The Pen Addict 193/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	193
Title:	Captain Happy Pants
Release Date:	February 17th, 2016
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 193
Audio File:	Audio Episode 193
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 193
Length:	6464 min <br />1.067 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 193. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined, as always, by the wonderful, the glorious, and downright handsome Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Man, I'm feeling pretty good today. Thank you, sir.

Myke Hurley: I am halfway through my second cup of coffee right now, so that's why you've been complimented so, so nice. I've got that buzz. I spoke about this in Analog once. I've currently got that buzz like I'm king of the world.

Brad Dowdy: Uh-huh. I know that one. Usually, I need the coffee in the morning to kind of get going, and then if I pick up one in the afternoon, like when we used to do this at four o'clock and I'd wake up and have a cup of coffee, I'd just be firing on all cylinders. I'd be Captain Happy Pants.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I feel like I'm ready for anything, which is good because I feel like I need to calm you down for our first topic today.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so why don't you lead us off and lead into it and give me a moment to collect myself right out the gate.

Freakonomics Book

Myke Hurley: Many, many years ago, a book was written called Freakonomics, which is an incredibly interesting book, which I recommend to people, by the way. If you've not read Freakonomics, you should read Freakonomics. There's a lot of just really interesting tidbits about the way to think about the world, so I would recommend that to people. But they have a podcast that they've been doing for many years called Freakonomics Radio. And actually, recently, Idina has gotten heavily into this show. I suggested to her that it might be something she would enjoy because she likes shows like this. And they did an episode, I think maybe this week, called Who Needs Handwriting?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was like late last week.

Myke Hurley: That feels like it falls right within our wheelhouse and even features a little bit about CW Pencil Enterprise right at the end of the show. And they're going to be on the next episode as well, which I thought was quite cool. But basically, the premise of this episode is looking at, in the modern world of devices and laptops and phones and all the things that we have these days, should handwriting still be taught to children in school, especially cursive? Now, I want to preface the conversation we're about to have by stating that it is very important for us and everybody listening and everybody who's listened to this and has complained that we need to remember our bias.

Brad Dowdy: That's it. Yeah, we are Big Pen, as Mr. Dubner refers to. Well, we're not Big Pen. I know, but we're in that category.

Myke Hurley: But yeah, we are in the sympathizer category of wanting handwriting to be around and still talk to kids because we love our pens. I think that that is very important to remember. And I actually think that the show itself presents quite a balanced view. There are some people in it that have questionable methods in certain scenarios. They point out some interesting facts, which I think we cannot deny, where a lot of the research into handwriting being a good thing is funded by pen companies. And me and you have spoken about this before. The BIC thing, was it like Fight for Your Right or something like that? Correct. Correct. Me and you have laughed about that in the past. The fact that it was BIC feeling threatened, right?

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. So that's my second biggest issue with the episode. Is the repeated, you know, like when he talks to Caroline, like, do you know who funds these studies? Well, his primary guest, he fails to repeatedly mention that Miss Truebeck is selling a book.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. About how handwriting is dying and how you should move on to other things. So she has her own bias as well. So she's he repeatedly brings up the BIC part and the do you know who funds these studies start? He says it like three times. Do you know who funds these studies? Except not one time.

Myke Hurley: What I don't like is he then refers to her later as a handwriting scholar. Yeah. Which makes it seem like she's an expert in handwriting. But no, she's writing a book about why it should go away.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Which is her whole reason for being on this show. And he fails to mention that three times. Right. He doesn't listen to mention that at all. So that was my my second biggest problem. My primary issue was Miss Truebeck. Her opinion is coming from a place of privilege. So let me explain that a little bit. She her the kind of the intro to her is she had she noticed her second grade child having difficulty with writing letters backwards. And she felt that the kid was not getting a fair shake in school. The kid himself felt he was doing bad in school. And she actually pulled him out of that school and moved him into another school.

Handwriting Instruction

Brad Dowdy: And that's kind of her basis for. The handwriting should go away and it should not be taught in school. The big problem with that is that such a privileged point of view.

Myke Hurley: And it's also a very unique scenario.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So my daughter in this exact same time frame in second grade couldn't write her nines.

Brad Dowdy: Forward for probably over a year, probably from second, probably into first grade into second grade. We would work on it and practice on it. And she would get mad because she couldn't do it. And it would just come come back every now and then it would creep up. But we worked on it. We practiced. So it's we know we knew eventually it would go away. Right. She's not going to write backwards nines for the rest of her life. And it just went away. So.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I felt bad about I didn't enjoy that part for one.

Myke Hurley: I don't know if I don't know if it's helping her child. I mean, it sounds like it helped the child's confidence, which, of course, is really important. But. Yeah, I don't think that. I mean, she doesn't really go into detail as to whether they continue to try and practice that to help him with his handwriting skills, because no matter what this person believes on, no matter what schools they're able to go to. As the world exists right now, he still needs to know how to write. Right. Right. Like that is still something you have to do, no matter what your view is. You still need to be able to do it to get around in the modern society.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And I just felt that the focus on that was just such a poor way to look at it, because it doesn't take into account people who are not in the same situation. People are not lucky enough to have the ability to switch their kids school kids, you know, in Africa that we send pens to all the time. You know, having a pen and learning how to handwrite is their way out. You know, kids who aren't fortunate enough to be in school systems with computers, they need to do this because that's the way to build themselves up and get them on in this world. And the way it was presented was like that whole part of the world doesn't exist, you know. And that was that was my biggest issue with the episode.

Myke Hurley: There were some parts of it that was, you know, very rightly pointing out some independent study, which shows that handwriting allows you to process information better than typing notes and things like that. And I mean, the whole episode, it presents things from both sides. I think that there is natural bias comes through. And if they would have had somebody like me or you on it, we may have been greater advocates for handwriting. They didn't really have they had advocates, but not really strong advocates. And so it was, you know, it was it was balanced, but not equally balanced. But my my takeaway from this, my feeling about this is I think cursive is nice. I don't think it's as important anymore. Sure. I don't know for how long we need to put an emphasis on actually teaching children that is a mandatory thing. Handwriting has to continue. And my feeling is for as long as we teach math, we teach handwriting. Because for all of the reasons that people say that you don't need handwriting anymore, you don't need math either, because computers do math.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And, you know, I'm on my kids, not, you know, on them that much, but just the how, you know, math and science are really the important things that, you know, these days that we need to focus on. And I just think those even if the kids aren't going to be artists or, you know, which we didn't even cover that as part of, you know, why this needs to continue. But just having that kind of, you know, tactile way of figuring out problems in math and science, you know, can't always be done in computer.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So anyway, you know, some of my followers on Twitter, you know, they were right. You know, this is just like a huge clickbaity type of podcast and you shouldn't even bother with it. But, you know, I thought there were some.

Myke Hurley: I don't agree with that. These people are professionals. This is what they do. I think that they basically we are just, as I said, we have a bias and we're more sensitive. Sure. Sure. I think that it was a good job. But what annoys us was the people inside of the show as opposed to the presenters of the show.

Brad Dowdy: I thought it was a poorly presented point of view. You know, it was it was super short sighted. It was super privileged. And that was that was my biggest problem with it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So anyway, you know, is what it is.

Myke Hurley: And that made sense for people that haven't heard it.

Brad Dowdy: It was actually the the comments on the on their blog on that page. They had like twenty nine comments and they were universally against everything that they said in the in that episode. It was just kind of funny. So, yeah, but that's self-selecting. Yes, it is. It is. So anyway, let's get on to some other articles. I did some did some cool stuff last week while I was traveling. You know, I kind of load up on guest posts and, you know, I get a lot of guest posts and get some really cool ones, you know, presented to me. And and, you know, I kind of time them with when I'm not going to be writing as much like when I'm out of town at the L.A. Pen show. So what did you think about this first one in here, Myke? Left handedness and the greatest insult of all.

Myke Hurley: It's pretty heavy stuff. It's maybe a little heavier than than my experience of being a left handed person. So it says Michelle Guo. Yes. She wrote a poem that she'd written years before.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: Right. And then basically typed it up for you. And it's it's pretty heavy. But obviously, I didn't go through some of the experiences that are being laid out in this. You know, this seems like that there was. And I know that had happened. People were like beaten for for using their left hand. Sure. Sure. In history. It never happened to me. Luckily, never happened to my mother either. But there are things in here about, you know, like writing on a whiteboard, trying to find a left handed mouse that I can obviously associate with. But it's a nice and nice piece. And what I like, Brad, is it's something a little bit a little bit different.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. You know, Michelle just emailed me one day and like asked me asking me questions. I don't even remember what the topic was at this point. She's, you know, help me find a pen or whatever. And the way she wrote, I was like, you need to like write more. She's like, really? No one's ever said that to me. And then like this is the first thing she comes up with. And I was like, wow, that's pretty great. So I really appreciate her doing this. Got a ton of good feedback on this. Of course, the left handers came out in force and really appreciated it. So it was cool to do something like this. I thought I thought it was pretty awesome. So thanks, Michelle, for doing that. And the second one is kind of goes along the lines of what we're going to talk about later in the show. So, you know, in a in ancillary kind of way with the L.A. Pen show, Daniel, Daniel LeMay wrote a piece called What Makes the Stationery Community Great. And he takes it from the point of view as being a complete outsider, not what, a year, year and a half ago, not knowing anything about this community and how he was basically taken in. And what did you make of this piece? Pretty heartwarming stuff.

Myke Hurley: And there were things that I didn't know about Daniel. I mean, I have a great debt to pay to Daniel because he was the one who sent me the DDC debt prints. So I'm which is an example of the greatness of the community.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, me, me, me too. So I got some from Daniel as well.

Myke Hurley: And so, you know, that's a great example of it. And I couldn't I couldn't agree more. Everything said. And of course, you talk about the greatness of this community who pops up in there, who pops up in this piece, Brad? The king enabler himself. Mr. Thomas Hall, who I have been and you have been on this end of his incredible kindness. Right. And there's a part in there where Daniel had bought a Franklin Christophe, which he lost. And then Thomas sent Daniel one. Yeah. And, you know, that, you know, that is the incredible community that I am lucky and you are lucky to be a part of. And I love all of these people who do these amazing things. And it's so true. I'm part of many communities online. This is the one that I am happiest to be a part of because it never makes me sad. And the rest of them make me sad. This one never makes me sad. There are no there are no nasty people in this community. Everybody is out to help each other. And it's not like it's a small community either. Right. And that's what I love the most about it is that everybody that is a part of this thing that we're a part of are just genuinely nice people who like to talk about the things that they love.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And the experiences that Daniel had are kind of a recurring theme. You know, it's special that Daniel was able to capture this in words and tell about the story. This is not an isolated incident by any stretch of the imagination. And we've all been involved with things like this on both ends of the scale. So it's just really great to see new people continue to come find a home in the Pen community. And I'm glad we're able to play a little bit of a role in that. It makes me feel great.

Myke Hurley: I have some new stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this is we've been trying to get this is kind of stuff we've been trying to get to for a couple of weeks. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We've just been busy, busy and sick, you know. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: We still still need to get to all of the ways I'm using my pens stuff. But yeah, true. True.

Brad Dowdy: But let's talk about let's talk about new stuff. I want to hear this.

TWSBI Eco

Myke Hurley: I bought a TWSBI Eco. And that was purely because when I was on the show and I bought the Disney Kuru Togas. Right. Which I also have here. Which are fantastic. I mean, I don't have a ton to say. You wrote up about them as well, didn't you? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: They're so cool. My kids literally use them every day.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they are fantastic. I have Minnie. I have Donald. And I have Mickey. And I've opened the Mickey one. The Donald and the Minnie haven't been opened yet. Not for any specific reason. They will be. And what I love about these things is how minimal they are. And they're just nice colors. And they have just like a couple of little, just a couple of pieces of iconography on them. Like the Mickey one just has a yellow shoe and a white glove.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. That was my favorite bit about them was how minimal they were. You know, these types of things can definitely be done in a gaudy way. And this is the furthest thing from it. It's beautiful.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And in using them, I realized why the Kuru Togas is so great. But at the same time now, why I prefer my Rotary rings is the weight of the Rotary rings. Because they're made of metal. Sure. Like that is the difference, you know, for me now is I like the weight of those. But that mechanism is next to none, you know.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: Which is, you know, that's what makes it so fantastic. But let's talk about the TWSBI Eco.

Brad Dowdy: Let's, yeah, I'm anxious to hear what you have to think about this.

Myke Hurley: So I purchased a TWSBI Eco. And I told Adina about it. And was effectively told that it wouldn't belong to me as soon as it arrived.

Brad Dowdy: So what are the specs? I mean, not that there's a lot of options. Black or white and what nib?

Myke Hurley: Mine is black 1.1 stub.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: So mine was coming from JetPens. So I ended up ordering a white 1.1 stub from Colt Pens. So it would arrive before and I could just give it straight to Adina. Because she was always loved TWSBI. She considers the TWSBI Mini or had considered the TWSBI Mini as her perfect pen. But she broke like two of them just for their general destruction.

Brad Dowdy: Their TWSBI-ness. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: So when I told her about the Eco and kind of explained that a little bit to her about the fact that it was apparently stronger. Well, she was like, well, I want one. Because she was using a Metropolitan, which she likes. But that's nowhere near what she loves. And also she'd seen Tiff using the 1.1 and taking the amazing pictures that she's been taking. And she's like, I want one of those. So I got her one as well.

Myke Hurley: This is the best TWSBI.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's pretty solid, right? I mean, it's fantastic.

Myke Hurley: I don't know how they have made this pen for the price they're selling it at. It doesn't make sense to me. This thing is fantastic.

Ink Color

Brad Dowdy: So what'd you ink it up with and start writing with? What do you think I inked it up with? Fuyugaki? Fuyugaki. That orange? That looks pretty awesome.

Myke Hurley: It looks excellent. Because it's, you know, I like that they've just gone with, yeah, we're just going to make them demonstrators. Like, just is what it is, right? It's clear and it looks great. There is a little thing that I'm a tad concerned about. You know, in the reed system, like the filling system, where the nib connects into the black area. What is that called? I always get that. I can never remember. The feed? The feed. That there's ink collecting around there? Sure. A little bit more than usual?

Brad Dowdy: That's normal.

Myke Hurley: I mean, it doesn't, it looks kind of a bit like, hmm, that doesn't seem right. I mean, I'm sure it's fine, but it's like, eh, I don't know, it looks a bit like it could explode, but.

Brad Dowdy: You know, if you could see the insides of your other pens, they'd be looking like that too. Okay, cool. I mean, that's just how the ink delivers.

Myke Hurley: Sure. All right, great. I don't have to worry about.

Brad Dowdy: That's actually a huge question for a lot of beginners. Like, oh, my fountain pen's getting ready to leak. It's actually not. That's just kind of how it functions.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I don't have a lot of demonstrators, which would explain why I've noticed that. The filling system is not as smooth, at least that's the way it feels to me. The mechanism doesn't feel as smooth as, like, a mini or an.

Brad Dowdy: Sure, I would agree with that.

Myke Hurley: But it does the job. And also, it feels like it maybe doesn't hold as much ink because some of the other pens that they make. But these are all just, like, minor quibbles because. Sure. This thing feels great. It's that, in my opinion, it's their best looking pen that they make. I think this is actually my favorite design. I know that you don't like it as much, but I love the clip and I love the cap.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I like the clip. I like the finial. I don't love the cap.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, see, I like the cap a lot. What I also really like about the cap is that when the cap's on, the thing doesn't roll around. That's true. Which is a big thing for me. And it has the fantastic nibs that TWSBI make.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you know I love those.

Myke Hurley: You would be hard pressed to get a better nib for this price.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, I think the Pilot nibs are probably the best in the price range, which is why I like the Metropolitan so much. I think this is probably second, in my opinion. For me, TWSBI is the best. Yeah, I like the fineness of the Pilot. I like the firmness of the TWSBI. That's why I like them so much, because they're a firmer nib.

Myke Hurley: And also, with the ease of getting something like a stub nib at this price, with this quality. That's very true. I'm kind of confounded about this, and I've been using it a bunch. I've been taking a lot more notes than usual. And it's not like every day, but I'm taking more notes. I'm taking notes more now, which is good, because I've got it in my brain constantly. And I've got the pairing of a dead print and the TWSBI Eco right now. And I'm very happy it sits on my desk, along with a couple of other pens that I'm still trying to use a little bit more.

Brad Dowdy: That's the combination you've been doing your tweet notes with, right?

Myke Hurley: You bet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so cool. I need to start on that. It looks like fun, and I just haven't been doing it. I totally need to do that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, one a day, which was your original challenge to me. When I started thinking about it, it felt like too much, because basically, my Twitter profile would just be full of writing. But I'm trying to do a little bit more. And what I'm trying to do is tweets around this show I'm writing out, because it feels like it's to the audience. Right, right. Like, if I start writing this stuff out for Connected, it's going to seem a bit strange. Although people know I'm a pen guy, but, you know, I feel like it fits more.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we get a lot of Cortex listeners over here, which is great. Hi, Cortex listeners.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, there's a... They love this show. There's a real crossover. I hear from quite a lot of Cortex listeners that are finding the pen addict.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, I get lots of emails. That's great.

TWSBI Eco

Myke Hurley: Which is awesome, and I'm happy that that's happening. But yeah, that's my haul, and I cannot recommend that to us be eco enough. Again, in three months' time, this thing might fall into a pile of dust. But as of right now, and my current belief in it, it is, in my opinion, the best starter fountain pen that you can buy. As long as this thing continues to stay together, then for me, it tops the Metropolitan and it tops the Safari.

Brad Dowdy: Nice. Time will definitely tell. Yep. You know, there haven't been a lot of consistent issues with the eco. You know, a few piston things here and there, but generally not like, you know, we've had before with the 530s, 40s, VACs, things like that. So, and I do have the VAC Mini, which is such a cool pen. So, I'll be working on a review of that probably in the next few weeks or so. I'll get that pen out and get you my thoughts on that one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and I can't wait for colors of this thing.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, that's going to be rad. The yellow one they teased already is sick. I would buy it immediately. Give me that orange. I want an orange. Yeah, I know. Speaking of orange, this isn't in the show notes because it just happened like right before we went and I was in the Slack room. There's a new Lamy Pico, which is like electric orange or something like that. I am all over it. It's at Cult Pens right now. So, we'll have to see about getting one of those bad boys. It looks awesome. I love the Pico as a portable pen. It's a great little pen. So, anyway.

Myke Hurley: I'll take a look at that.

Brad Dowdy: We'll throw that in the show notes for you because I just saw it literally right before the show started.

Myke Hurley: Well, I'm going there. I'm at Cult Pens right now. Oh, look at that bad boy.

Brad Dowdy: So, what's the name of it again? Laser Orange. Laser Orange. Laser Orange. That thing's pretty sweet.

Myke Hurley: That name's weird. I don't know if orange. It's a little weird. I wouldn't necessarily think of orange lasers. It's more traffic cone orange.

Brad Dowdy: But, yeah. We get the point.

Pen Chalet

Myke Hurley: Yeah. How interesting. All right. Should we take a break? Let's. This week's episode is brought to you by the fine folk over at Pen Chalet. You know Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils. They sell refills. They sell carrying cases, pen holders, fountain pen converters, and so much more. They have very fast and reliable customer service. They have great deals and discounts that they do every two weeks. All the time there's great offers over at Pen Chalet and all of your favorite brands like Pelican, Monteverde, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco, and they're an authorized dealer of all of them. You can get free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States, and they also sell internationally with reasonable shipping rates as well. I've had things shipped from the Pen Chalet, and their costs are fantastic. Pen Chalet also believes in satisfaction. They guarantee it with a 100% satisfaction guarantee on their low prices and high quality pens. So head on over to PenChalet.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website. When you enter the password Pen Addict for this week's special offer, you will also find all of that information there, as well as the 10% coupon code that you're going to need to save 10% on anything over at PenChalet.com. That's a new thing. Now you go, you just type it in, you'll get your coupon code there as well as your special offers, so you make sure you see everything. And this week, we have something slightly different, which is kind of cool. Some carrying cases for pens. We have the Monteverde 36-piece zipper carrying case and the Aston Leather Collector's 10-pen carrying case as well, which is exactly what the type of thing that I think us pen addicts need is somewhere to put all of that great stuff, especially with Pen Show's season in full effect. A 36-piece zipper pen carrying case?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so we usually play the game where Brad types in the code and is surprised by what pops up on this screen live during the episode. But Brad knew about these ahead of time because Ron is such a good guy. I met Ron at the LA Pen Show. No way! Yes, yes, I did.

Myke Hurley: Oh, man, I'm so jealous.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I was in the middle of working, but I had like five or ten minutes to chat with him, and we had a good time. We talked all kinds of stuff, and he sent me an email afterwards. He's like, hey, look, you know, this week we're planning on doing these pen cases, and do you think, is that a conflict with your business? And I was like, well, that's such a nice thing to, like, that's a legitimately nice thing to ask. And I said, of course not. It's completely different. It could not be anything further from, like, what we manufacture at Knock. And I think it's a good idea, actually, that these would be your promotional offers this week because I came back from the pen show, and I need, like, one of these 36 pen cases just to, like, transport stuff. That's what everyone uses at these shows, right? Like, Matt from The Pen Habit had, like, a 48 pen case, and everyone's carrying it around just to, like, move, you know, to travel with pens from one case to another if you're a large collector, right? If you have big things to move around, and this 36-piece case is probably pretty sweet for that. So I'm going to check this out myself. But Ron was – he thought it was important to ask me that before this week's episode. And, I mean, if we didn't know Ron and pen chalet were amazing, that just pretty much seals the deal, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and the prices on these things are absolutely fantastic as well. I've just added the 36 to a cart. So you can get the 36-piece zipper pen carrying case. It's on sale at $24 when you go into that special area. But after you put in the coupon code, which you'll find in our special pen addict area, you will get it for $21.60, and you can get the Aston leather 10-pen carrying case for $42.66. Excellent, excellent prices there. You should be checking this stuff out. These guys and girls over at pen chalet, they just do the best stuff, and we love them for that. So thank you so much to pen chalet for their continued support of this show. So let's talk about the LA pen show, shall we?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, let's. It was good. The end.

Myke Hurley: Thank you so much for listening today.

Brad Dowdy: You can find me at Dowdyism on Twitter. No, it was awesome. So let's kind of do it chronologically a little bit. But it's really more, most of these pen show recaps are better as a general overview and vibe of the show. But, you know, I did have some specific things I wanted to talk about. Like Friday, traveling to the pen show, when we landed, I got hijacked by Obama at LAX. So we landed our plane. We had to sit on the runway, sit on the tarmac for like 30, 45 extra minutes as Air Force One was trolling around the airport and getting Obama off to wherever his next stop was. But I had already planned to meet Lisa Van Ness at the airport. So I was at LA working for Van Ness Pens for this show for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So Lisa was landing about an hour behind me. So that actually put me closer to the time where I had to wait for her anyway. Because what Lisa did, her husband Myke drove from Little Rock, Arkansas out to LA. So he took the three or four days to make that trip earlier in the week. Arrived on Thursday. Lisa and I arrived Friday afternoon with Lisa having a full suitcase in tow packed full of Bung Box ink. So she wanted me to stay behind so I could carry that for her. So it actually made the trip successfully. You know, had nice big fragile stickers on the suitcase. Didn't get any damage. Although when we were getting into the taxi to get over to the hotel, we told the cabbie that be careful with this bag. It's very heavy and fragile. And what does he do? Chunk! Right to the back. We just looked at each other and laughed. But if it could survive the plane flight and that baggage handling, I'm sure it could survive the taxi guy. So they did.

Brad Dowdy: We walked right into the chaos because at 2 o'clock, it was about 2 o'clock on Friday afternoon, people have been out there all morning. And the way LA is set up is Thursday, Friday, Saturday are essentially trader days, non-public days. So you have to buy like the trader pass, which was like 65 bucks for those three early days plus Sunday. But it was still pretty busy. A lot of people are setting up. The kicker is the vendors don't have assigned tables for those first three days. Right? So there was lots of drama around that to where like with Van Ness pens, we had brought a lot of ink. So that's hard to move up and down every day and switching tables. Luckily, Myke was able to stake a claim on our official Sunday tables. So we were able to set up there all three days and just, you know, left it stored and had security out and, you know, had paid someone to watch it overnight, which, you know, we're not necessarily in a secure area.

Brad Dowdy: So that worked out, luckily. We were also right next to Myke Masayama, who brought Mr. Nagahara over from Sailor in Japan to work with him for the three days of the show. So they were right next to us the whole show. So we got to see all the people going over to Myke's table. But we just, we literally like walked in. I checked my bags with the, I couldn't check into my room and started right at the table. And like immediately there was people I recognized, people I knew, people coming up to say hi. It was just really, really cool. You know, I was already on like adrenaline at that point. And that was pretty much the way the rest of the day ran. Right? Because I'd been up at like four o'clock Eastern. So by the time we get there, it's already like five o'clock Eastern. And it was, it was forever until I went to bed that night. But, you know, the Karis Customs guys were there. We went to dinner that night with a bunch of people from Slack and like Joey Feldman and Debt and all these people.

Brad Dowdy: And hung out at the bar, you know, Matt from Pen Habit. And, you know, we hung out and, you know, played pens for a little while and had a few more adult beverages. But, you know, the show itself on Friday really wasn't that busy. It was just mostly talking, kind of setting up. You know, we definitely sold a few things. So it was kind of cool.

Myke Hurley: So I was watching some of your periscopes.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: And it looked crazy. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So that was, the crazy part was Sunday, which we'll get to. And, you know, Friday and Saturday were crazy because pretty much the whole day people were like fighting over tables. And I say that almost literally. Like there were lots of arguments. You know, we weren't involved in any of this, but you see it and you hear it from other vendors. Like if I ran a pen show, I would never have this non-assigned table set up for three days. Why did I do this?

Myke Hurley: I don't know. So it's a three-day show, right?

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: So it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And Thursday's kind of casual. They kind of loop Thursday in, but really Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Myke Hurley: And so when you're saying the three days, you mean Thursday, Friday, Saturday, right? So you have three days of unassigned, and then Sunday is an assigned day? Correct. Correct. And so they act, why do they only assign on the Sunday if it's open for four days? I don't understand. So you could obviously assign for the whole time.

Brad Dowdy: Because I think what they do, the theory is that the trader pass, like if you buy the $65 trader pass, even if you're not a vendor, you can come and get table space to use to put out your pens if you want to buy and sell pens. But it's a really terrible idea.

Myke Hurley: But they should have an area where people can do that. But the people that need a constant setup, maybe they pay a little bit more or something.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Yeah. It's just, it's, I've never been able to wrap my head around why it's this way. Because it causes so many more problems than it solves. It solves nothing.

Myke Hurley: When I think about how long it took us to set up Atlanta, doing that every day? Seems like a nightmare.

Brad Dowdy: So we lucked out. We completely lucked out. Not everyone was so lucky. So it's really, really strange. And there's no arguing with the promoter either. It's just, this is the way it is. And this is the way it's always been done. And your assigned table is on Sunday. The rest of it, you just figure out pretty much. It's pretty crazy.

Myke Hurley: It just, I really struggle to understand why you would assign at all if you're not going to assign for the other three days. Right. It seems really, really weird to me.

Brad Dowdy: So whatever. It is what it is. So Saturday, you know, we were, like I said, we were lucky to be in that same spot. And actually a bunch of people who are familiar with this show live in the area or in a close enough driving range. They paid up to come on Saturday, right? Because they know Sunday's really, really crazy there as far as the crowds go with the public. So Saturday was actually kind of busy. But with people that we didn't see on Friday, it seemed like a normal pen show day, right? People, you know, we finally got the fan-ass table set up well, you know, to where we were comfortable with it. We had a good crowd moving through there in and out. But it wasn't too busy to where we didn't get to walk around the show. Like Myke Van Ness and I walked around. We went over to, he wanted to go show me these artist pins, which I did like my longest Periscope on. And we have, I use this service called Catch that you can go see the Periscope replays. So you need to check out this artist one just to see these pins. I still haven't gone and looked at the prices of these pins because I don't want to know. But the gentleman, I'm blanking on his name right now, that runs Artists, he explained all about these pins. It was just fascinating. It's just the most beautiful looking pins you've ever seen in your life. And, you know, so we got to do that. We got to go talk with the Franklin Kristoff guys for a while. I sat down and looked at all their prototypes and talked to Scott Franklin about the, you know, the different colors that they're doing, what colors work well for them. What colors do they not have a lot of? What colors are difficult for them to make? So that was good on Saturday. Then we go back to the table and there'd be a lot of, you know, moving and shaking at the table. And that was good. Then we kind of, you know, simmer down and go walk around again. That's when I went and got my fountain pen day swag. Kerry's shirts that he did for the show are the best ones yet, in my opinion, because I'm a huge. I like his colors, right? Yeah, they're the Lakers colors, but I'm a Louisiana State University football fan and that's their exact color. So I bought two of them and bought them and got the little pins, the little buttons for those too. So I was excited about those as much as anything.

Myke Hurley: I love the way that those look. Yeah. I would buy a bunch of those colors. They are fantastic.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. So then there were a lot of people walking around in fountain pen day shirts just from the earlier releases, the gray ones and red ones. I saw them several times through the day.

Myke Hurley: Is it going to be doing anything for Atlanta or is it not on their radar? Hmm. Okay. Well, that's that then.

Brad Dowdy: Hmm. So, yeah. We'll have information on that. Hopefully soon.

Myke Hurley: I bet it's orange. That's all I'll say on that.

A-game Shirts

Brad Dowdy: If you're involved. I'll bet you're wrong. All right. So, speaking of shirts, Myke Van Ness pulled out his A-game shirts for Saturday and Sunday. Did you see these? Yeah, I saw it. So the employees at the shop made him two of these shirts, which I guess he's worn before. I'd never seen them before. It's like ink splattered on the front and then bottle designs on the back. He had one for Saturday. Then he had a different one for Sunday. Even though they look kind of the same, they were definitely different. So it was pretty cool. I like those. I got to meet the world famous master penman, Michael Sull, who I've seen at shows. You've seen his work from some of our friends and fans getting their names done by Mr. Sull. And he came over to talk to Lisa because he uses one of the KWZ inks to do this handwriting, one of the Iron Gall inks. It performs very well for him. It's obviously permanent. So we thought, you know, so he was getting some more ink from her and she introduced me to him. And, you know, I gave him one of our NotCo pen cases and he really enjoyed that. And he said, well, let me come do your name, you know, as we'll make a trade out. You give me this case, I'll do your name. And I said, yeah, that's awesome. And Lisa's like, you got to get the pen addict done. I'm like, yeah, let's do the pen addict. And so I wrote that down. He's like, no, you can give me your write down your regular name, too. And so he did both of them for me, which was really so nice. He was so busy the whole show just writing people's names and could not be like a nicer guy. He was like legitimately, legitimately nice.

Brad Dowdy: One of the other recurring themes of the show was people were bringing me things. Gifts, you know, things they made, you know, things they wanted to give me. I had two. Out of all the things I got, I had two kind of tear-inducing moments. The first one was when our good friend Joey Feldman made me a print of Ian Curtis with the Joy Division on there, knowing that I was such a huge Joy Division fan. And I didn't know what to say. It was like this mind-blowing kind of thing that someone would actually think to do this and put the time and effort into doing this. And, you know, I thank Joey so much. You know, I pretty much jumped his bones, hugging him so hard for this because it was so cool. It was so cool. And then, you know, on Sunday, I received a pen from a lady named Evelyn. She gave me Kaweco Fire Blue because she knew I traded mine in Atlanta last year for that orange, butcher orange field notes. And so I think I cried the most on that one because it was so nice and thoughtful. And I had met her, like, the day before, and she was coming back the next day to see Myke Masayama. And she brought me that pen, and I was just like, it's unbelievable, the people in this community. I know we talk about it all the time. But those were my two bring tears to my eyes moments. You know, not that there weren't more, but those two, like, really, really stand out. And, you know, it's, like, hard to comprehend that these things actually happen. You know, this is back to that whole community thing, right? So it was pretty great. And then Saturday night wrapped up with a party at the hotel, which actually worked out pretty good. We couldn't get an official room because you can't talk to the promoter, and he's not interested in anything. So we just kind of took over some space at the bar. And my friends at Kenro Industries had a Montegrappa party where they were introducing a new Moscow Mule copper pen. And they gave away some of these copper mugs, and they hooked us up with a bunch of Moscow Mules to drink. And, you know, we did some giveaways. You know, Brian and Ryan over at Kenro did an awesome job. And Vanessa gave away some ink, and I gave away some NotCo cases. And we had kind of a good crew there, you know, surprisingly so since we didn't have an official party space like we do in Atlanta, right? So that went super, super well. And so, yeah, it was a really good Saturday. It was, like, kind of the perfect day because it had the right amount of everything. Like, we weren't overwhelmed. We were able to see some things. We were able to sell some stuff, you know, with Venice. We were able to, you know, finish it up with a party. It was just kind of like the most standard all-around day with all kinds of good stuff happening. And then Sunday it got berserk.

Myke Hurley: I want to hear more about Sunday. But let's take a break first. Okay. This week's episode is also brought to you by Squarespace. You want to enter the offer code INK at checkout to get 10% off and start building your own website today. Squarespace. Build it beautiful. When it comes to giving yourself a place online, you've got to check out Squarespace. You can build a site that looks professionally designed regardless of your skill level with no coding experience required. They have state-of-the-art technology and intuitive and easy-to-use tools to power your site and make it look and feel exactly how you want. Squarespace are trusted by millions of people around the world, some of the most respected brands in the world. And this is partly because they ensure security and stability, but they also do fantastic features. They have responsive design. They have a commerce platform so you can build a store. They have cover pages to help you build great-looking single-page websites. They have rock-solid fast hosting. They're dev platforms. You can tinker with the code if you want to. The list goes on and on and on. Squarespace have 24-7 support with live chat and email, so they're there to help you if you ever need it. If you are thinking of starting a site or you're unhappy with your current website, you should go and check out Squarespace. You can get a free trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com. Their plans start at just $8 a month, and you'll get a free domain name if you sign up for a year. When you do decide to sign up for a Squarespace plan, make sure that you use the offer code INC at checkout. Not only are you going to support the Pen Addict podcast because they'll know you heard about them from this show, you'll also get yourself 10% off your first purchase. Thank you so much to Squarespace for their support of this show and Real AFM. Squarespace, you should.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm going to put someone on the spot right here because they just popped up in the chat room, and they're getting ready to build a site on Squarespace, and they used our code because they told me at the Pen Show on Sunday, and that's David SD in the chat room. He was one of the nicest guys I met all weekend. He gave me a pen from his job training police officers. He gave me a San Diego Police Department little police car button, a pen, like a lapel pen button, and he's getting us some more to give you in Atlanta as well. And he is working on a blog, and I'm holding to it, and he told me he would let me know when it's ready to roll. And I know he's using Squarespace for that. So it was great to meet you, David. Thank you, David. So Sunday, we were warned for days about Sunday, and it pretty much came true. The initial rush was pretty crazy, and I made sure to get it on video on Periscope. We'll have links to all that in the show notes. Yeah, I saw that one. It was pretty packed. There was a lot of people just filing through because the line was so long. I think it probably took them close to two hours to clear the line through the entrance just because people having to pay, register, get in through the show registration table. The show notes. The show notes. Sorry.

Brad Dowdy: Takes people hours to get through our show notes. They all along. So, yeah, so there are a lot of pictures from inside and outside. I was excited to meet Franz, who everyone knows from Instagram mostly and Twitter and Slack and Fountain Pen Geeks. He is so cool. He is like the nicest guy. If you want to see a bunch of shots from the pen show, check out Franz's Instagram feed and also check out Alltech Green's Instagram feed. They both captured more than I could have ever imagined. Alltech Green is Ricky Chow, who also helped us out a lot with the show, giving us information. But they're like the nicest guys. All they want to do is help. And everyone was so helpful. That was the other thing. Anything we needed at the table, like Matt from Pen Habit and a bunch of the SF Pen Posse guys like Richard and Ricky and Franz. And all these people were just so helpful. Anything we wanted to do, you know, grabbing us lunch or helping us fill ink samples or swatching things that we forgot to swatch, ink swatch. And it was just...

Myke Hurley: Having done only that one pen show and looking forward very much to doing my next one. Somebody who brings you lunch is the best person on the planet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so we hosed that on Friday. Both Lisa and I were in bad shape on Friday because neither of us ate lunch. And that's like my number one rule, you know, when we talk about pen shows is make sure you eat. And Lisa and I failed on that on Friday just because of the travel and everything. Then we did... We were able to get lunch on Saturday and Sunday, which is hugely, hugely important. Even for not those working there, just for those attending. You got to take a break. You got to eat. You got to drink. So I drank a lot of water. We were right across from like the water bottles, water cooler. So I got a lot of water. But yeah, that's huge. So yeah, anyone who does that. But it was just a busy day in general. There were times where it was like three or four deep at the table. People kind of having to wait to get up front to look at the ink and look at the ink samples. Things like that. Look at the different things that we're looking to purchase. Ask us questions. Things like that. So it was pretty steady. Didn't have much time to get around on Sunday. But that's cool. That's the way it's supposed to be. Sunday is the public day. And it was just really, really packed. So my Sunday night, we ate dinner. And after dinner, I almost couldn't walk back to the hotel. It was like I was so exhausted. And people were going to the bar. I was like, I just went straight to my room and crashed. I couldn't even go to sleep. So it was a long, long... By Sunday night, I was exhausted. But all during the day, it was good.

Myke Hurley: So when is Nock going to make an appearance at the LA Pen Show?

Brad Dowdy: Don't know. That's a good question. It depends on if we would be willing to ship all our stuff out there. Because we're certainly not going to make the drive. I have a hard time. It would actually be okay for us to have this table on assignment thing.

Myke Hurley: Because pen cases are easier to carry around than bottles of ink.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We can move that stuff around. I don't know that I want to deal with that, though. Because people get ticked with each other. Well, I've had this table for five years. Well, no one has assigned tables till Sunday.

Myke Hurley: You didn't wake up early enough, buddy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. There were people down there at like four and five o'clock in the morning to get tables. Yeah, that ain't happening, man. And I don't know that on a personal level, I would be super frustrated. I don't need that mental overhead to deal with that, right? So will Nock ever make an appearance out in LA? Maybe. It's a cool place. The people out there are awesome. I met so many great people. I think the product would do well enough. The Vanessas were nice enough to let me put a few cases out. And people who knew about them were excited to see them. People who didn't know about them thought they were pretty cool. So I definitely got good feedback on the not goods out there. It would do well out there, I believe.

Brad Dowdy: It's just a logistic thing. You know, it just couldn't be further away. And, you know, when you have a promoter that's not pro vendor in the way that this one is, I would have a difficult time giving him my money, knowing that it's just going to be a hassle from a promoter perspective. But we'll see. I'll never say never. Just because of the people. I mean, the people make it worthwhile. So if I can get over that and dealing with him and the frustrations that come along with that, maybe. Would you go back under the same circumstances? I would absolutely go back under the same circumstances. The Vanessas are wonderful to work for. They, I mean, Lisa hangs the moon as far as I'm concerned. And she thinks it's funny when I fawn on her like that because she thinks she doesn't deserve it. But she does. She's like a legitimately great person. This is the first time I've worked with Myke. First time I've met him. First time I've even talked to him. And he was just a nice guy. They did a really, really good job. They're super supportive of me. And them bringing me out there is nothing short of fantastic. And I could not appreciate them more for what they do for me.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, definitely. Thank you, Vanessas. But you bought some stuff.

Brad Dowdy: I did. I bought very little stuff. I like, so my plan. So outside of working the pin show, my plan was no plan, right? My, I'm there to do a job. So I go, I work for Vaness. Anything else is gravy at that point. That's my focus when I, when they bring me out to shows, I work for them. I do whatever they need. I'm there for them. And I love it. It couldn't be any better. So from a pen addict perspective, that means I don't get to see the whole show. You know, I can make a, I never made, I probably saw, there's no way I saw 50% of the show. I probably saw maybe a quarter of it. Just because I don't have time to get around that much. But what happens is all my friends go around. They know what I like. They say, did you see this? Did you see that? That way I can make beelines to put the places I look at. Right. So the first one, starting on the first, starting on Friday, did you know that Stylo Art and Aboya were here? And I was like, I'd only heard of them at the LA pen show for previous, previous years. So Stylo Art makes beautiful wood-barreled pens. And Aboya makes ebonite pens. They're both Japanese companies. And they're both, you know, you can order online. But the ordering process isn't the most simple thing. Aboya is starting to make some inroads over here. They have a few pens at nibs.com. They have a few pens at Anderson Pens, but nowhere near like their entire lineup.

Brad Dowdy: And so by Saturday, on Friday, they were down the hall from us. On Saturday, both of those tables, they kind of worked in conjunction together, even though they were separate companies. Both of those tables were literally adjacent to us. So it was Myke Masayama and Mr. Nagahara at the very end of the aisle. The Van Ness, two tables, and then Stylo Art and Aboya right next to us. So when I'm standing out in front of the Van Ness table working, and if I'm not working, I'm sitting in front of Aboya and Stylo Art and talking to them the whole time and looking at these pens, and they're just fascinating. And after two days of that, yeah, I went in. I went in, and that's what I bought. You know, I could have, if I shopped, there were several other pens. I now have other pens on my radar, which we'll maybe talk about at the end of the show if we have time. But as far as like pure shopping for me or for the pen addict, I did almost none and only, and I'm glad that Stylo and Aboya were right next to us because I really wanted to get something from them. So it worked out that I was able to, you know, I was at the Aboya table. We were joking. I was just there so much, you know, like five or six times. And, you know, it was just really cool. So I purchased two pens. The first one I bought on Saturday was the Aboya. The shape of the pen is called the, I'm going to go, Houga. It's H-O-U-G-A. It's basically a cigar shape with rounded ends, clipless. The ebonite color is called Kumpu Green, I believe, as best as I could track down. And it's basically just a solid polished ebonite with a gold Bach nib and the ebonite section and just a very faint Aboya made in Tokyo stamped on the barrel, which you can barely see. It's just, it's one of those pens. Ebonite just feels so good in the hand to me. I love the shape and the smoothness and the feel of it. It looks, okay, so Tanya's giving me Houga. How did I do? We'll see if that's good. So, yeah, that's a hard word. I love the chat room.

Brad Dowdy: And it's just a very cool pen. That was the first pen I bought. And it was a hard decision. I couldn't, it took me so many visits to their table because I couldn't decide on the color. Between the orange, red, and green, it was a really, really tough decision. They had a blue that was great, but they only had that in like a clipped and banded one. And it was a gold clip and a gold band around it and a larger size pen. I almost bought that one because the blue was so pretty, but I didn't. So, that was the first pen. The second pen I bought was a Stylo Art Asama, which is the shape. And the wood is called Buried Ash. And now this is a very, very lightweight pen, as you would imagine, from wood. But what they do is they have the ability to fit pilot and sailor nibs into these pens. So, they have, this pen has the wood barrel. It's a rushi, like clear rushi lacquered. I think reading on the site, it's like, you know, 10 layers of this clear rushi lacquered, which really makes the grain of the wood pop and shine. This is a pen you have to see in person to appreciate the colors of it. And the section and gold nib, I have a 21 carat extra fine sailor nib, just a stock nib that they enjoyed selling to me. They enjoyed seeing my handwriting. It was so fine that they wanted to take pictures of my handwriting because they couldn't believe that an American would write that small. And they say that's usually only reserved for like kanji letterers and things like that. So, it was quite funny. They got a big kick out of that. The pen is amazing. All of, so the stylo, the Boya, I narrowed it down to like a few pens. You know, they had a huge table of ebonite and all different shapes, sizes, and designs. There was only one or two styles I liked. The stylo arts table, there wasn't a pen I didn't like out of probably a hundred different barrels. So, that was actually harder to decide. But I decided to get one with a lot of grain and a lot of color that you could see. Like the black, like the solid black ones look really cool. But I didn't think I would enjoy it in the long run as much as one that was like really, really nice. Had a nice, you know, wood grain pattern and things like that. So, they're really, really cool. And the only other things I got were I bought a beautiful pen case, pen wrap from stylo art, which was made out of the lady working there. I think it's a husband and wife. And she was telling me the story of this pen wrap that I had in my hand and I picked it out. And it was her grandmother's geisha belt silks that this pen wrap was made from. I was like, yep, I'm totally buying that. So, I bought that. I bought a couple of pen cases from Myke Masayama's wife. And then I had Myke Masayama work on a Pelican nib that I had just bought. I had just bought a pen from Mr. Dudek, the Blue Marine Pelican. I got that nib ground down to an extra fine. And then he also fixed the Bach nib that I got with my first nib on the Aboya pen. And so, that's kind of an interesting story. So, Aboya uses Bach nibs and they're gold, 14 karat gold nibs. And I brought it over to Myke to just get ground into a cursive italic. And so, he looked at the nib through his, you know, through his eyepiece, through his magnifying lens. And he saw that, like, the tine slit was crooked, which I didn't see. Obviously, when I purchased the pen, it's actually kind of hard to see with the blind eye, with the naked eye. And Myke was able to see that. So, I was fortunately able to just walk back over. I had a hard time explaining this to the gentleman at the Aboya table. I forget his name. And so, but I finally, you know, showed him. We got out his magnifying lens, looked at it, and we could see, like, the tine was kind of off. So, Myke Masuyama said he couldn't really work on that nib. So, we just swapped it out over at the Aboya table. Which leads to the thing when you're kind of a tip. When you're, and I've done this before with Myke, and it's not always, he's not always able to do it. If you're buying pens, even new pens, you know, have someone take a look at them. You know, it's kind of like a mechanic looking at a car, you know, just to see if there's any issues with it. And I couldn't have seen this with my naked eye. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal, you know, if I came home with it. It would just have been more of a hassle to swap that out or either adjust it as it needed to be. But, like, when I bought, like, a vintage pilot at the Atlanta pen show, I would say, may I take this over to Myke and have him look at the nib and make sure everything's fine? And they almost, they always say yes. Bring it over to Myke, you know, or someone, you know, make sure he's not busy. Myke, I'm purchasing this pen. Will you just verify that this looks good? So, you know, fortunately, he was able to do that Saturday. Sunday, you couldn't get within a mile of Myke Masuyama. But, you know, that was just kind of a little side story of something that happened there, which has never happened to me before. So that was kind of a unique moment. But that was all I bought. I mean, the two pens and three pen cases. And then I got a bunch of other things from a lot of people. Got some pens, obviously, given to me. Got some ink given to me. Got some paper given to me. So all that stuff was very, very cool. But as far as purchasing wise, I didn't go nuts. But my, from what I didn't have on a shopping list before, I now have a couple of other things on a shopping list. Oh, yeah? Yeah, a Dana Trio. I'll have to go find the name. But one of the things I was able to see at the LA Pen Show was a Nakaya and also a Dana Trio with a lacquered clip. So they take that same Urushi lacquering from the barrels that they're using. And the clip gets lacquered as well. Colored, dyed, painted. It looks so nice. I'm going to have to get a lacquered clip pen. The Nakaya was way too expensive. It was like $2,500. And when I went to go show someone it, someone had bought it in the Amtorum. That's how nice looking that pen was. And then the Dani Trio was kind of a brown Urushi pen with a sky blue lacquered clip that just looked gorgeous. And was not exactly in the price range, but way cheaper than the Nakaya. But I need to figure out the name of the barrel and check it out. The other pen I'm kind of fascinated with, which I had never seen it before. And Matt Armstrong ended up picking up one of them. It's the Jupiter pen from Andy Lambrough. So it's really good looking. You would actually like this pen, Myke. And I don't know how much it is. And Matt took a picture of it on his Instagram, which I'll get for you in the show notes. But it's got this. It's kind of got a space scene with a big red Jupiter. But it's very subtle. Like it's not like you think about that and you think it could be tacky. But it's really, really not even remotely tacky at all. It's beautiful. And we'll get that in the show notes so everyone can see a link to that pen. But that's not a pen I would have ever considered unless I saw it in person. And it's pretty awesome. So those are the pens that are now on my shopping list. And I have no idea how much even those would cost. But it's very cool.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Awesome. Pen show fever.

Jupiter Pen

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, okay. Tanya put the link to the Jupiter in the show notes. So go take a look at that. I want to get your feedback on that before we end this. Yeah, that's pretty much what I said. I think if I bought one more pen, that would have been it. I think that was the next pen on my list.

Myke Hurley: All right. Where do you get it?

Brad Dowdy: So it's a classic pens LB3 Jupiter. That's the one. So that is now, that's officially on the list. Oh, no. It's off my list. Off the list. How much is it? Two grand. Two grand. Wow. But. Yeah. So I don't know what he was selling at the show for. My word.

Myke Hurley: That is stunning. That is.

Brad Dowdy: It's great looking, isn't it?

Myke Hurley: Stunning.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So y'all need to troll through Matt's Instagram and see all the pens he got. He got some seriously amazing pens.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I want it. I'm going to try and forget about it.

Brad Dowdy: So that was it. That's kind of the LA pen show in a nutshell. It was awesome as you would expect. I mean, you know, I've been to a few pen shows. Like I said, this is my third different city and they never, they never disappoint. It's a busy time. It's you're wiped out by the end of the day, but every single second of it is worth it.

Myke Hurley: Fantastic, man. Look, I kind of wait for Atlanta.

Brad Dowdy: Almost there.

Myke Hurley: Almost there. Week, just weeks away. Just a few weeks away. Yep. All right. That wraps up this week's episode. There's a bunch of great links and stuff in the show notes. Lots of Instagram photos in this week's show notes. If you want to find them, should be in your podcast app of choice, but all head on over to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 193. If you want to find Brad online, he's over at knock.co. You can also find him over at penaddict.com. He is on Instagram, penaddict. And he's on Twitter at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. I am over at mikewasright.com. Every time I say the URL, man, it makes me smile. So I'm pleased I did that. I host many shows at RelayFM, as you probably know by now. And I'm on Twitter. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks so much to Pen Schiller and Squarespace for sponsoring. Thank you for listening. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye.