This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
If you want me to, I can just put in like the Masterpiece Theater theme to make you sound smarter.
Good evening, Internet. Welcome to the octogenary episode of the Erasable podcast. This is Dr. Johnny Gember along with Tim awesome and producer Andy Welfle. How are you guys doing?
Pretty good.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So we have something very special planned for this episode and if you follow us on one of our social media channels, you probably already know. Tonight we're having our very first call in show, which is awesome. That's why we should do the free Razor and Roz thing. So this is how it's going to work. Andy's going to post a link in our social media channels when we're ready to take calls. But because of the anti magic of Skype, we have to call you. So you'll fill out a form with your name, your phone number and as briefly as possible what you want to talk about. The form comes into Andy and then we'll call you from Skype. And please keep it pg because we usually do. And, and this is already going to require live editing for Andy. So don't, you know, require a lot of typewriter bells? I'm talking to myself as much as
you don't it up everybody.
Oh,
well, I don't want to left out
excellent. So why don't we start as we always do with our tools of the trade. Tim, would you like to go first?
Sure. First of all, I am writing with a cool pencil that I was given on a visit to my uncle's house. It is a eagle turquoise in H. Nice super old one which is really cool because it was about three quarters of the way used and all faded, you know, with time. And it's just always so satisfying with an old pencil like that to throw it in a sharpener and then see it look brand new like the tip and the wood underneath. Once you get all the oily stained parts of it, it's just like it was made yesterday except for the eraser which is totally useless but really cool looking pencil. And I like, like it something a little different, something hard. And I am writing in a Chicago field notes which is not super unusual for me.
Nice.
And enjoying a Stella Artois. Now as far as what I'm digging lately, got two things. Been listening to this band called the Beatles.
I think I've heard of them.
Yeah, they're pretty good. I was totally obsessed with the Beatles for a long time, like a lot of people. And then for some reason in the last, I don't know, three years, I just haven't listened to them very much after being. Yeah, I mean, just like, obsessed. I was naming pets after them when I was a kid, and I was watching every documentary I could get my hands on. And then a few years ago, it just kind of stopped, which, you know, you have kids and a lot of things like that just sort of stop, and you're just whatever's right in front of you is what you're going to do. But got back into the Beatles thanks to the Ron Howard documentary the Eight Days a Week, which was a lot of fun. And also I've been listening to a podcast called Celebration Rock, which I highly recommend if you're a fan of rock music and especially classic rock. It's by Stephen Haydn, who rock critic in Minneapolis, so definitely check that out. But he did an episode with Rob Sheffield, who wrote a book about the Beatles called. I think it's called Dreaming the Beatles. But it's about. Well, that doesn't really matter, but I haven't read the book, but they talked about the Beatles a lot. And so it got me back, and I was pulling out all my old albums and listening to it and landed on a new favorite. I feel like every season of my life I have a new favorite Beatles album. And right now I am just obsessed with the Beatles album Rubber Soul.
Oh, yeah.
Which is a great album. But also in the podcast episode, in the Celebration Rock episode, they talked about the US Version, which was different than the one that we now think of as Rubber Soul. And so I made a playlist on Amazon Music of the original US Version that was released here, which is basically the same, but there's two different songs. And the most notable is the song I've Just Seen a Face. I don't know if you remember that song. I think David Lee Roth covered it for some reason in the 80s. But that's the opening track. And so I've just been listening to a ton of Rubber Soul. I didn't put this in the show notes, but I've also been listening to a lot of the Big Chill soundtrack. I don't know if you saw that. I posted on Instagram.
Yeah.
I found vinyl copies of volumes one and two of the. Of the Big Chill soundtrack, which I never even seen the movie, but it's just all these awesome Motown songs. It's like having a vinyl mixtape, which is really cool. It's got all this great Motown, but also CCR and the band. And yeah, they're really cool. I mean, you check them out on Spotify and things like that. But it's a great record to have because it's like being able to put on a really great mixtape.
It's like Spotify, but on vinyl. Yeah, exactly, baby. People are Spotify.
And then I am reading a book, kind of in the same world. I'm reading a book by Chuck Klosterman, the famous rock and pop culture writer. He has a book that he came out with last year called but what if We're Wrong. He's written a lot about music and pop culture, but this book is. He's examining the question of what will. When people 200 years from now look back at rock and roll or look back at the great writers of our time, who's the one they're going to remember? Because that's what cultures tend to do is they boil everything down to something very simple. Because like with rock and roll, for example, he talks about. Well, obviously rock and roll is going to be a thing of the past. We're going to move on to something else. That's what we have now. But when we get into the future, if we treat it anything like we treat reggae music or we treat, you know, which is basically reggae music equals Bob Marley for most people, or marching band music, which was apparently big at some point, John Philip Sousa. And so he goes through this, all these different. All these different subjects and all these questions of, like, what will the future think of this? Because he posits that we're probably wrong about everything right now, even like gravity and stuff like that eventually someone's going to figure out that it's a lot more complicated than we made it out to be. So, for example, for rock and roll, he boils it down. He decides through all this awesome logic that I won't spoil for you, you can read. But he narrows it all down to his decision that rock and roll is basically just going to be remembered through the lens of Chuck Berry.
Huh.
And he's got some really, really good reasons for that. But I highly recommend the book. It's really cool.
That's interesting.
And anything by Chuck Klosterman. He's. He's a great writer. Yeah, he has a really fascinating
profile
of Britney Spears that he wrote, like back in the day where it was so bizarre where he's like sitting in this photo shoot and there's this person whose job is to, like, bring her milk and cookies, like, as much as she wants. And.
What kind of cookies?
Chocolate chip cookies. Just like. And then he's. She's this like big time sex symbol. And he keeps trying to ask her like about being a sex symbol. And she's like, oh, I don't know. I'm not a sex symbol. I'm just an innocent girl. And like is totally playing this part. And he's like, his mind is being blown because he's like, am I being. He wouldn't say this, but I'm being trolled right now. Does somebody. Are you all seeing what I'm seeing? Because this is insane. So he's a really fascinating writer, so I'd really highly recommend him. So what about you, Andy? I've been talking for a while.
No worries. What am I? I am writing with a. The pencil that was closest to me, which is a souvenir pencil from the Oakland Museum of California, which I'll talk about later. It's this. You know those pencils that they have at museums that are like color changing? They're like hyper color. Oh yeah. Yep. So it's a, it's a purple mood pencil that turns into a. It turns pink and it's slightly sparkly and it is actually not too bad of a pencil. Nice for a dollar 25. And I'm writing in a notebook, a moleskin style notebook called a brand called Kolo K O L O, which I will also talk about later, what I've been doing lately. I feel like I'm still recovering from every spare time, every second of my spare time being taken up with plumbago, which is a good thing. I'm not complaining by any means. I just started reading.
Look amazing.
I just started reading.
Plug it.
Yeah, we should talk about what, what's next. Started reading a book by author Neal Stephenson and. Oh, he, he is. Co wrote it with somebody. Hold on. Rise and Fall. Co wrote it with Nicole Galland. If anybody knows Neal Stephenson, he's like a sci fi author that writes really, really, really long novels. It's called the Rise and Fall of Dodo. Dodo? It's an abbreviation, like an acronym. It's pretty good. It's like speculative fiction, time travel, like just a good like sci fi thing. And I appreciate that he has like a co writer because I feel like she's really like made his like tone more accessible. Some of his books I just have stopped reading because I just couldn't handle it. They're just so long and they can get really dry. He's not as bad as like Frank Herbert, but yeah, it's really good. But I've. I've discovered I rented the ebook from the library. Does anybody ever use Overdrive on their Kindle?
Or every day.
Every day.
I. Yeah, I use it constantly, especially for audiobooks mostly for me.
Yeah. And for ebooks, like epubs. It's. It's really hard because when you have a really long one, it just sort of like automatically checks it back into the library.
So 21 days.
So it happened to be. I like sat it down for a little while and didn't pick it back up. And all of a sudden I'm in the middle of it and it checks it just back in and there already like holds existing for ebooks because it's all a construct. So I actually went out and checked out the physical book from the library and holy crap. It's so big. It's so heavy. It just. You forget when you're reading something on your, on your like Kindle or your nook or whatever that like, hey, this, this is a really thick book. Like, you know, you see like, oh, I'm 35% of the way through. You don't know that. That's still like 400 pages or whatever. So I have the physical book now and it's like giving me asthma because it's so thick sitting on my chest. Oh, that is hashtag 2017 problems. But yeah, it's a. It's a good book I'd recommend. So that's it for me. How about you, Johnny?
So I just finished a book called the Race Underground. Did you guys catch the American Experience episode about that? That came out this spring. I think it's about Boston and New York and their race to be the first subway in America. No, so the special was just about Boston. But the book is, you know, about the, the race. Because it's called the Race Underground. Right. But it's a really cool book if you live in cities and you think about transportation issues and things like that. Even though like it's sort of rife with for. I think it came out in 2014. Oddly gender exclusive language in some places. And that thing where people make a noun out of the adjective describing your ethnic background, that really bothers me. There's weird silence now. So.
Yeah, processing what you. So like, say that again.
Like, for example, people were like whites, blacks, Hispanics. I hate when people do that.
Yeah, People first language.
Yeah, that's an adjective. Weird Southern people and their bizarre statues.
That sounds like the title of a Randy Newman album. Weird Southern People.
So we discovered a show on Masterpiece called My Mother and Other Strangers. Have you guys heard of the show before? It's about this small Irish village during World War II and an American Air Force base that's stationed nearby. So I forgot how we got onto that. Oh, we were watching Arthur and Arthur and George, that little miniseries about Arthur Conan Doyle solving a real case.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And then somehow that came up on the PBS app, like, oh, let's watch the show. No good pencil stuff. But it has Aaron Statin, the guy that played the tall blonde guy who wrote books, wrote stories in Mad Men. What's his name? Ken Cosgrove. Oh, yeah, that's always interesting. Yeah.
Yeah.
The only other thing is I discovered a really good whiskey, even though we don't really talk about booze on the show very much. My brother law and sister in law live in Louisville. They actually teach at the same school where our friend Lenore teaches. And they brought back a really delicious bottle of something called American whiskey that is aged in used bourbon barrels. So if you're on the hunt for a new bottle of something very, very, very delicious, take this as a good recommendation. And also, as we were saying before, measure it when you drink, because it's very good. Measure it. Leave the bottle in the kitchen. Especially if it's a weeknight or you're podcasting and you're very strict with yourself.
Just for example,
I mean, at the beginning of the show, we always talked about drinking booze. Were you guys really drinking booze or were you drinking coffee?
I was usually trying to say booze. It was booze.
Yeah, I was drinking coffee and like Perrier and just trying to sound cool.
Yeah, whatever.
On our first episode, I was sick though, so I was enjoying some American honey, that Wild Turkey whiskey with honey in it, like quite a bit.
Yeah.
And I am writing with a pencil that I forgot exists. The Faber Castell bonanza.
Oh, yeah.
Which is. It's labeled as a B number two. As you know, Faber Castell does their weird thing that a B is number two, but it's really soft. It's like MMX soft but not smeary, but a little crumbly. But the aesthetics of it are really pretty. It's a dark gold with almost bronze ish hardware and a dark pink eraser. And I'm writing in a new moon to salute the eclipse. Field notes, lunacy notebook.
So, yeah.
So shall we jump into fresh points before we start calling people?
Yeah, sounds good. Excellent.
Tim, do you want to start off?
Yeah, sure. I'll start out by mentioning some. It seems like every episode we have this, but some news. Something new from Baron Fig. So we received some pretty cool things from Baron Fig the other day, which was some new Vanguards. So they announced that they're putting out vanguards in three new colors, which it's kind of like. Well, no, I guess that's not true. I was gonna say. Wait, what are the primary colors? Red, yellow and pink.
Red, yellow and yellow.
Blue and yellow.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
So these are like sort of a twist on primary colors. Sort of. It's. Yeah, it's like a primary colors that fit the Baron Vic aesthetic.
I didn't even think of that.
Yeah. So it's one's like a. And I'm probably gonna get the names wrong, but there's. There's one called Fig Wine, which is sort of a. Exactly what it sounds like, a wine. Wine colored one. I got the yellow, which. Do you remember what the name is for that one?
They should call it.
I don't remember what was it called?
They said they should call it bookmark Yellow.
Yeah. Yeah.
According to the website, it's called Yellow Gold. One word.
Yellow Gold, Yellow Gold. So there's Fig Wine, Yellow gold, and then the blue, which is called old Blue slate. I had it right in front of me, and then I went back to blue Slate, Slate blue, Blue slate blue Slate blue. They're all really, really handsome colors. And not kind of over the top. The yellow is pretty bright, but the blue is. It's the exact same color as the walls of my son's room, which is kind of cool. I love that color. I love that. Kind of like it almost looks like a Facebook blue sort of. But maybe a little more on the gray side. Definitely more on the gray side. But which ones? So I got. I got the yellow gold.
I got the blue slate.
Okay. And Johnny, I'm liking the red. Okay. And so Andy, what were yours lined or were they.
Mine were dot grid. And what's interesting about them is the notebooks themselves are quite a bit darker than their illustration. And I guess they kind of look like the big picture of the blue of the slate blue on their website. But like the illustration that they have that's quite a bit lighter than it. It's. It's almost like a navy blue. Like, I guess blue slate is maybe not a navy.
This.
This is more gray. I'm not good with colors.
It just looks darker than it does.
Yeah.
On the website.
And. And I. And I wish. I also wonder. I haven't matched them up with the pencils from, like a blue set yet. Yeah. Yeah. But I'd be interested to know if, you know, they kind of went with the same color scheme as the prismatic pencils, I, I, I don't think so. I think prismatic are brighter.
But yeah, I've got those in front of me here actually. And those are more of a like a pure primary color kind of thing. Like they're bright white. Bright blue. Bright red, yeah. But still be a cool kind of mismatch and like, like in a good way. It was like dissonance or something. Yeah. But I, I'm not, I've never been a, I have not yet been a user of this size of softback notebook. I've got several different ones and I think for a little while I tried to use ones from Domepaper. I've got these and I just, I love Baron Fig so much that. And I've got, I started to make use of the last ones, the gradient colors that they sent us. That version was really cool and I used that for like house projects and I made use for each one of the notebooks and I gave one to my wife and she loves it in this one. I think I'm going to take them to school because I think they'll be really handy for projects at school and just to have something to jot down lists and have kind of like a brain dump page because I'm ready for a new little brain dump headquarters because I worked through a write notepads reporter. So yeah, pretty cool. So I think it's a. Did you all enjoy yours or are you enjoying them yet or are you using them yet?
I haven't used them. I sent you guys each a red one today, so I'm actually saving it for the fall because that color is perfect for autumn.
I love that red. That's the one I'm most excited about.
Yeah, it's a lot more red in person and less purple. Burgundy. Yeah, very cool.
One other note about Baron Fig is that they officially have bags in the menu on their website. Oh yeah, Cool. Yeah, the back backpack. Andy, you tipped me off on that. And I was pretty excited to see that because I did not, I did not enter into the Kickstarter. But that doesn't mean it's off the table for me to do at some point because there are some really handsome, simple bags that I like a lot. So they're available for pre order on the website in charcoal fig wine and blue slate. And they are $95. So pretty cool. So you can go there. Just go to BaronFig.com at the top. You can click on bags. So go check out all the cool new stuff from Baron Fig. They're Always coming out with something interesting. And the only other thing I wanted to bring up, aside from bear and fig, is that I got a pollux as a birthday present, which was awesome.
Oh, it was your birthday? I lost track of the month.
Well, my birthday is Sunday, so it was like an early birthday. Turning 30.
Oh, boy.
Oh, man. Yeah, I'm turning 38 next week. I mean, a bigger number.
You realize. You realize, Tim, that this is when all your hair goes gray when you turn 30.
Yeah, I've been waiting for it. I've actually just been dyeing it up until now. By the time all the dye wears out, I'll be like, well, you know, just normal. Is your hair a different shade of gray? So what you gonna do about it? But so I got a pollux from my uncle for a early birthday present, which is cool. And so, Andy, you have a pollux.
I do.
And Johnny, you do not, Right?
Nope.
Okay.
No good reason.
Andy, you've talked about your kind of, I don't know, kind of lukewarm about the palms.
Yeah, it's.
And what were your reasons?
Mine was mostly around how touchy it is. Like, it's. It's pretty easy unless you find the right technique to just, like, catch the. Catch the wood a little bit too much or, like, you know, cause. Cause the. The core to break. And I think most of it is because it's kind of a concave point. And so if you don't, like, feed it in the right way or if you go too fast or go too slow, it just sort of splinters. At least when I do it. And maybe you've had a different experience or maybe the same.
So. Kind of complicated. Yeah. So when I was at my uncle's house, who ended up. He got me one. He had one. He listens to the podcast and he had one, and I was using his, and it was, like, amazing. He showed me what he did. He's like, yeah, I run it through the classroom. Friendly to get a point on it. And then I sort of top it off with the pollux. That's a great idea. And so I did that, put it through the pollux, and his just made this beautiful, amazing point. I was kind of fawning over it. And then. So he got one. One arrived at the house, and it was great. And then it started to do that. Started to, like, break all the tips off. Yeah, all the. The cores would just break. It was really frustrating. And so I stopped using it. And so I basically took the blade off, put it back on, and screwed in real tight, and then it was great. So it's like, if the blade loosens, even just a touch, for me, man, that's annoying. Causes problems. But I have heard of people saying, like, some of the. The Pollocks come with a blade that's not the best. And so if you buy one of the new refills, you can get it from CW Pencils. They sell the two pack of replacement blades for the Pollux. That. That kind of fixes the problem for you. So, I mean, just get a masterpiece comes with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I have one of those, So I loved it at points, but it's also been kind of finicky, and so I'm trying to figure that out because I want it to be. I assume it's like a regular use,
like a Ferrari or something like that. Like, it's kind of hard to manage. And when it does work, it's just, like, amazing and incredible.
Really fun to drive. But the oil change costs $650.
And the, you know, and it's, like, super sensitive when you, like, switch gears and you have to, like, get a technique for, like, breaking or turning or whatever down.
Do you sneeze while you use it? It'll, like, send you in and do
a tailspin immediately crash into, you know, the side of the road. Yeah. Also, it's $28.
Also, it's $28. Like, yeah.
Little pressure.
Kind of nuts. Yeah. It should be 12. That would be a very happy price for it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, so that's all I got. So what about you, Andy?
Well, I will.
Awesome. Plumbago.
I will. And let me just start by saying I am posting into the group, into the erasable US live group, the form, the link that you click on to fill out a form to be on the show. So if you're in the group right now and you're listening to this live stream, go click on that if you want to call in.
So why wouldn't you want to come?
Why wouldn't you want to talk to us in person? I just. I just don't even know. Cool. So. Yeah. So quick update on Plumbago. We. I think since we recorded last, maybe. Were we sold out the last time we recorded with Charles?
I don't think so.
Okay. If we weren't. We are. We are now. We made 300 copies, and we sold most of them in pre order, and we sold out the rest of them really quickly after, which is great. I thought that 300 of them would be, like, plenty, but apparently, apparently not, which is which is good news. So, yeah. So what we're going to do, rather than make another print run, is sell digital copies. So if you go to erasable US shop, you can pay four bucks, which is less than half the price of the original, and download a nice high resolution PDF. So, yeah, that will be on there for the foreseeable future. What's nice is on the back cover of Plumbago magazine, there is a link, a secret link to go to to download a scan of issue one. So essentially you're getting both issues so far for four bucks. So you should do that. Starting to think about issue number three, but we're not. I think things are still kind of, like, forming and we want to have a little break. So probably in about a month or so, maybe when the fall starts, we'll start thinking about it for a winter release.
Well, before you move on and start talking about three, issue two was awesome. Like, I was blown away. I just got mine yesterday.
Yeah.
Which. So, Andy, you sent me a couple copies, which was like, really nice. And I was waiting for him to get here, and they never got here. And so I told you they never got here. And then you sent me more. And then yesterday, both of them show up, like, both shipments that you sent me. And I opened it and was just like, blown away by the quality of them. They're amazing. They're really nice. It's like the quality of some of these nice notebooks we talk about. I mean, it's really paper quality and the construction quality. I mean, they're awesome.
It came out really well. Thank you. Thank you. It was a really fun project. I forgot how much I love kind of like working in a print medium. I haven't.
It done.
Done it super seriously. Since I worked at a nonprofit and we put out a newsletter. I just had a lot of fun. Yeah. And. And if you ordered a physical copy and you have not gotten it, give it a little time because it's just a little like, bananas. How weirdly like, like, the delivery patterns have been. Like, there are people in the UK who got it before people in Seattle, which is less than a thousand miles from where I live. So I do not understand customs is
like, what is this? Plumbago?
Yeah.
Sounds dangerous.
Yeah. And. And some of them, like, some of them I sent out through the mail center at work, which maybe adds an extra layer of bureaucracy to it, and some I'd like dumped in the post office, but I have no idea. So sorry if you haven't gotten it yet. If, if you go, let's say another week. Email me if you haven't received it and we'll, we'll figure that out. So. Yeah. So plumbago. Yay. It's been a lot of fun. We'll talk about three issue three pretty soon. If you're interested in contributing. I do want to mention I talked before about a store called Top Drawer which is in like a San Francisco like American brand of Itoya and they sell stationary and like Japanese travel accessories and the people who own that have a notebook brand called Kolo K O L O. And I bought one. I bought like the A5ish size, kind of like moleskinny notebook. It's fantastic. It is fabric browned and really beautiful colors. I bought one that's kind of a what like I guess I would call slate blue and it has little like elastic ribbon and a bookmark. And I'll be talking about it a little bit more in future, like maybe on my blog. It's, it's really good. It's, it's maybe not quite like as good as a confidant in my opinion, but I like it a lot and it's actually just about the same price as a confidant. I want to mention the San Francisco pen show which is coming up next weekend. If you're in the Bay Area, you should go to it. It's a pen show so it's going to be mostly like fountain pens. But on Saturday I'm going to be volunteering at the Nakco booth with Brad Dowdy. So they're kind of tacked on to the Van Ness booth. Van Ness pens and Anna, Anna Reiner from well appointed desk will be there. So if you come on Saturday you might be able to see Anna and Brad and me all in the same place.
So what are the chances of you guys tying him up and covering him in pencils? Probably putting the picture on the Internet for everybody to see.
Probably pretty good. You know, last, last time, last year I went to the pen attic meetup and I think somebody got a picture of us like sword fighting with a pencil and a fountain pen. So I'm sure you should sword fight
with real swords and then when he loses cover him in pencils.
Love you, Brad. Just imagining, imagining like a Godfather like scene where he wakes up in his hotel room and next to him there's this like big bag of pencil shavings.
Like he's like broken fountain pen into the tines all spread.
You monster.
It's going to be a lot of broken ties. Nibs.
No Andy up All night sharpening pencils with his Pollocks and breaking him off, like filling up a duffel bag full of them.
That dude is a southern gentleman. I would probably like. I think his, his sword skills are probably way better than mine. Yeah, a lot of duels.
Yeah, all you guys are taller in person. This could be really fun. You could break stuff.
Last thing I want to mention is an experience that I had on Sunday which was kind of amazing and totally unexpected. Katie and I went to the Oakland Museum of California, which is a really great sort of like general purpose museum in Oakland. And they have like some natural history, some California history, some art. It's really cool. And they have traveling exhibits and one of them is an exhibit of the photography of Dorothy Lange. And we all, we all know Dorothy Lange is a photographer because she was attributed in Blackwing 344 and she took a lot of pictures in like the 30s through the 60s, mostly about like Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II, kind of forced to by the government. She took pictures of like crop share farmers and their relocation from Oklahoma to California like during, during the 30s. And after that happened, John Steinbeck wrote her a letter and basically thanked her for her photography from like, from that era that he used in a series of essays about, about the Depression about like the, the Okies traveling to California. Kind of based on like you know, Grapes of Wrath. This, his essays came out maybe two years before the Grapes of Wrath was published.
So.
So he wrote her this letter just a page on like some yellow like notepad paper. And I look closer and I look closer and it was written in pencil and I was like, this is amazing. So took a bunch of pictures and it is a really, really dark, smooth marking and it's, it's in amazing shape. It was, it was written in 1965, which was just a few months before she died. But it's in, it's an incredible shape. And I'm wondering like, do you suppose he wrote that in a black wing? Like there's obviously no real way, no real practical way to know.
Well, he like, you know, he's known for using some harder pencils like some of the, the sort of f or H kind of pencils that I don't think would have put, that would have put down a line like that. So yeah, it's not. I think it's fairly likely and it looks like it was written yesterday.
Yeah, it's an amazing shape and his, his handwriting is incredible. Like I like that is handwriting goals for me. Like it is Gorgeous. And I guess Katie kind of remarked on it, and I was thinking that too. Like, you know, if he wrote so much stuff longhand, you would think his handwriting would sort of like, just degrade, because mine. Mine certainly does. So maybe he just, like, goes much slower and more intentionally when he's writing a letter to somebody. But. But also, if that were the case, it seems like he would have some, like, nice stationary or something because he wrote it on a legal pad of paper. And he also completely ignored the left margin. Did you guys notice that?
Yeah, I think I read somewhere that he always did that with notebooks because it was his sort of over the top, don't want to be wasteful sort of attitude where he used every bit of paper.
So, yeah, I posted that to my blog to Woodclinched, if you want to. If you guys, I'll have a link in show notes if you want to see a picture, a bunch of pictures of this.
It's.
It's pretty great. It was. It was a really great pencil moment. Just kind of thinking about how, you know, there's a Blackwing volumes tribute to Steinbeck, there's one to Lang, and he likely used a black wing underwriting this, like an original black wing.
So
it's like Lebowski's rug. It just sort of ties the room together. Yeah.
Doesn't smell like pee.
Hopefully not. It was under glass, so I don't. I don't actually know. Speaking of the museum, have you guys noticed those, like, gold colored Chinese pencils being around more and more? I think Caroline or somebody posted about it in the group. They ran across these gold pencils that they hand out, like Chinese people kind of give out as gifts and hand out to each other for good luck.
Oh, those five sided ones.
Yeah. Have you been noticing those?
More and more sort of artists at Craftsman Supply always has a cup by the register.
Okay.
So that's been more prevalent lately.
They have them in the gift shop at that Oakland museum, and there's the only marking on it is like Chinese characters. And so I don't know if it says, like, the Oakland Museum of California or if it just says something about, you know, good luck. But then at work today, people were. People had some of them. They said one of the. One of their Chinese co workers brought back for them. So this is just like the third time in like a month that I've. I've seen these pencils around somewhere.
So, yeah, I definitely haven't seen much of them, but, yeah, I don't live in a cool Place like you two. So much cool stuff.
Cool. So that's. That's it for freshpoints for me. How about you, Johnny?
Well, I don't have a lot, but now all three of us drive Subarus, which I think is worth noting and worth a good picture one day. So we went. We bought a Forester last week that has like literally every safety feature you can possibly get in a car, which is why we bought it. And it's silver. It's like the most boring dad looking car you ever saw. Even so, like a gray interior. But yeah. Yeah. I just today avoided an accident because the car stopped.
That's awesome.
That's awesome. That's what. And I told you, like telling everybody else's story, but I have a friend who had that exact same car from a year earlier. And he left my house, he came over to watch Henry for me and then was on his way home with his daughter who's like, was at the time on the highway and a tree fell on top of him. Like literally like on the highway, a tree just went, now I'm gonna go down now. Fell into the highway on top of him. And they both walked away with like minor bruises and were amazing. Fine. Like it was insane.
Yeah.
He sent me a picture of it and I was at. I remember I was at Wrigley Field watching a cubs game and he was just like helping Jane, basically giving her a break and watching the kids for a little while so she could do something. And I got a text from. He's like, hey, check it out. It was a pict cards like totaled. So you made a good choice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We also brought the kids new car seats that have super safety rating. And you can fit three car seats across a back seat of a car if you're careful what car seats you buy. The secret nobody tells you. You don't need to buy a damn minivan and be uncool. You can drive a Firester and be slightly less uncool.
Dusters are cool. Yeah.
We. I think that we should have a spinoff podcast where we talk about our Subarus. We'll call it the Accidental auto Podcast.
How about the. That'll be our next After Dark. Just like. Yeah, just like geek out on Subarus.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
So my buddy in Baltimore wants to start a club called the Dork Club. The dad's off road club because he. He just bought a Crosstrek recently. So maybe I'll total my car pretty soon. Get another one. Yeah. So also, did you guys see the Field notes, Wednesday edition.
Yeah.
Yep.
Nobody stuck with this in our group. I already filled one up. They were, like, super nice. It was a really pretty blue, but the inside was completely identical to the regular ones, including the brown graph, which was disappointing. They've been blue graph before, and that's been nice. And last Friday, we had all day child care, so Frankie and I went to Philly for the day with no children and no car.
It was awesome.
But there weren't a lot of good stationery stores. There was like a blick, which, you know, doesn't have a lot, and a store called Omoizaka that sells a lot of Japanese stuff. It's cool. But if you have black wings, maybe not that cool because you already have them. But if anybody lives in Philly and knows of anything good for stationery, want to put it on cartographite? That would be super awesome.
Yeah.
Because the only thing on there was the Blick, which I already knew about, which, like, as far as Blick art materials goes, the one in Philly is a really good one. And, you know, all of them have a different price. The prices, they're a little lower.
Just cool.
And it's underground. And they have, like, more moleskins than you could possibly imagine. But it was still. I didn't buy anything.
So, yeah, you would think that Philly would have, like, some cool, like, indie stores or something like that.
How the hell does Baltimore have more stationary stuff than you? No offense, Baltimore, I love you. They also don't have a cool brand there. Like, right. Notepads, which is cool for Baltimore because so much here sucks, but that doesn't suck. So on that note, we're going to take a really short break and then we're going to do our main topic Collins show. And now, as promised, for the main segment of our show, we are going to do our very first call in show segment as I reuse lots of words. So some listeners have filled out a form and included their contact information and question, and Andy's going to call them on Skype and we're going to have them on the show and do a little wrapping.
All right.
Just like on the phone. Sorry.
Yeah. So this is going to sound awkward at first, but let me add Harry Marks to the call.
Hello.
Hello, Harry. Hi.
Long time. First time.
Yeah.
This is not your first time, in fact.
Yeah.
Harry was on when we talked about National Novel Writing Month.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
So, Johnny, if you want to give me the prompt.
Sure. Hello, Harry. We're listening.
Hey, Harry.
I'm sorry. I was getting some weird feedback because I think it was sort of like when you call into the radio and you're getting the call in one ear and then the playback, the delay on the other, so I had to turn down the other side.
Yeah, yeah.
There were a few episodes on Frasier where they did that. Turn your radio down.
Yes.
Why does your Kelsey Grammer impression Sound like Dr. Claw, Jonny? I don't understand that.
Yeah, everything sounds like Dr. Claw.
We could really go there, baby.
It's also his Don Draper impression and his Lisa Simpson impression.
If I could do a Don Draper, that would be the only way I ever talked.
So, Harry, what do you want to talk about today?
Oh, you know, lots of things. No, I did have a.
Tell us about your parents. Start from the beginning.
Start from the begin.
Well, I was born at St. Barnabas Hospital. No, I'm kidding. I would like to talk. It's. I don't know. It's something that sort of irked me because I feel like as I acquire more stuff, like I'm looking right now at two mason jars filled to the brim with pencils of all shapes and sizes, and I'm just sort of wondering. I don't do a lot of writing during the day unless I'm actually working on a book or something. You know, there's to do lists and stuff, but I don't really. I want to do more, especially when I hear, like, when Brad Dowdy talks about he's got, like, eight pens inked up, and he works through them all day. What do you guys write all day? That would allow you to work through your stash a little quicker because I'm accumulating more than I'm using, and it's kind of freaking me out.
Johnny, I feel like you go through your supplies faster than we do. So do you want to take this first?
Sure. Well, with three kids and being the only driver, a lot of the things I write down are things that I have to do or remember to do or places I have to be. And I don't have a lot of brain space, so I sort of write a lot as, like, a brain dump sort of thing. Like, this stuff happened. This is a cute thing the kid did. This is something I better not do. Again with the car. Something's gonna blow up. And then also I do a lot of sort of free writing, which really, really eats pencils up and field notes and write notepads, books, because that's something else. We all stack up. So, yeah, I guess most of it is, you know, just sort of free writing and like, word sketching, I suppose. How about you guys?
I am. I kind of live by the. I don't know what I think until I read what I think on paper. Like, until I write it down. Like, even in just, like, daily life, like, it's hard for me to process anything, whether it's trying to decide which days my kid is going to go to aftercare at school or, you know, what am I going to do with my spring break. Like, anything I have to write down. So I find myself finding all these moments throughout the day where I just sit down to write without, like, any sort of plan and when I only have, like, five minutes, you know, and I'm just writing all kinds of random stuff just because I feel better. It's like a form of meditation or something. And so I like, that's the majority of what I do, writing throughout the day. The good days, I might be working on a writing project where I spend a little extra time, but most of the time it's things like that. It's making lists at school. And it's also. I do a lot of. One of the main things I teach in class is about close reading, like, how to annotate things and how to read deeply and how to put your thoughts onto the page to show me, like, that you're thinking while you're reading. And so I do a lot of that in front of them on, like, a document camera. And so I roll through pencils, doing that a good bit where I've got a pencil and I'm writing live on the document camera and showing them. Like, when I read this, I'm thinking this. And then when I go here, I'm thinking this, and here's a historical connection I can make. And I'm writing all over and they're copying down what I have, and then they're giving me what they have, and I'm writing it on there. And so that's. So I feel lucky that I get to use pencils in my, like, job setting kind of a lot, which is kind of great. So even. Even grading sometimes I'll. I'll just say, you know, screw it, and I'll just write on their paper and pencil. I'll put the grade and pen, that's for sure. But yeah, yeah, I had been keeping.
I'd been keeping a reading journal while I was preparing for my show. And, you know, I would write down questions and take notes and I would annotate in the book and even in the Back cover on the, not on the COVID and that blank page right before the back cover. I would, I would scribble questions and page references and things. So I always had a reference in the book. And then I'm getting into a new book I'm starting in my sixth novel, which is going to take about a year of research to do. And so I've been, I've been using my byline and doing a lot of research in that and stuff. So I'm trying to use it more. But I just, you know, during the day, you know, for work and stuff, I'm on the computer all the time. Most of my job takes place on a computer. So it's hard for me beyond the simple to do list to realize use my tools. So I'm just looking for ideas on how to do that, especially during the workday.
And that's for me, kind of what I do too. Like you, Harry, I figure I'm probably at my desk on my computer or in a meeting. Also on my computer.
Yeah, exactly.
And I do keep a pocket notebook for mostly lists or if I'm taking, if I have a bunch of stuff to do that day, I kind of in the morning, you know, distill it down from my online, my, my computer to do list. Just kind of like the, the action items I'm going to be taking, like the things I want to accomplish today. And sometimes it's kind of hard to decide when I'm going to take notes in a meeting on my computer and when I'm going to take notes in a notebook. And sometimes it's a little bit about like the social cues, like if I'm taking notes, if everybody has their computer up and they're typing, um, you know, I might as well do that too. But if I'm the only one like furiously typing notes on my laptop while everybody else is just having a conversation, I tend to be more of a note taker than most other people. So if that's the case, I'll, I'll bring my notebook and I, I always, always bring my confidant or my A5ish notebook with me to a meeting. But a lot of times I just leave it closed. So I wrote, I write pretty tiny. And I also write use up most of the page when I write. So I go through my stash really, really slowly. So like you, Harry, I feel like I acquire faster than I use. In fact, I've taken all of my confidants to work and put them on my desk because it makes me look really, like accomplished and important.
I totally understand. I have a little alcove on my desk at home and I have all. I lined up all of my pocket notebooks. I had cleared out room. And I have my workshop companion. I have my two sets of write note pads, the Thoreau and the Chesapeake. And I've got a couple of loose field notes and a whole lot of things and about four bylines because I'm stockpiling them. But I'm just sort of working my way through so as I try to finish one, I can just pull one off the shelf and throw it in my bag and move on. But as of right now, I still carry about six or seven notebooks with me. And they all have their own specific purpose. And I never get far enough into any one of them to feel like I'm making a difference in any one of them.
Yeah, one, like, weird. One weird trick. Yeah, one weird trick that I. I figured out for myself, like, to like, mess with my head is that when I have. When I don't feel like I'm being or like, I guess productive, but more like just not using the stuff that I have to kind of trick my brain lately, if I'm having one of those days where I just like, have that need or like, I just want to use a pencil down to a nub and sharpen it and use it and sharpen it and use it and sharpen it. I'll pick up like an MMX or something really soft so that as I'm using it throughout the day, it like makes me feel more accomplished or makes me feel like more done.
I did that with the stakes and ladders because the whole inside was shattered. So I actually got to use most of. Or waste away most of the pencil.
Yeah. So you get to like actually work it down, like, okay, I gotta sharpen it. And then by the end of the day you're like, I used an inch of this pencil today. That's awesome. Which is ridiculous. But that's just like how my brain works.
But so cool. I do say that I usually, I just have like, you know, two notebooks going at once. I have like the A5 size, which is usually work, workish stuff. And then my like, you know, pocket notebook, which is a field notes or I write notepads or what have you. So I don't have like seven notebooks for different purposes. I usually just like, keep everything in one, which maybe I should find a better balance because sometimes I lose stuff and I forget. I forget. So. Thank you, Harry. Do you Want to plug your podcast?
Sure. Especially since we're coming back next week.
Nice.
Covered.
Yep, Covered is back. So this season's very special because I'm interviewing only women authors, and one of whom you all know, Caroline Weaver, will be on my second episode. So I've actually. I've been listening to your interview with her and Brad's interview with her and anyone else who I know not to ask the same questions. So I've been reading her book. It's phenomenal.
And.
And so, yeah, we come back on September 1st or 2nd, whatever that first Friday in September is. And I'm very, very excited.
Harry and Eraser will share a distinction of. Both of our logos are created by TJ Cosgrove.
Yes, that's absolutely right. And they both popped up in a recent video of his too, which is very exciting. So if you want to listen, it's@hologramradio.org covered or you can find me on itunes. My album art looks like an old Penguin Classics edition, so it's pretty easy to recognize.
Cool. Awesome.
Excellent.
Thanks for coming to you.
Thank you for talking to me, gents. You enjoy yourselves.
You too.
Thanks.
See you.
Bye.
Should we. Should we call Woody over here?
Sure.
Gotta do a Baltimore accent, though. He's off.
When you answer it, you should start in with, like, how you doing, hon? Or whatever. I can't do it.
You need to hit yourself in the head a few times.
Okay, hold on just a second. Oh, this is. See how this goes there? Hey, Woody, you're on the air.
Hey, Han, how you doing?
I'm doing just fine. How are you doing?
All right.
This is awesome.
I mean, come on, man. Come on, man. I just washed my car today, and then it rained out here. I mean, you know, going.
You got wash it. Wash it.
We wash it with water. Water. Water washes everything. Water and soap.
Wash that car.
Water it. Soap just sounds like too normal. Water, water washes everything, so. Oh, man. Come on. You know us here in the mid Atlantic, so.
So should we. Should we tell the people who. The very confused people who we have on the line right now, in fact, this is Woody.
Woody. Woody Woodpecker. Come on, now. Come on, Woody. Notebook. That doesn't want to talk about notebooks. He's seen too many of them. He's seen too many of them and made too many of them over this summer that he just wants to talk about pencils and other things?
You know what? The best. The best notebook. The only notebook really in my mind is field notes. It's the only Pocket notebook for to use out there.
That's completely fine by me.
I, I, I, you know what?
Hey, hey, I'll take anything, I'll take, I'll take a meat off the rack at Target over having to actually manufacture another one right now. No, I'm, I, I am just kidding. I am just kidding.
I love it.
But my lord, here in the mid Atlantic it has been so hot and humid but we still trudged through and made all the notebooks and we've got something really cool coming that you're not even going to even be able to infiltrate what is coming. But it's cool. And I will give you this. Might have a little color in it. Ooh, might have a little color in it. Okay, I'll leave you with that.
Colors. You heard it here first.
I do want to compliment you guys. I want to compliment you guys on the sound quality tonight is absolutely amazing. Amazing. Turns out when I put my desk, I'm listening and it's unbelievable.
It's usually Skype is just like a huge bastard. So this is, this is pretty good.
Oh no, I think I've sound like I've sounded like a robot once or twice on your podcast.
Yeah, sounded like a robot. I know once or twice.
I know once or twice. Once or twice. How's everybody doing?
Pretty good.
Yeah, we're good.
How's everything at right Notepads headquarters?
Oh, you know what? It's good, it's good. Busy, busy, busy. A lot of custom work and a lot of focal nitty gritty on what's coming in the fall. And
Chris, can you tell us a little bit about you posted actually on Instagram today. You had a giveaway for some really cool private branded notebooks. What are those?
It's some of the things that we've done with some of our custom clients that we can't necessarily sell but we can give them away. People that follow us on Instagram and share us on social media, they have an opportunity to enter this. And I literally, I literally witnessed the emails rolling in with mailing addresses of people who were selected. And we did this, we did this 100% the right way. It wasn't like, oh, here's this, this, this, this name, this name. We got a whole little add on service that systematically like, like random.org selected, selected the folks that were a part of it that shared and liked and did all that. And you know the 10 people that were selected, hey, we're sending them out stuff that cannot be purchased. So these are things that, that we've done like, custom work that she'll never be able to buy unless you're a client of the people that we've done business with that, you know, we've always have some samples back here and that's what everybody's getting. So really rare, unique stuff that you otherwise couldn't acquire.
That's very cool.
Pretty fun.
Yeah.
So we didn't get to talk about pencils that much when you were on because we talked about notebooks. So now we've got you on the spot, and it's live. What do you look for in a pencil? As a person who contracts an inconsistent American company to make pencils to your specifications?
You know what, that's funny because we do. We do contract to make many pencils and I use a lot of those pencils that we make and sell. But I'll be honest with you, I'm. I am a stickler when it comes certain things. So in. In business practices, I will use a. Like what is in my hand? A Stabilo that I can write on steel, I can write on plastic, I can write on paper. I can write on anything because I have to write notes on a multitude of different surfaces. I'll take hours. I even have like, I bought a perfect pencil for like 40 bucks, like on clearance rack at feel like in my pencil cup here. Now it's really whatever I grab. I mean, literally, I could grab anything. A majority of the stuff in this pencil cup is stuff that Johnny Gamber has brought down and dumped off on it. So who, like the black. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that guy, that guy, that guy. So like the plastic pencils and all that sort of stuff.
I have you guys with opex. You guys, you guys.
I'm not going to name them. I'm not going to. I'm not going to name them by name, but I really like. I mean, like, even.
Yeah, I see the Wopex show up in your product shoots quite a lot.
Well, because we like them. We like them. Okay. We like them. We like them.
Watch out putting them under the screen.
Recorded.
They're very bendable. I like them. I like them.
Watch out if you put the hot studio lights on them because they'll melt.
That is a good point.
That is breaking my heart.
Duly noted. Oh, they write. They write so great because it's almost like you've written something and then it follows behind you. It's a. It's a hot minute late.
Yeah,
cool.
But I don't know. Papers and ever. It's, it's. It's it's as much of a battle finding great paper as it is finding a great pencil. I mean, we're constantly. Oh, my God.
Gosh.
This week alone, I've gotten 15 packages from four different paper providers trying to find something different, something new. And I constantly put it to the test. So what do you do to put
it to the test if you're, if you're like running a test on paper? Like, how do you, like, what are your, like sort of, what's the, the gambit you run it through? Just.
Oh. So I have the fountain penta and we have the sharpie test also.
Really?
The sharpie test is one of the, one of the top two tests. So we'll see how a sharpie bites and bleeds. And then we'll go into more of the pens. So we'll even go with the flares, we'll go with the gels, we'll go with the ball points, we'll go with the pencils of different hardnesses. Fountain pens are sort of the final nuance test to see, like, if it feathers, if it bleeds through, if it bites too much, if it grips too much. I can't tell you how many different paper stocks we have. Just absolutely stricken from ever even coming back and being reintroduced into this mix. It's, it's funny. I mean, we, we throw everything to the rigors, like to the nth degree.
You should, oh, I mean, you should have used, you should use some of that stone paper, the compressed stone powder and plastic sheets.
Oh, my God.
I've tried that.
I've tried that.
I've tried that. It did not, it did not pass the first test. But I, I mean, it's, it's a clever idea.
Nicely.
That's being really nice about it.
Clever idea.
So real quick, can you talk about any possible good new pencil goodness coming out from right notepads.
So we have like our sort of like new standard with the wooden graphite, the black and white modern pencil. We're going to continue on with the pencils that come with every special edition release. We may even. We've tickled the notion of doing something where we will go with a static pencil of a different hardness. We're not going to run people through the gamut of, oh, we have 10 different hardnesses like other people have done recently. We just, we want, we want people to sort of embrace what it is that we're presenting to them. And this is what works best for the paper that we provided to them. So, and a lot of it goes with design. And the theme of what we're. What we're working with at the given moment and that sort of thing. So it's not a money grab. It's not a sort of like, hey, let's just throw so many different things out there. It's just. It's just. It's us. It's a piece of us. It's what is currently going on here in these confines that this is what we've created. This is what we use. This is what we want people to use that then enjoy this theme.
Nice.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah.
Excellent. I love that.
Like that theory or that philosophy a lot better. Mm, awesome.
Well, thanks for calling in, Mr. Mr. Roth.
Yeah, Woody.
Woody Roth.
Thanks, Woody.
Woody.
Yeah, let's go.
And we'll talk to you soon, I'm sure.
Yeah.
All right, fellas.
Cool.
Thanks, Han.
Well, thank you. Well, and everyone out there. Everyone out there, keep them sharp. Take care. Be well.
Yeah.
That was awesome.
That was our bit of local color for the day.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm calling internationally with this next one, so hold on just a second here. It's exciting. This person has not been on the show before, so this is. This is a brand new caller.
Hello.
Hello, Spencer.
Hey, how you doing?
Good. You are on the air with the Erasable podcast.
Hey, Spencer.
Woohoo. You guys might doing pretty good. You might recognize Spencer from the. From the group and from Twitter. He is pretty active in both places. And Spencer, do you have a. Do you have a blog?
I don't have a blog at the moment. No, I haven't. I need to get on that.
Yeah, yeah. Nice. And you are in Canada, aren't you?
I am, yeah. I'm in Toronto, Canada.
Very cool. I notice whenever I talk to somebody from Toronto, it's always Toronto.
Yes, we leave out that last t. That seems to be a bit of a local habit here.
Yeah. In San Francisco, you can tell if somebody is not local because they'll say San Fran or Frisco. And if you live in San Francisco, if you have to abbreviate it, you say sf. You don't say San Fran, you say sf. Sf. Really? Yeah.
You know, someone's in the. In the cool kids club.
Yeah, ours would be jc, which would have like a whole different connotation.
Yeah.
Hot as hell JC today.
You watch your mouth.
Sorry.
If you're in Baltimore and you want to know if you're a local, you just throw a brick through a window. Right, Right. Johnny.
Hey, man, that's too close to home.
Literally did that this afternoon?
No, the riots two years ago were really close to Frankie. Where Frankie's school is now.
Yeah. So Spencer line. Well, flee.
I would have to yell. Sorry,
Sorry. What do you want to chat about today?
Yeah, so I was wondering. I recently made the switch to just carrying one notebook. And for a really long time I had thought that I was a real like multi notebook person. I carried a different notebook for every part of my kind of life. And I like to think that that's how I organized myself. But after switching to one notebook, I found that I'm actually more of a one notebook kind of person. It makes a lot of sense for me just to keep everything in one place. So I was just wondering what you guys do and how you kind of organize that.
Can I ask what. So what notebook do you like to use for your. If you have to narrow down to one, does it change? Like what are you using right now?
So what I narrowed it down to is a confidant. So right now I'm carrying the metamorphosis and I think something within that size is what I'm. What I'm planning to carry into the future.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The confidant. So convenient. Such a. Such a good size. And if I could. Like I aspire to be you. Like I aspire to be able to do that, but I, I can't do that. Like I always. I'm a. I'm more in the Harry Marks camp. Like we were just talking to him and he carries six or seven. He said I end up. They just accumulate. I tend to go through this constant stream of narrowing down to one to simplify my life.
And then I'm like, wait, once you're
32 and then going like back to
6, once you're 30, your back will start hurting.
My notebooks turn gray.
Yeah, yeah, they're all going to be gray confidants. No, your shoulders and back will start hurting. So then you can't carry six notebooks.
Well, something else will have to go. I guess I'll have to just ditch the laptop, I guess. Yeah, yeah, I won't have to carry. We'll be able.
I won't be able to put them in that Slim Baron pig backpack either.
That's true, I guess.
Spencer. Yeah, I. I am a kind of a one. I'm actually. So I'm a two notebook person, but really only because I split them up by form factors. I, you know, keep, you know, a pocket notebook around. So I just always have. Have one in my back pocket. But if it's something bigger or more formalized or something where I need to like, you know, write a bunch of stuff on one page. Then it's. Then it's my. A 5ish size notebook, which is usually confidant but is a colo for right now. So I don't know. I. I like that a lot and I've kind of always been like that because I just knew that I. I didn't have like, the physical capacity to carry so many different notebooks and I, I definitely abandoned projects pretty quickly. And I know that I would only fill up, like, you know, a few pages of something before I get to the end. And even though I acquire notebooks super fast, I guess I'm. I feel kind of frugal with them. Like, I want to try to like, make it through at least. At least half of it. So.
Go ahead, Spencer.
Oh, yeah, that was a huge part of it for me as well. I felt like I was carrying around all these half empty, half empty notebooks all the time. And there's a certain satisfaction to filling up a notebook and then moving on
to the next one. Yeah. I think I've come up with an idea based on this conversation and Harry's and just like, do we all need to embrace the concept of like, a burner notebook or something? Like a notebook that, like, when you start a new project, like, you just go back to your burner notebook, you go for a while and you're like, hey, this is gonna stick. So I'm gonna switch to a new notebook and like, actually give this a place to live. Or I'm just gonna stick around here for a little while because I have a big problem of starting new notebooks for everything. But I think in essence, I always have one going for work, one going for, like, personal writing and then pocket notebooks. So I think at minimum, I always have three going no matter what. But I do tend to start new notebooks because I get ambitious. Yeah, narrowing down one would be awesome. I think at some point when we were. Since we started the podcast, I was doing this thing where I would start, I had a blank notebook and I would work on it from one direction for one reason, and then I would flip it over and then work on it from the other direction.
Like, because I thought you were saying that you had a notebook about one direction.
Yeah, no, I have several of those.
I only have a Zane notebook.
How did you know that?
You got a bit too excited at Target.
Yeah, dollar section went all out. I actually just bought. Yesterday I bought a Lightning Mcqueen Notebook that I'm pretty excited about. Got that for like 85 cents from good Pixar Cars movies.
They're still merchandising cars Notebooks.
Well, they just came out with a new movie.
Come on, Andy. I don't know.
So I just got that.
But yeah.
Yeah. This is a really. It's always a really interesting topic. It's really interesting to think about it. Yeah. And like, everybody approaches it from a different direction. It really depends what's going on in your life and, like, what you're into.
I feel like there was. And maybe somebody in the chat has a link to this, but there was a really good episode of the Pen Addict where he talked about sort of like his notebook strategy. And whoever kind of like wrote in asking about it had a really interesting thing that they wrote about. They. And it was essentially, yeah, like, do you have sort of this, like, commonplace notebook, like a burner notebook, or do you have, you know, like something for each project? And I think. I think kind of the consensus for a lot of people was if you have sort of like that one important project, like the novel that you're writing or you know, the big thing that you're trying to plan for, like, maybe that deserves its own notebook because you need to be able to reference it and kind of treat it like the source of truth rather than like, just have a big old notebook full of pages and. Because that's what mine is like. I. I was actually just yesterday looking for a workshop that I was attending at a conference a year and a half ago, and I had the notebook that I had written it in, but I knew that it was buried somewhere toward the beginning. And I, like, it took me forever to find it because I don't have, like, a good organizational system to get there. So I do feel like. Yeah, if you, if you. Spencer, I don't know if you have any, like, big, huge, kind of like important capital P projects that you're working on or as you might say in Toronto, projects. On our project, I have a couple Canadian co workers and we're always arguing about whether you say progress or progress. As I from the Midwest often say. I don't think.
Yeah, we get out and about doing our projects.
Yeah. Project. I always put a Chicago spin on it, too. Projects.
Projects.
Sausage.
Anyhow, yeah, that's. That's kind of my thought. Like, if I. If I had something really big and important that I wanted sort of like this sort of like, record to exist for, I might. I might buy a dedicated notebook. But. Yeah,
yeah. And I found for me as well, kind of separate from the. From the stationary side of things, it has actually made me a lot more productive just having this one place to live, per se. I've seen actually an improvement in the stuff that I'm getting done and as well just being able to remember stuff because flipping through eight different notebooks before wasn't necessarily. But that's the way for me.
That's like a. Like a headquarters, which is. Yeah, we all need something like that. Yeah. Spencer, do you point.
Do you number your pages and then do like some sort of a. Like a table of contents, like kind of the bullet journal method usually calls for?
I don't, but I do always put a title at the top of the
page, so that's a good idea.
I just kind of have a rough mental idea.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same with me. I always put the title and a date on the top of the page so I can like, at least sort of like, reference it chronologically if I need to. Yeah.
I also put the kind of borrowing from the inside cover of the field notes books. I always put the start date and the end date right on the inside cover just for easy reference.
Yeah. Nice.
Cool.
Do you have any projects you want to plug or any things you want to tell the people about?
Yeah, I've got a website for some of the work that I do on the art side of things, so I make art in my free time. So you can go to spencerjulian. Ca.
That's cool. Your art projects on Instagram. You just look like super cool people.
Thank you very much. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Cool.
Thanks for calling up.
Thanks, Spencer.
Talk to you later, Spencer. Take care.
Bye.
Cool.
All right, our next voice is a familiar voice.
I tried to pull in the people who have not been on the air with us before, but apparently everybody else is too, too afraid to talk to us.
Y' all too good to talk to us.
I think. I think Spencer can attest that we're. We're friendly people. So. So please, if you're. If you're around, fill in that form. And I am adding our next person to the call, who is maybe a familiar, familiar voice.
So maybe it's a wopex thing.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we're not into that, but, you know.
Hello. Hello to Illinois.
What's up? Hello.
Hey, it is Mr. Michael Hagen from Leadfast. I feel like we're hosting one of those, like, Christmas, those Andy Williams Christmas specials where we're all just, like, sitting around like, oh, our good friend Michael Hagen has joined us.
I'm gonna sing a song and, you know, like, a country Jesus song or something.
I wish that you had, like, duet with, like, a sweater on or something.
We could do some, like, barbershop. Good night.
We were talking about this earlier. How the hell were you and I both not in Carbondale yesterday?
I don't know. I mean, like, literally. It would have been the most awesome portion of the path of totality to have two pencil bloggers there as well.
Check out these.
Black wings, white eraser, very eclipse.
I'm only, like, a half an hour from the path of totality here. But our, like, coverage was 97%. I'm like, yeah, sure, 97%. That's a lot, right? This is gonna be pretty awesome.
I'm thinking about going to Fort Wayne in 2024 because that's gonna be in the path of totality.
So how about we go to Carbondale in 2024?
I don't think it'll be in the path.
No.
Effingham is in the path, though. Halfway between Carbondale and Fort Wayne. So there you go.
Effing Effingham.
Effingham. It's got that big cross, man. It'll be like the double.
We can get our effing vodka and go to Effingham and have a party night.
Because I'm effing pencil tattoos while we're there.
No, no, they don't allow pencil. They don't allow tattoo artists within the city limits.
Yeah, really?
I don't want to Back alley.
I think that was a thing, but it's not a thing now.
So I looked at the eclipse yesterday, like our president did twice, and I. You know, I don't live very far from Washington. I sell it. So, like, he's not that stupid because it wasn't that bad.
It's a good thing you're a podcasting artist, Johnny, because you don't need your eyes for talking.
My eyes.
The 97% is, like, still bright outside, though, wasn't it?
Yeah, that's what, like, the 3% makes a huge difference. 100% is total darkness. And I had 97%, and I was like, oh, it just feels like 6 o' clock in the evening or something. He doesn't feel that much.
Where I was was like, about. It was going to be about 92% or whatever. I was like, all right. Yeah, that's. That's. Like I said, like you said, good enough. I couldn't even get, like, a. A card, you know, Like, I held one of the cards over another card to try to see the thing. And it was just, like, so overcast, too, that I couldn't really get anything going.
I was telling my son, I was like, hey, it's going to be dark and you're gonna be able to see the stars, and it's gonna be crazy. And then he comes out with his, like, we made one of those pinhole projectors. And he comes out and he was just, like, totally baffled. Wait, what's the winner of the stars going to come out? Why do you always lie to me?
Did you even know that, dad?
Did you even know that? Did you even know? Yeah. So this is kind of an inside joke, but my son has developed the hipster lingo of when he, like, has some information that he doesn't think you know, he says, did you even know this? He tells you it's pretty obscure.
You probably never heard of it.
Yeah, you probably never heard of this. Hey, dad, did you even know this? The sun's still out. Oh, yeah, I did. Thanks.
Thanks, bud.
Smartass.
So, Mike, what do you want to chat about? Okay, so besides the eclipse, which we're
having, the question I submitted to you and the questions that I have written down since I submitted that question are different. But I did want to ask you guys, if it wasn't pencils, what other thing would you podcast about? Because we know all about your love for pencils and stationery, but what about what. What is the real Tim Wasem? What is the real Andy Welfle? What is the real Johnny Gamer? What do they really love?
Oh, boy.
Besides pencils?
Personal.
I don't know. Yeah, I feel like I could probably conduct an entire podcast either about Star Trek or about, like, bad 90s sci fi, like SeaQuest and Earth 2 and.
Oh, my God, SeaQuest.
Yeah. Do you remember Sequest?
Jonathan Brandis?
Yeah.
I'm going to have dreams of Roy Scheider tonight,
so I feel like mine would be either. And I've tried to get this started before, and it still might be a thing, but some sort of book club sort of podcast where you just get friends together, put a bottle of wine in the middle of the table, and talk about a book for an hour on a podcast.
Yeah.
Or honestly, I could, if I'm thinking about the things that I have enough knowledge about that I could just talk about for a long time.
Great.
The Grateful Dead would probably be one of those things. Like, I could totally talk for an hour and a half about the Grateful Dead every other week.
And you don't want to be on my Doors podcast.
No, no, I don't. That wouldn't exist. Nobody listens. No, but that's probably that. That's probably it. Yeah. Grateful Dead or some sort of like books or. I don't. I'm not qualified to be a have a writing podcast because I don't like actually finish stuff as much as I wish I did. But. But yeah, I read a whole lot. I'd love to talk about that. Or the Cubs.
I mean, obviously there's so many now though. They even have like an official one.
I haven't listened to that one yet. IV envy. And there's like the Sun Ranto podcast.
Sun Ranto is hilarious, but it's not for. With little kids around. Don't listen to that with your kids in the car.
Yeah. Johnny, how about you?
So in 2010, before the Black wings came out and I sort of started posting on Pence Revolution again, I started toward the idea of doing dad, PhD blog. The whole like, hey, I finished my doctorate and also stopped having a career, like because I change diapers all day angle. So let's. I would probably podcast about Nietzsche and diapers, which is pretty much my life.
That's the name of the podcast right there.
Yeah.
What doesn't crap on me makes me stronger.
Diapers full of Nietzsche.
The poop, super poop theories.
Poop is dead. We have killed him.
And Mike, I guess. I guess I would ask you the same question, but you have like three podcasts.
Yeah, they're mainly about, you know, just a bunch of my friends all getting together and shooting the shit. So they're not really about one topic. Like I'm more of like the ringleader of it. Like I push them to hey, let's talk about this, let's talk about that. And then I sit there and. And act like I know what I'm talking about and totally don't. I wanted to ask.
No, go on. I'm sorry.
I wanted to ask though, what is like your guys favorite pencil sharpener, handheld and crank?
Oh, can I go first?
Yes.
Kum. Brass wedge. Single or double hold period.
Nice.
So no, thing is you don't have a crank sharpener that you like at all?
Oh, I have.
Well, the. What is it? The Deli 6035. The one that's kind of long point. I do use that a lot.
Is that the. Is that the gray one?
But the handheld, definitely. Yeah, yeah, the gray one.
Like the short. The short tray that pulls out the. The. I don't have it in front of Me. That's why I'm asking, because I think we have the same one.
And the tray has that extra sharpener if you want.
Okay. It's not that one.
It's like, it has a, you know, normal blade sharpener, but it kind of
resemble the Dela 133.
No idea. Yeah, no, it's small. It's really small. But the point is almost masterpieces. Masterpiece. Oh, my God. I can't say that. But it's curved like a classroom. Friendly. But there are no bite marks. There's a really good sharpener. Or, you know, the KUM has the hipster cash of being discontinued, so I like that. And I have like five of them. Maybe ten. Yeah.
Moving on. As far as, like, what's the most reliable that I use the most is the bullet, the brass bullet sharpener.
Do you have the one with the key ring?
Yes, I just got that. Actually. I use that more than any other sharpener I own just because it's so reliable. It's not like as long a point as I would like, but it's just. It always works, which is awesome. And then crank sharpener. I is. It is the D A H L E. Is that pronounced. Do you say deli or.
No, I. I thought Dale.
I thought it was Dala.
Dale.
I could be wrong.
I believe it's Dale.
Okay, dude, I have no idea.
Dala. So the D A H L E133 is my favorite. It's like the. We talked about it at the podcast at some point, but it makes kind of a medium long point. It's made.
The wood part is pretty short, but the point itself is pretty long.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I use that a whole lot. It doesn't put the bite marks on the side, and it makes a nice, like, medium point. And it sharpens my jumbo pencils that I use sometimes. And I can use the. I can use that for the ladies that I still use fairly regularly. So I'd say those two.
What about you, Mandy? Oh, boy. I. I think that my answer is probably the most, like, basic one, the Starbucks and Ugg boots one. Because my favorite is the. My favorite handheld is the Masterpiece because it's just, like, pretty reliable. And I let. I like me a good long point. And then honestly, the. The only crank sharpener that I use with any regularity is the classroom friendly. And kind of for the same reason, because it.
And.
And that's the same as what the Carl Angel. Whatever.
Carl Angle five.
Yeah. Which I keep meaning to get one of those because I hear that.
That they're Carl Weathers.
Angel Carl. Yeah. I hear that their grips are maybe a little bit nicer, like a little bit not as brutal.
So.
But I have just two of those classroom friendlies. One at work, one at home, and I just almost exclusively use them for, like, you know, my first point. Like my. To sharpen a brand new pencil.
So which colors?
Well, at work I have a blue one, and it used to be on my desk at Facebook, and it's kind of a Facebook blue. And yeah, you're right. At home I have my original one, which is that green one, which I really like that, like, toothpaste green. So. So, Mike, while we have you here, we were talking a little bit about, like, how you have podcasts with friends, and there's one thing that. So you and me and friend of the show Topher has. We had like a. Like a kind of an ongoing, like, text conversation dread. Do you want to bring. See if we can bring Toffer into this actual conversation now just, like, call him out of the blue a vigilant
or a Fidget Vapors reunion? Heck, yeah.
But.
But with our. But with Johnny and Jim here too,
this is the roadies. The roadies are hanging out with the Fidget Vapors.
This is unscripted, and he may not
even probably be cut out of the
show depending on how Toffer reacts.
So I'm gonna pretend like I'm Chris. Oh, hey there, hun.
Okay, let me see if I can hang on. Hold on a second here.
Sometimes he tweets that he goes to bed at like 4 o' clock in the afternoon. So we'll see.
He's got his Darth Vader mask on,
but that's on Texas time. He's got to still be up now, right?
Yes. That's like, what, Texas time is an hour different?
Central Time. He's.
He lives in Houston, which is the most boring place I've ever been in my life. And I lived in Carbondale for three years.
Come on, guys, let's not.
Sorry, Houston.
Let's go. Not give away his OPSEC here and there. Okay, we're. We're calling.
Go to Houston whitepages.com. quiet.
Quiet.
Let's see if he answers. I wish it made the ringing sound. Thanks, Johnny. What is this? A British telephone that rings tw.
That's pretty good.
Who said that's me?
Hey, Topher, this is the eraseable Podcast plus calling. So we just wanted to call to see how you were. But you are not here, clearly. So we'll Talk to you soon. Bye.
Without saving the world.
Text me later.
Boo.
Vape life. Okay, I just hung up on him. She's gonna regret not answering the phone, that's for sure.
He sure is. Okay, there was the most exciting thing in Texas for the entire friend. Houston for the entire year.
Johnny, I want you to explain something to me from one of your answers earlier. Oh, word sketching.
Oh, yeah.
So you were talking about free writing and word sketching. What do you mean by when you're talking about that?
I suppose my best explanation is not when you're, you know, doodling things, when you're on the phone and you're doing bizarre little shapes, but, you know, when you're sketching funny faces and things like that or things you saw, especially with words, that's.
It.
Is that remotely intelligible?
No. Yeah. Yeah.
So like, you're looking. You're at a coffee shop, you're looking at this painting, and you're just describing the painting.
Yes. Like, you know, thoughts at a red light. And then the guy behind me starts beeping because you've whipped out your field
notes sort of scribbling down at the. At the light.
I keep it right. Notepads, the tiny little one in the car.
Giggle.
Yeah, Talk about, like, which. How many notebooks. Which notebook, Whatever. I just started bullet journaling recently, and I found that I use my pocket notebook now a lot less because for me, bullet journal is really like a gigantic ongoing to do list. So I mean, like, at its simple form, it seems like that's what it is. And then, like, you know, within the day that you set aside, you also write little events that happen to you or little notes to yourself or whatever. But at its core, it seems like a big, long to do list. And I usually put to do lists in my pocket notebook. So when I sit down in the morning to talk to, you know, go over the day and think about this bullet journal. I've kind of been doing that now. So really, I don't know what to use my pocket notebooks for at this point, except for pulling stuff out and doodling.
And it.
It seems like I'm going through way less pocket notebooks than I used to. Because of the bullet journal.
Yeah. Do you follow it pretty closely? Are you.
You mean as far as what, like the.
The.
Like the rigors of getting things done that day that I put in that day or.
Yeah. Or do, you know, because I think
it's supposed to just be.
Get it out and then, like, you know, you can go through your month and look at the things that aren't done yet. And if they're not done, then you can either move them to the. A future month or just cross them off because they obviously weren't that important.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
So I think that I'm only in the first month and really, like, for anything I've read, and I'm trying to keep it, like, super, not hipster, and not trying to dress it up and not look like, you know, Tombow's Instagram or something like that, because I'm trying to make it as messy and, like, real as I can make it. If I look at all that other stuff and I. I'm gonna try to, like, dress it up, and it will become more of an art project than, like, getting things done project for me. And I'll. And I'll get discouraged because I am no artist whatsoever. So I'm just trying to, like, keep it as simple as, like, the guy that started Writer Carol or whatever started it. Like, I'm trying to keep it as simple as he, like, first laid it out. And from everything I've read that way, the second month is where you really start to see how everything fits together. Because the first month's really just filling out your basically daily task list or whatever, moving things around in the index and whatever is, like, the second month is second, third, and ongoing months is the most, like, where you really see the benefits, I guess, of the bullet journal. Yeah, so we'll see in two, three months.
Well, awesome. Thank you, Mike, for hanging out with us and then also trying to call Topher. That didn't work out.
That sucks.
It didn't work.
I sent him a very needy text.
It'll be fine.
Cubs just took the lead, by the way.
Oh, yeah.
I haven't even been paying attention, so that's awesome. Cool.
All right, sir, I'll see you.
All right, bye.
Cool. So we have time. Let's maybe set time for one more. Ring, ring, ring, ring.
Hey, Luke.
Hey, Julie. It's Andy from the Erasable podcast.
Hello? I'm actually in a Staples right now.
Oh, no, that's awesome. Could you. Can you chat, or do you want to take it later?
Oh, no, no. Let's chat.
All right. It seems like an appropriate place to be, right? Yeah, my battery smells really good.
We'll write it down. It does. Smells like printers and pencils.
Yeah, in the element.
Smells like compressed air. Wait, what?
Julie, where are you calling from besides Staples? What?
I'm. Well, you called me from Denver, Colorado.
Denver.
So where did we call you to.
Yes.
Or where did we call you from?
Denver.
I'm actually going to Denver in three weeks, maybe four weeks.
Oh, three weeks. Stationary meetup.
So, Julie, what is your. What is your question?
Oh, I had so many random ones. I wasn't expecting that in the Google sheets. Well, okay, so one that I. One that I always think about is, like, so when the Blackwing Volume 24 came out, I was like, oh, this is my favorite pencil. Like, I'm never going to want another pencil after this. Like, I need a lifetime supply. And then I was like, how many pencils is a lifetime supply of pencils?
Oh, gosh.
A better question might be, how many roads must a man walk down before he's considered a man?
Or a question for us could be, how many lifetimes worth of pencils do you. You already have, Right?
Exactly.
That's how it feels.
Are we talking, like, Highlander here? Are we talking. Yeah.
There can be only one. Yeah, I. I mean, like. Like when I think Johnny is the one who really likes the Palomino HB without the eraser.
Yes.
Yeah, I also like that one. I missed the boat. But, like, how many did you get, Johnny?
So I don't remember if it was a Father's Day or birthday. A few years ago, I got a dozen, but I think my wife thought I was joking when I said I wanted it gross. So when I won, it was a gross. So I have a dozen.
I listened to this episode recently. That's when he got the PO Bag.
Yes.
Not crazy. I just listened to this episode recently. It's like episode 19 or something.
It says I bought it.
Like, go ahead.
I was gonna say, it says on here you're only up through episode 21. So. Yeah. You have a lifetime of terrible podcasting in front of you.
Oh, my God. We're coming up with 100.
Yeah.
Gosh.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I bought five dozen. I bought five dozen of the volume 24. And I was like, is this enough?
I don't know. And then if you.
Yeah.
If you find yourself, like, in need of money, you should just start selling them sort of like, box by box, and you'll be a. You'll be a thousand at least.
Are they rare? Are they, like, the John Muir one?
They're not quite that rare, but I would say they're, like, maybe the third or the fourth kind of rarest. Like, it's. It's hard to gauge it because it's still, like, relatively new, but there's a store that's in Mill Valley, which is kind of close to San Francisco in the North Bay, that's selling them for $50 a box, and that's not in a reasonable price for it.
Oh, my goodness.
I sold them for 100 online recently at a store.
Yeah.
Let's see.
This makes me.
Go ahead.
So I was saying this question of how many is, like, a lifetime worth of pencils? Like, I don't know, but it makes me want to, like, we should do this experiment where all three. We should all pick 12 pencils. Like, pick a dozen, just dozens, just the number that comes to mind, and then use them just at a normal use and stick to that 12. And let's see. Either spend two months and see how many you actually go through, or see how long it takes us to go through that entire dozen to get to the point where we would have thrown them away, which might be different for each of us. And so then you can kind of like. It's like a benchmark. Well, it took me three months or it took me six months to get through 12 pencils. So that means a lifetime's worth of pencils would be.
Maybe we could get a bunch of other people on board and sort of just do like, an average of them all.
Yeah. And try not to, like, do more, like, on purpose just to use up a bunch, but just, like, usage and get yourself like a. Yeah, like a. It's some sort of variable.
It's very personal information.
Yeah. I definitely think, Julie, that my sort of, like, lifetime of pencils is based mostly on sort of, like, how precious I think those pencils are. So, like, I probably will not use kind of, like, find that, like, Holy Grail pencil, the one that I'm only going to use for the rest of my life, because there's always something new and always something else cool coming out. So. So for me, I have a dozen. I think I have slightly less than a dozen two elevens. And to me, that is a lifetime of those, because I'm probably going to go through them very selectively. But then I have, like, a crapload of golden bears because I go through them quickly, and if I lose one or give them out, like, no big deal. So it. It's kind of like I don't. I guess. I guess I sort of inhabit the space in between a collector and a user, because I definitely collect pencils. I have, like. I don't like to admit it, but I have pencils I'm never going to use. But then I like to think that I. And a user, a realistic One who won't use all of the pencils that he has. So I don't know. It. It's. I think it depends and I think it depends a lot on like how much you like it and also how kind of like rare of a resource this is.
Yeah, it's rough.
Yeah.
Tangent. I'm like by the set, the Noricas, which is the year that everybody likes. Is it 14, 2014. 14 and okay, now there's only 15 and 16.
I think you can. Yeah, you can tell on there when I think it's okay. You know how to tell it sounds like there's like it's. It's in the copyright on the side.
Yeah.
I actually don't have never used the Nordica 2014, have you. Have you guys?
No, I'm sure Johnny has.
I've been sent norca's by. I think you two have both sent me them at some point and maybe somebody else, but. But they were just loose and so I don't know how to tell if they're the ones.
One thing you should look for, Julie, they're so cool. I avoid them.
Sorry.
Julie. I don't know if your staples has this, but if you go over to the paper and notepad section, they have these writing pads with a brass spiral at the top and this like cool like press board cover. And it's called a retro. Ampad A M P A D or. No, it's called Ampad Retro gold fiber. And it is one of my very, very favorite like writing pads and pad Retro.
Is it by. Okay, I'm by like the binders.
Yeah, it's. It's by where like legal pads and probably notebooks. Not like school, like a.
Like the old days of radio where you just have to like narrate what was happening.
She's walking down the aisle all the way.
It's like an NPR segment.
We go now to our field journalist Julie Fan. Julie, describe what you're seeing now.
Staples, oddly enough, in a staple. Okay, now I'm in like planners. Many planners, probably.
It's probably around the planet.
Legal pads.
Yeah, legal pads.
Okay. You said Ampad.
Yeah.
How big?
You say they have them in both like a.5 sizes and a4 sizes. So like size of a sheet of paper.
Okay.
Size of a sheet of paper. And then also like half a sheet, half a sheet of paper.
Okay. And you said brass spiral.
Yeah, it has a brass spiral on the top. And the COVID probably looks kind of like kind of a mahogany dark brown press board.
Wow.
It looks really retro.
Everything Has a spiral on the side.
This has a top spiral and. Okay, well, if.
Maybe if you just start shouting gold fiber notebook. Maybe like somebody.
Yeah, I'll keep looking.
Cool. No worries.
Another thing that I noticed when I was listening to your early episodes is that you tend to not like flashy pencils. Like, I feel like there was talk of like the Ticonderoga noir.
I love that. So I just sent you guys some hologram pencils that look like that.
I'm trying to think. Julie, have we gotten to Blackwing volumes yet? Do they exist yet? Blackwing volumes?
I think they. I can't remember because I kind of listened to some of the later ones where you have Charles Barlzheimer on, so I can't remember what's happening. When you asked him about the inspiration of Blackwings, is that in a later episode or is that an earlier?
Um, good question. I. So I guess episode 21 where you are is from January 2015. So we have not. We have not started talking or like Blackwing volumes doesn't exist yet. So I feel like. I feel like having sort of a constant steady drip of fancy pencils. Like flashy pencils hasn't quite happened yet for. For me at least. So I. I still, I guess I still prefer like, more understated pencils, like unique looking but understated pencils, rather than like the Blackwing 530, which is a bright gold pencil. Which is kind of a gold one. Yeah. One of like, I guess the exception for me because I do love that pencil. Yeah.
Which one is the 211? You said the 211 was your favorite one. Which one is that?
The John Muir.
The John Muir. That's the.
Ah. I want that one so badly.
Yeah. That one is like.
I would want two.
Yeah.
Post in a group.
Post in the group. All right, cool.
I've got like honor roll pencils. I could trade. I've got like, yikes pencils. I think I could.
Yikes might do it.
All right.
I think that with the flashy pencils, the thing with me is that, like, it. I almost feel like a kindred spirit with Steinbeck when he talks about like having like a flashy color like that he'd want it to be something that's not going to like, distract him. I don't know, like, maybe I'm just being like, maybe I'm overdoing it in my own head or like thinking too much of myself. Like I'm like, I'm more important than I actually am. But like, I just like yeah. Sometimes I'm just like, this is distracting. Like, it's cool looking like some of those, like, neon. What were those? The. They had, like, the tiger print on them.
The Karandash.
Karen Dash. Yeah. Like, those, like, I was like, wow, these are cool. Maybe I'll get into these. But then, like, I never pick them up.
Yeah. Yeah.
I would just be looking at, like, look at that crazy pencil in my hand. Oh, wait, I'm doing something right now.
Julie, you asked if we like pink pencils in the thing, and I think I'm fine with pink pencils. I don't know if I have any. Johnny, I bet you have some pink pencils.
I do.
Yeah.
The pink neon Wopex is a fine pencil.
Yeah.
I was using one of those the other day. Don't tell anybody, but I was using a pink Wopex.
You're in staples. If you go down the pencil aisle, there's a box of green pencils, and there's usually a sign next to it that says, best pencil in the store.
And also, careful making materials that cause
cancer in the state of hazardous material.
So I actually feel like everybody else. I like stationery my whole life, but I think I, like, got really into it thanks to Johnny. I think I was watching YouTube videos of, like, how to organize your pencil collection. And then I was, like, reading blogs and how to organize your pencils. And I think I stumbled on upon pencil revolution. But really, this is all thanks to Johnny. And I've tried the Wopex because of you. And I. I. It's okay. It's all right.
That is.
I don't really like it.
That's been as high praise as much
as you're gonna get. I'll take it.
And it was. Okay.
Waxy and weird.
Waxy and weird episode title right there. That's Johnny's like, you know, you got like 10 BTM. You got waxy Johnny is like, waxy Weird Johnny.
Weird gambler.
I only ask because I don't think there's enough pink pencils out there.
It's true.
Yeah.
Yeah. Do you hear that? Black wing? We need a pink one.
Yeah.
Targeted those Ticonderogas. And was it 2014, 2015?
They had, like, three shades.
Yeah, a lot of they were pretty cool.
Like, red. I don't know. They're not really pink. Some are red. I have those.
Well, the two of them were like, Grand Budapest Hotel, like, Super West Anderson pink. Those are pretty awesome.
Yeah, those are the best ones.
I did not let anyone have those. I kept them.
Oh, Wopexes. Wait.
Yes.
Seven Orca. Wopex. They're like, all on the ground next to the trash. It's weird.
Someone must have dropped them. So they were running through the be a checkout because they were so excited they found them.
Must be a mistake of some kind. They should be in the trash can. Why are they.
What staples is this? I'm coming over there.
Johnny goes to Denver.
What do you. Andy's gonna be here.
It's true.
Why are you going to Denver, Andy?
I have a conference. I am going to do a workshop about interface writing at a conference. So.
Okay.
Nowhere.
It is somewhere downtown. It's at a convention center and a hotel. I don't know which one.
Oh, okay. There's really, like, only one. I think there's a big blue bear.
Okay.
Have you been to Denver before?
I've never been to Denver before. I'm excited.
Oh, man.
Okay.
I've never been.
When you fly into the airport, there's a big, like, blue horse. Do you know about the blue horse, Lucifer?
I. I don't.
It's a very large horse sculpture. I'm not spoiling anything because even though I'll describe this well, you'll still be surprised.
You see it.
It's a large blue horse and it's like. Eyes glow red when you drive by it.
Yeah.
It also killed its sculpture or sculptor. So when he was making the big horse, a piece of it broke off and crushed him and killed him.
So there you go.
Welcome to Denver. There's also a big blue bear.
The end. I am terrified to come to Denver now. Between that and the altitude with. Maybe because I have asthma. Yeah. But I'll. Before. Before I come, I will reach out and maybe we can grab coffee and find some other. Some other Colorado people and you can give me some recommendations for places to eat.
When are you going?
The week of September 11th. So I'll be there Monday.
Can I use you as a mule? Because I used to also live in the Bay Area. I miss the stationary stores. Okay. I'm going to compile a list. There's no good stationery stores out here. Really? There's like, one.
Gotcha. Cool. I'll find you on Facebook.
Excellent.
Cool.
Just go find Chris and find his mutual friends. And it's probably the only one.
There you go. That's crazy.
There you go.
Well, thank you, Julie, for calling.
Thanks, Julie.
Yeah, thank you. Good luck at Staples. I hope that everybody doesn't think you're a crazy person talking to the phone. They're probably gonna Call close soon.
Yeah, they're probably gonna call.
What?
They're probably gonna close soon. They're like, ma', am, you need to get going.
Eight, 30 of 20 minutes. I think I have 20 minutes.
Okay. Plenty of time.
Okay, awesome. Godspeed.
Plenty of time. I don't know. I don't know what an F pencil is. Really quickly. What is an F pencil?
F as in Frank, pencil number two and a half. It is basically between HB and 2B. Is that correct? Oh, HB and H. You're right. Yeah.
Got it.
Wait.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's HB&H. It's like on the hard side.
Yeah.
Hard pass. Okay, thank you, guys.
You're welcome.
Good chat.
Good chatting with you.
Good talking to you.
Bye.
All right. That was fun.
That was fun.
We have to do this again.
We definitely have to do this again.
Do this, like, quarterly?
Yeah, that's a good idea.
More than quarterly. Let's do it, like, tomorrow.
Just make this a daily call in show. It's like Talk of the Nation, but for pencils.
That's how we're finally going to get the fame that we deserve.
I think you're right.
We're going to be on CBS Sunday morning with Morocco, which is, along with being on the Simpsons, somehow one of my life goals. So, yeah, I might have submitted. So I went on to their. Their suggestion form and suggested that they cover our podcast, and they ignored me completely.
I bet they get that all the time.
But, you know, I think that would be a really good segment.
Yeah.
Plus we could totally meet in person with our Subarus. It would be cute.
That would be cute.
I would not drive to New York, though.
But yeah, I would not drive to New York for more. I'm either, probably. All right, should we wrap it up?
Sure.
Yes.
So thanks everybody for tuning in, especially our live folks. And call in folks. Yeah, we are the Erasable podcast. This is episode 80, which is, I think, a nice milestone. This episode is located at erasable us80. You can find our Facebook group at facebook.comgroups erasable. We are really quickly coming up on 2000 members, at which point I'm sure we're gonna do something awesome. You can check out our official sort of Facebook mouthpiece@facebook.com erasablepodcast we're on Twitter and Instagram raceablepodcast. And how about you, gents? Where are you on social media and the Internet?
You can find me on Twitter imwassum. And I'm on Instagram timothywassom. How about you, Andy?
I'm@woodclinch.com or I'm Twitter and Facebook at A Wealthley A W E L F as in fobber L e. How about you Johnny?
I am on the Internet@pencil revolution.com on Twitter @pennsolution and on Instagram Instagram at by name. So we are erasable. And thank you for joining in for tonight and check us out in a couple weeks.
Bye.