads. He's subscribed to the field notes, so
he'd at least see it.
And one of the my little fresh points is that I sent the link, I guess, a couple episodes ago to Mr. David Rees for our podcast, and he wrote back and said that he was gonna check it out, which makes
me super, super excited.
Yay. Hi, David.
Hello, David.
What else on these? I was kind of disappointed that they didn't give us any special staples, but, you know, the stamping is silver, so it just kind of makes sense that they're silver. I just really like those copper ones from America's Beautiful. Those were gorgeous.
Yeah.
Actually, I'm gonna mention. I mean, I didn't get mine yet. I haven't ordered them yet, but I love the idea of the arts one because I could see myself using the right side to write the prose and the left side to do edits, like where you can like draw. Draw lines, diagrams of things that you're trying to write or trying to map things. I'd really like that. I wish I could order just those by themselves. The science one sounds cool, but to me it almost seems like it'll be more of a novelty thing, especially along the lines of my vanishing graph paper.
It's like the ultimate graph paper.
Yeah, it's like super graph.
You could probably ignore it. Plus, the science one is printed on a. The COVID is sort of graphite colored. It kind of fits in with our favorite writing implements.
Beautiful.
Yeah, I mean, I haven't written them yet, but I'm totally going to because I have an idea for a children's book that I'm going to write before I die. And I'll put this in a safe somewhere to write it in.
Yeah, the arts one.
I guess that's all I have to say about those. That won't spoil your fun when you get them. Oh, there's one more thing that I know. In the regular books, they put a pertinent information section in that's just sort of blank. And this one, they label it for, like, your address and your city and stuff like that, which is pretty cool. Yeah. And there's a little more space. You can actually write your info in there a little bit.
Is it the same color as the COVID The outside cover?
Yep.
Okay.
So I'D probably still want to use like my. My white gel pen or something like that.
Yep. I had to whip one out.
Yeah.
What do I have the jelly roll one?
Yeah.
It's like a white paintbrush. It's lots of ink. Another thing I wanted to bring up is with our little Baltimore based stationary geeks group, one person always comes out is Chris Roth from Wright Notepads and Company, who we reviewed those in the winter on Pencil Revolution. And I was afraid I would get called out for being, I don't know, unfair because they're from Baltimore. But I was being totally fair. They're really, really nice. So they're working on a prototype of a pocket ledger, which is. It's sort of like. It's probably like a reporter's notebook in proportions, but it's a lot smaller, so it's. It's a little thinner and a little taller than your standard pocket notebook. I don't know what they're going to do permanently, but they have a sort of temporary closure on the bottom, a little black elastic. So Chris gave me one that we can give away on the podcast next week or the week after sometime. But the pages look like what you'd use if you worked at a diner.
I think it's pretty awesome.
We're holding it right now. There's a lot of pages in it, too.
Can you, for a bar order, can you send me a picture and I'll post it to the show Notes? Because I would love to see something like that.
Yeah, this one's still like prototyping. The print is in black. Usually they use a red pantone print for the pantone ink for the covers. And I think these are. This particular book is letterpressed, but I don't think they're gonna letterpress them. When they go to production. They'll be offset printed. So this is super, super cool, like collector's item, I guess, and also super useful.
Yeah.
And my last thing was. You guys can probably appreciate the. The difficulties in writing reviews about stuff where you don't know how much you like it, but you could see that somebody else might like it. I ran into this problem with the Dixon Tycon electric pencil sharpener, because as far as electric pencil sharpeners go, it's pretty nice. But I realized that I really hate electric pencil sharpeners more than I thought I do. Yeah, they're noisy and they don't have an aperture, so you've got to hold the pencil like perfectly still. But the other cool thing is you get a delicious long point and they're really easy to like do a touch up. Just kind of drop it in for a second. And now quite dull. Point is quite sharp.
I was really surprised how that. How long that long point was.
Yeah, I was too.
Yeah.
It looks weird because you're used to the tapered friendly that tapers in and this is perfectly straight. So it almost looks like it's ballooning out the other way.
Huh.
If you like close your eyes.
Like what?
But everything in it's plastic. So I didn't know how durable it was going to be. So I dropped it a couple times. It still works.
I got it on purpose. He kicked it. He ran it through the dishwasher.
Not the dishwasher, but it's pretty. I really like the colors of it. So I do have it out and plugged in my. I own one other pencil sharpener, an electric pencil sharpener that someone sent me. It was like the worst thing I ever got to review. And I totally didn't review it because I couldn't think of anything nice to say about it. Aside from the fact that it holds a whole year's supply of pencil shavings. It's the size of a blender.
Wow.
Literally. But you can't empty it because they wind up everywhere. But this little guy was easy to empty. So if you're in the market for an electric pencil sharpener and you like Dixons, especially if you like those, the beautiful yellow and green. Definitely check them out on Amazon.
There's a pencil sharpener I really want. It looks. It looks like a KitchenAid mixer. Did you see that post? That short post? Yeah, it was a. Oh, what was it called? Morris Sharp. It just. It's insane looking.
Yeah, I totally want one of those.
Pot missing.
Yeah, it does.
So do you gents want to move on to our pencil heroes? We're running pretty close to an hour already, I think.
Sure. I think we.
Sounds great.
Yeah.
I go first, Mr. Andy.
Sure.
So yeah, mine is. I took mine in a little bit different direction. In the future I definitely want to do like, you know, some literary or, you know, heroes of mine. But for now, my. The first. The first thing that came to my mind was Don Bell who was the proprietor of Pencil things back in 2007, 2008 when I bought that sampler pack. And he's really interesting. He was an old. Just a retired guy who lived in Arizona. He was super friendly. I emailed him right away and he sent me back this long email just about how, you know, they'd love to have somebody to review products on the blog would I be interested and set up a time to call. And he was. I've never heard anybody who's just so sort of, you know, genuinely and unpretentiously interested in pencils and a big. Just a big fan of pencils. And it wasn't. It wasn't something like, oh, well, I only like, you know, palomino pencils because they're high quality. Something like that. No, he loved pencils of all kinds of. He had a really cool little pencil things gift set that he made a few of. And I cringe a little bit at them because they. His sort of like, preferred font for pencil things is Comic Sans. But hey, he was. I mean, that was his thing. He loved it. He made a whole bunch of those pencils that you could find at department stores for a while. He would take a Swarovski crystal and put it at the end of a. Like one of those black pencils with the black dyed wood in it. And he was super cool. And actually he sold pencil things, I believe in 2009 he was. Had some health problems and he sold it to some people who aren't. They took it in a slightly different direction than I would have wanted them to. In fact, they closed down their blog and they mostly became like Amazon sellers of like, crappy little Japanese erasers. But I mean, the erasers, they look cool, but. So I know, Johnny, you had. You had talked before, I think, with Don Bell, I remember. Actually, I was just Googling him again today to try to see if I could find out some information about what he's doing nowadays. But I actually saw something on your blog from like 2006, I think. So, yeah, he's the one who actually sort of first introduced me to Charles Berelzeimer Woodchuck, which eventually kind of led me to that job@pencils.com for a while. And yeah, so Don was super neat. He was just a guy who really loved pencils and he had a little tiny business in Arizona and he was an entrepreneur there and he had a good thing going with the pencil things. So I don't know, Don, if you'll ever hear this podcast, but your email address doesn't work anymore. So drop me a line sometime if you ever hear this. So, yeah, he is my kind of personal pencil hero.
Awesome. Tim, do you want to go next with Mr. Steinbeck?
Sure, but I'm just gonna feel like just preaching about celebrities now. You give such a touching tribute to.
I'll have some of my favorite celebrities next time.
Don't worry. And now I'm gonna talk about a grumpy writer. Yeah. So I. If I had to make a Mount Rushmore of writers. I'm an English teacher, I like to write all that thing. And I read a lot, read all the time. If I had to make a Mount Rushmore for Four Faces of Literature Writers, John Steinbeck would be the first one I'd put up there. I didn't actually read any John Steinbeck until I was in college. I went to a small liberal arts school in Tennessee called Milligan College. And in our humanities class we read the Grapes of Wrath. And it's one of the maybe 10 books in my life that I remember where I was when I read it. I remember putting. I had one of those highlighters that had the little sticky notes attached to the end and I was just throwing them all over the place because I just never wanted to forget anything as I was going through. And then I ended up reading east of Eden, Cannery Row as much as I could for a couple years. Read everything. And he's just been a really big influence on me. A good way to sum up what John Steinbeck is like as a writer. Actually David Foster Wallace, he committed suicide in 2007, 2008, something like that. But he was a famous fiction writer, wrote Infinite Jest, which I'm actually reading right now. But he said in an interview that he loved John Steinbeck except when he was banging his Dr. But I actually love when he bangs his drum. And I wish he would always bang his drum. He's very passionate. So he had a really big influence on me. And as being a young pencil or pen Pencil writing nerd. At some point in college, I googled what kind of pen or pencil does John Steinbeck use? And that actually led me into my pencil obsession because I found out about the Black Wing and that was sort of the slippery slope to where I am now. And I've got some quotes and things that I was going to read from Steinbeck about his pencil usage. But just first, just kind of from memory, he was known for being kind of an obsessive writer. And he would write all day long, which is noble and great and he was very prolific. But what I'm learning now as I read his collected letters, that that also meant that he was divorced because his wife had to make the money for like 10 years while he just sat around and wrot. He wasn't maybe wasn't always the best situation. He didn't really like help out a lot and ended up having issues because of that. But he would write all day long. And he would always start in pencil. He would write in pencil. They say he would start every day with 24 sharpened pencils, and he would sharpen all 24. And by the end of the day, he would have to sharpen all of them again because he would write until they got to a point that he wasn't comfortable with, whatever, and then he would move on to the next one. In most of his famous books, Grapes of Wrath came out in 1939. East of Eden was in 1952. He actually passed away in 1967 or 68. But when he was writing these books, he had what was extremely rare then, in which Johnny might hiss, but he had an electric pencil sharpener, which was super rare, super expensive at the time. But he would sharpen all of these pencils at some point throughout the day when he was taking a break. And then he would get back to writing and he would actually write. When he was. Before he was super famous, when he had to kind of pick the most economical way to write, he would write in these big ledger books, which would have all these crazy line patterns and things for accountants to use. But he would write in these big ledger books, and he would write in a tiny cursive print, and he would do it in pencil. So he would always. Of course, if you're writing in a tiny print, they'd need to be sharp, which makes sense why he switched so often. But he would write in these books, and then he would go on to typing and editing and stuff. But actually, the first thing I was going to read, and this is from a letter he wrote, there's a book out called Journal of a Novel, and it's letters that he wrote to his friend while he was writing east of Eden. And while he's writing it, he wrote a letter on March 22 where he said. He says, and now, Pat, I'm going into the fourth chapter. You know, I just looked up and saw how differently my handwriting is from day to day. I think I'm writing much faster today than I did yesterday. This gives a sharpness to the letter. And also, I have found a new kind of pencil, the best I've ever had. Of course, it cost three times as much, as much, too. But it is black and soft and doesn't break off. I think I will always use these. They are called black wings. They really glide over the paper. And, brother, they have some gliding to do before I'm finished. Now to the work. It's kind of a cool quote. But that's where he. He gets associated with black wings so much. And I think 99% of his association with black wings is because of that quote right there. And actually.
What a quote, though.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a great quote.
Yeah.
But. And I don't know, I've. I've done as much research as I can with all the books that I have, and I'm still reading through his collected letters. But apparently at some point he got frustrated with the black wings because he would call them soft and fine, say they floated over the paper wonderfully and all that. But eventually maybe they had a bad batch or something. But for a while, he would say that he had some cracking on them, their point breaking. And this is actually a quote. He said that all hell would let loose, which is very. You know, that's banging his drum sort of. And then he switched to the Mongol 480 pencil, and that was kind of where he ended up. He would actually say that he would write with pencils so much that he would get calluses on the sides of his hands from the hexagonal shape of pencils. And so he would. So he switched to trying to write with only round pencils or pencils that were, you know, semi hex, like, softer corners.
I love that he just, you know, talks so much about something like that because, you know, you don't think of, like, you know, super talented writers really caring much about the tools that they used, only the actual craft. But I love to see that, you know, he's out there kind of, you know, obsessing over that as much as we are.
Yeah. There's a famous post. I'm actually gonna search for it now as I talk, but there's a post where they talk about his three favorite pencils that he had mentioned over time. And I already mentioned two, the Blackwing and the Mongol. But he also used a calculator pencil. And I'm trying to find the actual name.
Oh, I have it on. I have it on the Pencil Talk site. Here's the Blaisdell special grade.
Yeah. Yeah. And he actually. Those were pencils that he had originally swiped, apparently a couple dozen from Fox Film Studio. And that was one of his favorites, which I've not been able to find either. I have a Blackwing 602, but I've never been able to find that Blaze calculator or the Mongol 480. I've always wanted to try them just because of my love for Steinbeck, but. But those were kind of his big three the Mongol 480, the calculator and the blackpink. And he was just passionate about pencils. And that was. He even talked about it in the Paris Review interview. Paris Review does this Art of Fiction interview section where they talk about. They let writers talk about all sorts of things, and one thing they always end up talking about is what they write on and what their process is like. And so he talked about pencils and said, hexagonal pencil cuts into my finger after a long day. You see, I hold a pencil for about six hours every day. This may seem strange, but it's true. I'm really a conditioned animal with a conditioned hand. So he thought about pencils a lot, and he wanted to be in control of that part. And I can identify that when I'm writing, I can't deal with it if I don't have something that feels right. Then all I can think about is how crappy the pencil is or how crappy the pen is. But, yeah, he's my. He's my first nomination. I'll stop rambling about him. But he's my first. First nomination. I love John Steinbeck. I love his work. And he's actually kind of the reason why I got into pencils in the first place. So that's awesome. Cheers, Mr. Steinbeck. Excuse me.
Well, like Tim, my pencil hero, is also the guy that got me into pencils. Lo and behold, I was bored one summer and I was reading Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. It's a memoir of his time in Paris that he wrote toward the end of his life. And I think his wife edited it, supposedly badly. So there's this really cool line that Moleskin always quotes that I thought I would read. There's. I read this and literally stopped reading and went out and bought a box of pencils. This was like, you know, the time of gel pens. People weren't really into fountain pens on the Internet very much back then. He writes, in the very beginning, it was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly. And I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it, and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil, and it started to write. And then later on, he mentions that the story was sort of writing itself. And he talks about sharpening his pencil into the saucer of his cup. So if I do that, I totally think Hemingway and get a little tear in my eye. But unlike Steinbeck, he's like, he never mentions what kind of pencils he actually liked, like, brands or anything like that. Even I think in Is it Petroski, someone? Petroski wrote a website somewhere, mentions that weird fact that, like, you know, he'll tell you what kind of beer he likes, what kind of gin he likes, what kind of car he likes, but he never mentions what kind of pencils
he uses, even though I used them every day.
I find odd and kind of frustrating because, you know, I want to find the magic papa pencil that's going to launch my writing career. Another really good book where he talks. Well, he talks about pencils a lot, obviously, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which everyone's probably read. Robert Jordan has this little pocket notebook he pulls out of his shirt, and he draws what the bridge looks like that they're gonna blow up. And there's some other cool parts, but if you haven't read it, I don't want to spoil it. Those are super cool. And Henry also influenced the way I wrote my dissertation in, like, really short little sentences that were packed with, like, I don't know, smartassery. They made me edit out eventually, and they didn't appreciate the Hemingway influence. And you think, was it at the end of his life, he was obsessed with carpenter pencils. He would, like, go in and write down his weight and his blood pressure on his bathroom wall. If you find that. There's a book that came out, I think, in 99 for the centennial of his birthday column. I don't remember what it's called. I have a copy of it where they have a really cool picture of him, like, an old fat drawn on the wall. These scratchy little slanting lines I totally want to do, but I don't have enough space on the wall in my bathroom. But that's my super, super pencil hero. Put a big eh on the chest. Proclaim pencil glory.
Mr. Ernest, if you send me a picture of you with a big eh on your chest, I will put that on the show notes.
Shave a big H into my chest.
Now we're back to our tattoo talk.
Yes.
It's been a long time since we've talked about tattoos.
It's true.
Yeah.
I actually have one in my notebook. I thought, like, a hexagonal cross section of a pencil with a little dot lead would be perfect. And I realized that I actually saw it somewhere. It's one of the logos that generals uses. Oh, nice semi hex pencil. I'm, like, lame. I thought that was a really original Idea.
It's still original to you. Yeah.
Get away with it.
I find it highly unlikely that people are gonna see you walking along the streets and be like, oh, you got that from generals, huh?
That person would be my real pencil.
Yeah, exactly. Then you'd be like, yes, I love you. Be my friend forever. Go. I will follow you.
I think we all sort of hinted at Thoreau because Thoreau's like, the American pencil hero. So maybe we could do a little snippet on him around July 12 for his birthday or something.
Yeah, that sounds good.
We have to do it, like, you know, do it on our smartphones while we're out walking.
Have a remote episode.
Yeah, just stay in your cell phone range. Awesome.
Should we talk about the giveaway?
Yeah. So for our giveaway, we have five packs of word notebooks that I actually have. They're right here, and I have envelopes. So when we pick winners, and my wife's off for the summer so I can get them out the next day, we'll pick our winners on our next podcast on June 30th. That's a Monday. To enter, subscribe to our podcast on the website or on itunes. Leave a comment about who your pencil hero is and why, and then we'll assign each eligible comment a number, and then we'll pick five random numbers on the show, and you good folks will get some awesome notebooks in the mail for free, and I'll probably stick some pencils in there. And before we finish, remember where we are. We are at Erasable Us. This episode is erasable us 8. And you guys want to say where you could find you on the Internet? The Interwebs.
Andy, go ahead.
Sure.
I am Andy Welfle. I am on Twitter at A W E L F, as in frank L E. Or you can find me on Twitter oodClinched. You can also just go to woodclinch.com and find all of my contact information there. That is me on the Internet.
I'm Tim Wasem, and you can follow me on Twitter Writing Arsenal and my website, where I occasionally post reviews and blog posts@thewritingarcenal.com and I'm also on Instagram, the writing Arsenal.
I'm Johnny Gamber. I am on Twitter pensolution. I am on Instagram @johnnygamber, although I'm contemplating switching that to Pen Solution. And I am on the Internet when I have time to post on Pencil revolution dot com. And this is Erasable Podcast episode number eight. Please don't erase us from your podcast list. And we'll be back in two weeks with five very, very lucky winners. Thank you for listening.