The Pen Addict 357/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	357
Title:	The Porsche of Moleskines
Release Date:	May 1st, 2019
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 357
Audio File:	Audio Episode 357
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 357
Length:	5353 min <br />0.883 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 357. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, Myke Hurley, and happy World Stationery Day to you.

Myke Hurley: Brad, every day is World Stationery Day for me.

World Stationery Day Discussion

Brad Dowdy: Me too. Is that why I didn't know that today was World Stationery Day?

Myke Hurley: You know what? When I saw this in the notes, I know we had this conversation last year, too. Yep. That, like, it comes about and we don't know anything about it. Because really, this is a, like, vendors type thing, right? Like, it's not really for me or you, I don't think.

Brad Dowdy: You saw what I put in the show notes, right? It's completely hashtag marketing, right? Which is totally fine. And nothing wrong with that. Yes. Totally. But this is, the sentence I wrote was, World Stationery Day is a part of National Stationery Week, which runs in conjunction with the stationery show in London. Yeah. That's everything you need to do.

Myke Hurley: And also, like, all of the brands, because this seems like a pretty UK-focused holiday, right? Like, where it's come from. And the brands, like Paper Chase and Ryman, like, these are not specialist companies by any stretch of the imagination. Like, these are the staples and, like, you know, of the UK, basically. Paper Chase is nice. They do really nice greens cards. They sell, like, a lot of Lamy products and stuff like that. Like, that was where I got the petrol. I got, like, a bottle of Lamy petrol and stuff from there. Like, you know, like, they're good, but it's not, like, Colt Pens.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Which, props, shout out to Colt Pens. They won, like, the 2019 Retailer of the Year Award. Yeah. Something like that. I'll have to look at the things.

Myke Hurley: Which, you know, all that stuff is tied in, right? So, like, now there's a lot of events this week or whatever for that kind of stuff. But, yeah, congratulations to them.

Brad Dowdy: Which I will have to say, good job by this marketing team. Because they, I think they do a great job. Like, they've, in the past, they've brought out a bunch of bloggers to the National Stationery Week. Oh, excuse me. There's too many things. The Stationery Show to do different things. And I know they brought some out this week. And I've been reading about some new bloggers. They've been tweeting and things like that. So, you know, they do try to do, have, like, a social media push. And, like, have an aspect of spreading the love of Stationery. And, you know, we're saying this kind of, like, in a funny way. But, actually, legitimately, they do a good job in setting all this up. And, you know, they have, like, they give out awards. Like, we're talking to cult pens. Like, this would be it. I would like to go to this one day just to see what it's about. It's probably not really like the National Stationery Show in the U.S., which is more vendor slash sales-y type stuff. Like, you're writing orders. This feels more just like vendors saying, hey, this is what's coming up next year. I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe I don't know enough about it. It's a trade show. It's a trade show. Yeah. But they do a good job. They don't make it weird. But happy World Stationery Day by the London Stationery Show. There isn't even a day anymore. It's sponsored by World Stationery Week. It's just a whole week now. It used to be a day. Well, no. It is the day, Myke. I read about this because I was getting confused. National Stationery Week is this week. And World Stationery Day is the Wednesday of National Stationery Week.

Myke Hurley: Oh, my God. Okay. All right. So that's the thing, right? Because the National is the U.K. part. Yes. And then the World part is everything else. Interesting. Okay. All right. I'm looking forward to National Emoji Week. It's kind of funny to me. You know, are you familiar with World Emoji Day?

Brad Dowdy: I only in so much as I follow our friend Jeremy.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's just kind of funny that, like, I know... I have a close friend who created a holiday. Right. Right? Like, World Emoji Day. Jeremy just, like, did it one year because July 17th is the day on Apple's Emoji Calendar. And then, like, he spent a couple of years trying to make it a thing. And then the Emoji Movie came out and then it just, like, exploded because I think they did a bunch of stuff on World Emoji Day for the Emoji Movie. And then, like, and now it's, like, in this age where news... Oh, here we go. Where news is trying to find things to talk about actively as opposed to just necessarily reporting on what's going on in the world. This is how stuff like World Emoji Day gets so popular. And it's kind of always kind of funny to me to watch my friend Jeremy just on TV for, like, a week. He's always on TV, but it's especially particular for World Emoji Day. Jeremy runs Emojipedia. He's Jeremy Burge, if you don't know who we're talking about.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So we'll put his link to his Twitter in there. That's the best place to follow him. And if you think I've created something weird, we need to introduce you to Jeremy because it's pretty amazing.

Myke Hurley: I have a... We all have weird jobs, right? We all have weird jobs. But Jeremy is my friend with the weirdest job. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: We had to spend a lot of time with him at the wedding, Mary Beth and I. And he's just such a good guy. He's the best person. It's hilarious. And Mary Beth's like, he'd explain that to me again? Yeah. And I'm like, I'm not sure I can. Yeah, exactly.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, Jeremy has the most peculiar job of anybody that I know. And I love it. It's brilliant.

Kickstarter Video Topic Shift

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Speaking of weird jobs, Myke, I finally did mine, which was sent out the video to the Pen Addict Kickstarter backers from the Atlanta Pen Show. I said I was going to send it out last Friday. I had a little scheduling snafu. So I got it out yesterday. So if you have not seen it yet and you're a backer of any video level of the Kickstarter project, check your inbox. Maybe check your spam filter because they do come from Kickstarter. And you never know how these things get grabbed. But it exists. If for some reason you are a backer and did not get it, you should reach out to me.

Myke Hurley: You can log in to Kickstarter and go to the Activity tab where it shows all of the updates. And you'll see the update there as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I loved re-watching this. Yeah, it's nice. You know, it's like one of those things, it feels weird to re-watch a thing that you did, right? Which is why I don't re-listen to all the podcasts that we do. I rarely listen to any. I re-listen to any because I already did it. But the video is pretty cool to watch. I just giggled and smiled. And I was like, oh, that was fun. I enjoyed that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's a super fun thing. I'm really pleased that we have it. So make sure you go and check it out if you're backed for the video level.

Brad Dowdy: Can I give a shout out to the video quality?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you should because it's amazing.

Brad Dowdy: Steven and Mark Hackett, thank you. Like, I don't know what to say. It's top notch.

Myke Hurley: I don't understand how they make it better every year. I feel like there has to be like a limit to how good it can be. But they seem to keep making it better every year.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So even if you don't want to listen to us, the technical aspect of the video is really good. They do a great job. You mentioned a certain product on that show as I was re-watching that you had ordered. And apparently it is now in. So let's get an update on what you have going on.

Japan Blue Pro Gear Discussion

Myke Hurley: All right. So ending the saga, the probably month-long saga of the Japan Blue Pro Gear. So this is the Pro Gear, which is this special edition one that I was able to get from Wancher, which is like, is a regular Pro Gear with some modifications, including like a steel or like some kind of metal, which is wrapped around the pen and has the puck marks or smallpox. As you may remember. Yes. So it arrived yesterday, to which I was very excited about. This thing somehow escaped the grasp of customs. Dang, that's a win right there. I know, because this was not a cheap pen. No. So I don't know how it got past customs, but it did.

Myke Hurley: I love this pen. And I am very conflicted about it, not in a bad way. But I am trying to understand it. I feel like I don't understand it yet. Because it's so different, Brad. Like, this is not a Pro Gear. Yeah. Like, it is not. That's fair. It is heavy. It is shaped differently. It has one of the wildest things that I've come across on a pen in a while, just in like questioning why you did this, like in an interesting way. So it's a screw cap, right? Right. But when you post it, it snaps. Okay. Sure. And it's just really interesting to me to make that decision. Like, they built both mechanisms in.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Like, I wouldn't even bother on the end, but I get it.

Myke Hurley: No.

Brad Dowdy: But they did it.

Myke Hurley: And also, like, when you do that, it has the whole, like, there's a lot of, like, in the description of this pen and stuff like that, there's a lot of sword imagery. And they talk about, like, how a lot of the processes are similar to the way that sword handles are made. Okay. And then, because this pen is a little bit longer than a regular Pro Gear, when you post it, it's very long. But the cap is thicker than the pen. So there's, like, this weird feeling of, like, the cap almost then becoming, like, a handle. Mmm. Gotcha. Right? Because for whatever reason, they made the cap way thicker. Like, it's way thicker. And then it has that special band, right, that goes around the outside. Um, this pen is so bizarre in so many ways. Um, I absolutely adore it. Uh, it's cold to the touch when I pick it up, which is a very wonderful feeling. The texture of it is unlike any pen that I have used before. The color is, it is one of those pens you cannot photograph to show the color.

Brad Dowdy: I would have bet on that.

Myke Hurley: And they describe it a lot, like, in, like, the pages and stuff. So I think I'd forgotten that it came from a store called, I think it's called Oita Made. Mm-hmm. Um, and they are very proud of the pen. Um, there's, like, a lot of articles on their blog, right? And, like, what I did find out in doing just a little bit more, kind of reading about it, um, they're actually making more of these in June. They're doing a second run.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, of the, uh, same color, same exact setup?

Myke Hurley: As for what I could understand, yes.

Brad Dowdy: As best as you could tell from...

Pen Availability and Unique Methods

Myke Hurley: Like, a second production run. So if you are interested in it, which I know you are now, um, you can still grab it. But it's, like, you know, a lot of the photos give it an almost purple look. Mm-hmm. But the purple is only in certain lights. It's mostly blue. And, like, again, they talk about... I guess it's hard for me to, um, truly understand, uh, what went into this pen when I'm reading a lot of translated materials. Right.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, besides smallpox, that definitely went into the pen. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: But it seems like with this pen, they... Some of the methods that they used to try and make it are, like, unique. Like, the way that they were able to color the metal is, like, a thing that had been... Like, they worked it out and discovered how to do it, and then did it. So they talk a lot about the color that this pen has is, like, a traditional color, but has not been able to be used before to make a pen like this.

Brad Dowdy: So that color choice is meaningful to this pen. Like, there's... Very meaningful. Like, there's... It's not just a color. No. It was purposefully done for this reason.

Myke Hurley: It's very important.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: So, like, that's what I've learned. And again, like, I would love... I would love to know more, but I feel like the translated materials are not giving me all of the information that I would particularly want on this, if you know what I mean. Sure. Like, they refer to it as being colored by a natural amber that was said to be impossible so far. That's what the translation says. Mm-hmm. And I really want to know more about that specific thing. So, like, again, so by combining the innovation technology developed through many years of research with the traditional Japanese color, and then there's a symbol that I can't read. It hasn't been translated. We have created the naturally colored metallic materials of natural glaze, which has never been possible. In order to make use of the technology and attractive materials created, we blah, blah, blah. We commercialized it with our heart, right? Like, they're talking about, like, what it means to them. But again, it's like, they keep referring to, like, this never-been-done-before process, but I don't know what it is. I don't know what they did. And I'm really intrigued.

Myke Hurley: This pen is unbelievable. But, like, when I talk about me being conflicted in it, it's like, you are nothing like what I thought you were going to be. Because, like, the size of it is so weird. It's taller, and I don't know why. Like, I don't know why they added the extra acrylic on the back, right? Like, why they made that longer than any other pro game.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know why they did it. Because the heavier cap would not post on a shorter stake, if you will.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It would wobble.

Brad Dowdy: So, since it's got some weight, it has to be deeper. So, they extended the length of it there.

Myke Hurley: That's a good point. It was also possible, right, that, like, just from a visual perspective as well, like, because it got wider, that maybe it should have gotten longer. Otherwise, it might have just looked like a stubby pen. But, again, no cap. No clip, sorry. It's, like, it's wild. Everything just looks so different about this pen, right? So, like, the finial, the traditional, like, finial with the anchor on it, it's huge. So, there's no other pen that uses this, right? Because it has to be wider. So, it's way wider.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: It's wider than my King of Pens finial.

Brad Dowdy: Hmm. Interesting.

Myke Hurley: And it's, like, a completely different shape to the King of Pen as well. This is a fascinating pen. In length. I totally agree. This is very close to my Progear King of Pen in length. It's, like, maybe half to three quarters of a centimeter shorter than the King of Pen.

Brad Dowdy: Is it a little bit heavier or a lot a bit heavier?

Myke Hurley: Uh, it is heavier. It's definitely heavier. Because you would expect that from a material choice, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to know. But, yeah, no, it's definitely heavier. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I can't wait to get this one in my hand and see what it's all about. It's special. It's very interesting. I love this pen.

Pen Importance

Myke Hurley: Like, this is, it's become a very important part of my personal collection. Like, this is easily the most special, uh, sailor pen that I own. Right? Like, in a, in that kind of sense. It's, like, this is, unlike anything else, it's super hard to get. And is, from a materials perspective, unlike anything. You know, it's, like, I love the, the bung box, fifth anniversary one, because it has the metal grip section. Right. Um, this has a, uh, acrylic grip section, by the way, in case you were wondering. The metal is just what's wrapped around what is essentially an acrylic pen. It's, like, other things. Like, I really want to know what's under here.

Myke Hurley: Right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It's, yeah, it's very, very intriguing.

Brad Dowdy: It's the, uh, pink love bung boxes under that.

Myke Hurley: It's just, like, they took the rarest program I could find.

New Sailor Pen

Brad Dowdy: Speaking of which, let's, uh, move on from one sailor into the other one. I think it's just worth a mention. Yeah. That the 2019 North American limited edition sailor, this has been a thing that they've done recently with the 1911 lineup. And they did a Pro Gear this year. It's called the Pro Gear Lighthouse. It's an interesting pen. Like, it's great looking, right? I want to see, this is another pen that I don't think is going to be able to be captured digitally.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this is one of those ones where every single picture I've seen of it looks like it's a completely different color.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So, it's supposedly a graphite gray, which, in person, I would imagine looks stunning.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: What really has me interested about this pen, not in a purchasing aspect, I have no need to own this pen, but I'm curious about the naming and the style of this pen that they call this the lighthouse and added the clear finials. You know, it's clear on the end cap, on the top, top of the cap and the bottom of the pen. So, is that reflective of a literal lighthouse to where the, you know, you see the light going around the beacon around the top, you know, and it's glass, or is it a sign of things to come later that the lighthouse style of clear caps will be seen in more pens?

Myke Hurley: Does that make sense what I'm asking? This feels more to me like the beginning of a series of pens than... That's what I said. Yeah. That, this is what I think this is. Like, you know how you would get the, I don't know, what color series, right, is one of them. Or, like, what was, there was one, I can't remember what it was, but I think it was a North America one, maybe a couple of years ago, where they did a bunch of them, and they were, like, focused around, you know, they got, like, Ocean Sky, you know, like, all of those ones, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and they've done seasons. Yeah. They did seasons and spring, fall, winter.

Myke Hurley: So, to me, it totally feels like that, right? Okay. But what we have here is this is the beginning of a series, and that series is, like, the lighthouse series, and it's, like, this is the graphite lighthouse. That feels logical to me.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. That's the way I feel, too, and I felt kind of weird saying that. Maybe I'm thinking too much of it. Maybe it's because I want that, right? I want their lighthouse to be a thing.

Myke Hurley: There is definitely a bit of wish casting in this for me, yes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Because so many of the very cool limited edition ones you get in Japan have a similar aesthetic, right? Mm-hmm. And I'm just interested to see what's next. Like, I hope this is a thing, not a singular. And I hope next year we get, you know, a second lighthouse. I think that would be pretty neat. So, who knows? Who knows? But I thought that was interesting. Again, I want to see that in person. I'm not interested in owning it. I don't need this pen. I think it's kind of cool looking, though. So, I do like it. Next up, Myke, in the new product category, we have our good friends at TWSBI sending out a teaser this time. But this teaser is a little bit different. It's more of a commitment. And this is TWSBI fountain pen ink, right? I'm assuming it's not TWSBI perfume in 60 milliliter and 18 milliliter bottles, right? It's ink.

Myke Hurley: Or that they're just selling bottles.

Brad Dowdy: Now, that I wouldn't put past them, except I seriously, because they've done ink bottles before. But their Instagram post cracked me up because here's what it says. So, it's the picture. And we'll put the link in the show notes if you haven't seen these yet. I know a lot of you have seen them. Beautiful bottles, by the way. Unbelievable, yeah. They have a picture of it. It's like a, what's it called? Frosted? Like a frosted glass?

Myke Hurley: It's like frosted glass with a red acrylic top. And the big bottle, the 60 milliliter bottle, looks like basically the end of a TWSBI pen. And then the 18 milliliter is slightly different.

Brad Dowdy: So, they have those two pictured. And the caption says, we have something special coming soon. Dot, dot, dot. It will be filled with ink. I just thought that was, that is so hilarious if you follow TWSBI at all. I just find that to just be infinitely hilarious. That's just like me saying, Myke, I'm going to make a sandwich for lunch, dot, dot, dot. There will be meat on the inside. You know?

Myke Hurley: I feel like there's a little bit of a self-own in that. It is. Where it's kind of like... It's brilliant. That's what I'm saying. We know what we do. And we're not doing that this time. It's actually going to be what you want.

Price Point Discussion

Brad Dowdy: It's genius. It's absolute genius. Really good job by them. I'm interested in the price point for these because TWSBI is a price point brand. They hit things that other people do not. They work in areas that are ripe for disruption.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: Looking at these bottles, these inks will not be dirt cheap, but I feel reasonable. Like, it's a 60 milliliter bottle. Well, this bottle has got to be expensive-ish, you know, relative to lots of other bottles that you see. But I imagine we're talking only in the $20 range, you know, give or take a few bucks. It would be my guess for the 60 milliliter, 20 to 25, maybe? I don't know.

Myke Hurley: I'm wondering if, like... I'm sure they've been working on this for a while, but if they are maybe going to try and capitalize a little bit on Sailor's price increases and stuff like that. Where they're like, all right, we're going to walk in and try and undercut people. Cool.

Brad Dowdy: I just hope we go with eight-ish colors as opposed to three.

Myke Hurley: Hmm.

Brad Dowdy: Because if I'm Twisby, you go, well, I have to make black and blue, right? But if I'm Twisby, I also say, well, look at all the colors of pens I make, and they're all these demonstrator pens. We got to do something else, too, right? So I hope we get something beyond black, blue, red, green.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they should do some fun stuff because they do make almost predominantly demonstrator pens these days. Right. They should have something to fill it with. So I'll ask you then, do you reckon we're going to get just flat colors? We're going to get sheen? We're going to get shimmer? How far do you think they're going to try and push this?

Brad Dowdy: I think we're getting flat colors. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Which I'm fine with. Like, let's... We got to start somewhere, right? Better go to be good, though. Yeah. I have faith that they will be good. Like, I would like to see a really cool purple, like, come up with something, you know, neat like that. I'm just interested. I think these bottles are great.

Myke Hurley: I would like... I mean, I would love to see them try and match some of the colors that they've been putting into the Twisby Go's, you know? Like, a nice green, nice orange, that kind of stuff.

Brad Dowdy: That's what gives me hope. Yeah. Right? Like, their colors on their product are good. And they've never offered any ink or cartridges. I guess they don't really need cartridges there. All their pens are piston fillers or vac fillers.

Myke Hurley: They made a bottle for the vac, right? Which made sense, right? Because it was helpful to have a specific bottle to fill that pen with.

Brad Dowdy: An ink well, essentially, was what that was, where it had, like, a coupling in the top of the pen to where you could vac fill it easier without, like, opening the bottle.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. They also sell some bottles now as well, which I didn't actually know. They're called diamond bottles. And they've got, like... They're, like... I don't know. You can... They're made so you can fill their pens really easily with them. It actually looks like quite a clever design, honestly.

Brad Dowdy: They do a good job. So, I'm excited to see this. And I love... I just... I mean, they did such a good job on that Instagram post. I was just dying when I read that. Yeah. Yeah. It was perfect. That was very good. Mm-hmm.

Sponsor Segment

Myke Hurley: All right. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Squarespace. You can make your next move with Squarespace because they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. Squarespace will help you set up a unique domain name so your website will have the brand that you want it to. And they'll help you design it with the use of their award-winning templates. Everything is fantastic. It all looks so good at Squarespace. You can just enable one of their templates and you're done. And they have so many to choose from. But you can also customize them to your heart's content as well. In their great web interface, everything's drag and drop. You can see it all happening. You don't need to know a line of code to be able to make a wonderful-looking website at Squarespace. They have so much functionality. You can create about any type of website you want. Blog, portfolio, an online store, a site for a business, a site for a band, a site for an event, a site for a wedding. It doesn't matter what it is. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you do it. There is nothing to install or patch or upgrade. They have got you covered. You don't have to worry about anything. And they have award-winning 24-7 customer support, which could be great for you, but also great if you recommend Squarespace to somebody else. You know, like you've got like a friend or a family member who's like, hey, I want a bit of website. You say, oh, go to Squarespace, and then if they have problems, they can just talk to the support team. You don't need to be involved in that anymore, which is wonderful. I've been using Squarespace for years for many reasons because I think they're fantastic, and so many projects have had Squarespace websites. Look at Brad. PenAddict is on Squarespace. Knock is on Squarespace. Huge fans of Squarespace over here. You can sign up for a free trial today. Go to squarespace.com slash PenAddict, and you can try it out for yourself. And then when you're ready to sign up for a plan and launch your website out to the world, they start at just $12 a month, but you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show by using the offer code PenAddict at checkout. So once again, that is squarespace.com slash PenAddict and the code PenAddict to get 10% of your first purchase. Thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of this show. Squarespace. Make your next move. Make your next website.

Brad Dowdy: I run behind on many things, Myke, which you know. A lot of my followers on the internet know. And one of the things I ran very behind on was listening to Tim Ferriss's podcast interviewed with Neil Gaiman, the wonderful, I guess I don't even know what type of genre he is, the wonderful writer. He's the everything writer. I'm a fan. I haven't read all of his books, but I've read several. And I love him. And I also follow him because he has shown a huge love for fountain pens. And this is something he's always had for a long time. Well, Tim Ferriss got him on the record and they went way deeper than I thought down the fountain pen path. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to actually listen to this, but there is a full transcript to where you don't even have to listen. And you can go in and pick out the stationary parts of the conversation. But it kind of blew my mind. Not that I didn't know all of these things, but just how on and on and on they went about it. What did you think about that? It was a big part of it. I've watched a clip.

Myke Hurley: People are sending me video clips and stuff. So I've seen the clip that you referenced, where he's really talking about it. It's kind of funny to me because as I'm watching it, I'm like, poor Tim Ferriss, right? Because Gaiman is like unloading on him, like all of his incredible knowledge about fountain pens and how much he cares about specific colors of ink and how important a different paper is and like the weight and the feeling of the fountain. Like he's really going for it, you know, like to the point where it's like, oh, it's like if Tim Ferriss had asked me to describe the way that I use pens, right? So yeah, I actually found it quite amusing, but at the same time felt a little bit bad. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I think Tim knew it. He's like, yeah, you know, I've got nothing. That's pretty much how he took it. He didn't say that, but that's kind of how he handled it. But then he would pry a little bit more if Neil said something interesting. Like one of the things which I took, which I haven't heard him say before. So he has the issue that a lot of us have where he'll buy a notebook and save it for a certain thing. Granted, the notebook in this case that he bought is a 19th century notebook. That's air quotes. It's like a 500 page bound 19th century accounting book that he's owned for 25 years because nothing has been special enough to start writing in it yet. So I cracked up at that because we all do that. Yep.

Myke Hurley: Like, oh, this sketchbook looks really nice. I'll just wait until I become an artist, I guess.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. So I thought that was really, really funny because I know we can all relate to those things. It's like, oh, this bottle of ink is special and I can't use it till I can match the specialness of it. So it's pretty funny. He is very much team safari. I don't care what anyone says, even though he just kind of mentioned in passing. I think I heard him under his breath saying hashtag team safari in the show. So I'm going to go with that. Unabashed Lamy Safari fan. He's obviously his go-to pen is the Pilot 823, which we've talked about a million times. And then he dug into like when he was talking about his notebooks, he dug into the specifics of the notebooks and he took a shot at Moleskine, said that their paper quality went in the dumpster. So he switched like he used them for a long time, you know, rightfully so. And then when their paper quality went in the dumpster for fountain pens and he explained all this to Tim. That's like one of the things you're talking about, how when you write on bad paper with a fountain pen, it's an issue. And he's all in on Leutsturm now, which he called the Porsche of Moleskines, which is just an amazing, amazing phrase. Um, and I don't know, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I know everyone that listened to it thoroughly enjoyed it. And I appreciate everyone sending over the links to it. I'm glad I got to listen to it and not just re I had time to actually listen to it and not just read through it because you get to hear like some of the, you know, you pick up the little passion terms and phrases and the way people say things that were really into stuff. And you can tell he's really into pens and paper and things like that. And, um, I'm just left after an interview like that going, I don't understand the brain and someone like Neil Gaiman. Like it doesn't make sense to me that you can be that prolific and everything like just so talented, like it's mind boggling. So it was a very enjoyable, enjoyable interview.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, um, that kind of ties in a little bit, the obsessiveness over stationary, you know, there's a podcast about pens. Um, I'm not sure if you've heard of it, um, that obsesses over little things. And one of the things I've always obsessed over is logging my stationary usage. We've talked about this for a long time. And from my perspective, since I use so many things that aren't fountain pens is how can I, is it actually possible to track everything that I use? And my answer and my attempts have always led me down. No, it's not. It's just not. Um, that seems to be too far fetched of an idea. So the things I've tried in the past are notebooks, you know, just keeping one specific notebook that every time I used a new pen or paper and I just log it in the notebook, but you got to kind of have that notebook with you at all times. And sometimes I can do that. Sometimes I can't. There's spreadsheets. There's online databases you can use, but that ended up being kind of tedious. Um, same with Instagram. Instagram's kind of tedious. Like if, do I take a picture of every time I grab something new? It was like, well, I don't totally care about my picture quality on Instagram, if you can tell, but there's gotta be some semblance of niceness to it. You know, you at least have to have some decent lighting or show something, uh, pretty good. So I'm going to try Twitter out for this and I don't know if it's going to work. It's just another one of those things I'm going to attempt. I got some good feedback on just what I'm trying to do. So basically all I'm doing, Myke, is anytime I grab a pen, pencil, marker, fountain pen, ink, notebook, I'm going to log it digitally. Um, I have a little drafts snippet set up to where I can just go enter in the data and then in drafts, I can just open up tweet button, hit send. So I'm trying to like number them so I can see how many I do. I'm trying to hashtag them, which I've already changed once, you know, I've changed the format of these things based on some feedback I've been getting.

Brad Dowdy: And I kind of like this aspect of it. I don't know what the end result is. I don't know what the end game is, but I know if I do this on Twitter, I can maybe provoke a conversation, you know, around those products. And that's what I enjoy Twitter for is having conversations around stationary and other things that, you know, people like.

Brad Dowdy: And maybe I'll go back and, you know, if I can, you know, I can create a spreadsheet, I can track the hashtag if I want. I also put the hashtag in there so people can opt out of it, right? I don't want to dump on people's Twitter feed. I don't want to see it.

Myke Hurley: So I did wonder, I mean, this probably isn't the right thing, but I did wonder, like, did you consider maybe creating a separate Twitter account for this?

Brad Dowdy: No, I did not.

Brad Dowdy: So the thing, here's the, here's, no, no, no. I think, I think I can answer why I did not. So for example, I have a separate Twitter account that's pin underscore addict. That's where the blog and RSS feed goes. I don't want to reply to people in more than one place.

Myke Hurley: Right, right. You don't have to be checking in multiple places.

Brad Dowdy: Even though people don't, won't necessarily reply to this, this is actually something that I want to engage in conversation about.

Myke Hurley: Without needing to be like, all right, now it's time to go log into the Alva Twitter account and see what people are asking. That makes sense. Right.

Brad Dowdy: So if someone asks me a question, I'm going to get to it faster on my main Twitter account. Yeah. Because, like, I don't reply to the pin addict RSS feed account. Like, it's just there for people who like Twitter as their, you know, distribution for articles. So they can follow that account. But if you ask me a question on that account, I'm not going to ever reply to it. I just don't do that. I've maybe done it like two or three times in the years that that account's been open. And I was like, oh, that was a mistake. Like, so yeah, that's probably why it doesn't have a separate Twitter account. I don't know. I don't know if this is going to be a thing. I'm enjoying it so far. Like, I'm seven entries into it. The format has been refined already to make it shorter and more concise and more telling. I don't know. Do you have any other thoughts on this? This is just something I'm going to play around with. I've always wanted this, but putting this down in a notebook would never work, I don't think.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I like there is kind of a better public element about this one, which is better than if you were just writing it down because you're actually sharing it with people rather than just yourself. Like, I don't know if I would personally be that interested in logging what I use just for my own gain.

Brad Dowdy: Right. You know, and I find it interesting, like yesterday, I had no entries.

Brad Dowdy: Do you know why? Because I didn't use a pen or a paper yesterday. Yesterday was like all typing, you know, all, you know, email work and all these other things. I literally used no pens or paper yesterday, and actually that drives me crazy a little bit. It's a little bit bothersome.

Brad Dowdy: But doing something like this, I don't know. We'll see how it goes. It's just something I'm interested in. It's not like I could pull a report off of it like I could on a spreadsheet where I used X pen X amount of times, right? I'm not necessarily looking for that, but I'm just looking for just a general log, see what my habits are, and then maybe have some conversation around all the different things I'm using. You know, because I use a lot of stationery. Like, I'm not pigeonholed into like just fountain pens and ink and Tomoe River paper. I use so many different things, and I want to be able to put that down in writing somewhere digitally.

Topic Transition

Brad Dowdy: So that's it. That's it on that.

Myke Hurley: I'm keen to see how this one progresses.

Topic Transition

Brad Dowdy: Well, I'm keen to see how this next one progresses, Myke, because I think it could be a problem. So our good friend, which people like it when I say our good friend. Everyone's our good friend. Good friend, friend of the show, friend of the podcast, Marco Arment, creator of the Overcast podcast, my podcast player of choice. A very popular one.

Brad Dowdy: Created. Oh, in a recent update, like just this past week, added the ability to clip snips, basically, of podcasts. So he has snippet sharing in podcasts, and being a Twitch person that I know you are, one of my favorite things on Twitch is that listeners can create clips of your Twitch stream. So like if you say something funny or something weird happens on a game, they can create a short, you know, five or ten second clip of that thing happening and then share just that snippet. So they can say, haha, this was funny. And you don't have to go, hey, at the 158 mark, go check this thing out. Well, now we can do that to podcast too. So what do you think about this? Because I'm dying already. Oh, I think it's brilliant.

Myke Hurley: Like I've had a lot of like, I've been talking about it a bunch too, because I'm really excited about it. I think Marco did a wonderful job with it. So like it just allows you when you're listening to a show to just press a button and share the audio. And then you can like, you get a little video, which is the best way to do it. You can also share a URL, which opens a web page, but I think the video is nicer of up to a minute. And you can then share that on social media or whatever. And over the last few days, a few things have happened. Like people have been sending me the clips of the episodes that I'm posting. So it's really interesting because, or they're like, and I'm encouraging people to do it too. Like if you share a clip of a show, tag me in a tweet because I want to know. And like, so we did this of Upgrade. And there was just like this little joke that we made for like 30 seconds on Upgrade. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen it shared now because it was just a point that resonated with people. But something else that's been happening, which has also been nice, is I've been watching people sharing their favorite moments of their shows in history. So like a lot of shows that I enjoy, I've been seeing people share those. But then also like stuff from our past as well. And there was this one clip that our friend Joe shared from episode 31, which is what I'd forgotten, the infamous table slam moment. I won't spoil it. I'll put a link in the show notes in case you're interested. But then there's also stuff where like people have been going back into our archive and pulling out funny things that we say, right? Which we talk about that every now and then, like the idea of the Vanishing Point Grail pen and all that kind of stuff. So it's, I think that this is a great feature to help with the shareability of shows. So me and Brad are both encouraged, like if you find stuff in old episodes or in current episodes and new episodes and you do want to share them online, please tag us in those tweets so we can see them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's hilarious. I cringed when I heard that clip only because I sniffled it out.

Myke Hurley: And if you haven't used Overcast, this is a great reason to try it out as well as all the other great reasons. But this is something that's special to the app right now.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. But I just heard myself sniffling and umming all through that clip and I was like, oh, I'm going to die here. But the payoff was worth it in the end.

Brad Dowdy: Last thing, and we'll hit a few STPAs before we get out of here. This morning, we got looped into a tweet by a friend of the show, Jacqueline from Inkpothesis, where she made an iOS shortcut kind of quiz thing. What's it called? Find My Perfect Pen? Yep. So if you're on iOS, we'll share this in the show notes so you can go click it yourself. And it's basically a shortcut you can run that goes through a few basic questions to try to figure out what pen should be recommended to you. And it's mostly, you know, standard pens, not really fountain pens. I did look at all the inputs to see what the options were, right? I just took the quiz. And I got to say, I'm kind of impressed with the answer. But I want to hear what you thought about this. And then we'll give our answers here in a second.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I love stuff like this because it combines a lot of my loves in the world. But I took the quiz and said, you should basically, my perfect pen is a Retro 51. It's like, oh, funny, you should say.

Brad Dowdy: And my perfect pen was the Uniball Signo DX. And I just, not only did I die when I saw mine, then like five minutes later, you tweeted me what you got. And I was like, oh my God, are you kidding me? I was like, yeah, I mean, that's pretty good. So we'll have this in there for y'all to go play around with. I thought it was neat. And she's open to like, you know, tweaking it and modifying it. I guess once you get a shortcut, you can actually modify it too, right? On your own. Yeah, you get it.

Myke Hurley: And then you can just change it to your heart's content. So like, this could just be the bones of a different shortcut, right? Like if you don't know how to put it all together, but you would like to create a quiz of your own in relation to pens. Now you can see how Jacqueline did it just by looking at it. And you can tweak around it. That's the way to learn in shortcuts is to download other ones and play with them.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, I just couldn't believe that both of us got those answers. It was perfect.

Myke Hurley: I mean, she did the right. I mean, she did a great job, right? Like her picks were right, right.

Hypothesis Validation

Brad Dowdy: We've, we've validated the hypothesis, if you will. As TPA Coleman Bueller says, I'm using the platinum preppy and love it. Can you think of what a good pin with a slightly better build quality might be? It might be the smaller size I really like, or the kind of flat grip shape I like. I'm not looking to spend vanishing point money though. I think it's pretty straightforward that the pilot metropolitan is a massive step up from the preppy and feel in a very high, high quality nib. That's probably better than the preppy, but at least in the ballpark of the preppy. So, um, I think that's the choice. Your other choice is the platinum plays ear, but I don't think it feels as nice as the metropolitan. It's a lightweight aluminum barrel. It can get dinged and dented. Um, it looks good, but if you're stuck on the platinum nib and like you like the, what is it? Oh, oh two, their extra fine nib. You can get that in the plays ear, which is nice. That's a nice pin as well. But those are the two choices. And I think the way the question is phrased, the pilot metropolitan would be the correct answer. Sheath S. Heath 114. What are your thoughts about what the next level of advancements will be in fountain pen or stationary product worlds? Perhaps something like new materials or improvements in manufacturing or changes to how inks are made, package, et cetera. So this is the one as TPA question that I didn't have like an immediate answer for. We've kind of been asked these questions in the past and it's really, really hard to get in the future mindset when you see things like, you know, the smallpox pen that Myke has, right? With the metal work, but still being, you know, sailor parts. So, you know, the nib is fantastic, you know, that's advanced and futuristic, but it's also small scale and not like a worldwide type of innovation. So, like, how do you take this?

Myke Hurley: I don't think that there is a lot of that, right? Where, like, a company comes along and just, like, completely changes things. Everything feels iterative because it's such an old technology.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. So I think what we're starting to see right now and which we've banged this drum for years is the customization and we've kind of got that in barrels and we're starting to see that now with nibs. So we're starting to get more. So the people who want the most custom writing experience in fountain pens, like, you know, that have all of these beautiful barrels. Okay. So the next step is to what nib can I get for that? And so you see things like regalia writing labs. Our friend Ralph makes wonderful, crazy, wild nibs that you can get. And anything that you can do to personalize your product more is going to do well in this community. It's just scale is always a challenge. So figuring those things out on what people who like to customize stuff want to do next. And I think right now the nibs are getting a big, big run.

Pen Show Advice

Myke Hurley: All right. Next question comes from Jeffrey K. Coleman. If I'm going to Chicago as my first pen show, what should I expect and what's a reasonable budget for a newbie to fountain pens?

Brad Dowdy: I have an exact answer for this. Okay. $100.

Myke Hurley: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: You can get everything and probably have lunch money. You can find a pen that you will enjoy that fits your style, your type of writing, your look aesthetic. You can find an ink to fill it with and you can find paper to write it on and you will still have money for lunch and you will be thrilled. You do not need to spend crazy amounts of money at your first pen show, especially if there's any risk involved as in like you don't know if you're making the right decision. So there's such a huge range of high quality pens under like $50, $60 that you can get even down to $20, $25. I rave about the Eco all the time. It's under $30. You can do everything, have an amazing experience, look at everything else, you know, take a look at the gold nib, you know, Pelican pens, right? That are hundreds of dollars. See what they're all about. But find the one, you know, entry level pen that's kind of going to get you started down the path. Find an ink color that you really, really like to go with that pen and buy some good paper. And that's it. Like you do not need more than that.

Myke Hurley: There's questions from the tiny badge. Are there any women pen makers out there to support?

Brad Dowdy: Love this question. So this came up a lot when we were doing the Baltimore makers panel, you know, a couple months ago at the Baltimore pen show, which was great. And, you know, it was a start and we had four white male pen makers in it on the panel. And this is something that I've spoken about and think about a lot is how can we have a more diverse group, you know, as part of panels, as part of the conversation, as part of the makers that we support. So this was a good opportunity to get some names out there. The first one that came to my mind and came to most people's mind was Renee at Scriptorium. Her work is awesome. I don't own one of her pens yet. I need to get in the queue. The styles are amazing. The craftsmanship looks awesome. Any pens I've ever tried from hers, from other friends have been fantastic. The look, feel, materials, everything is right on the money with Scriptorium. If you're not familiar with Scriptorium, you need to go check them out. We'll have the link in the show notes where Renee does amazing work and her Instagram is awesome. So go check that out. Then the nib section tweeted at me, gave me a couple more names. So Miss Lai from Yachting Style, who makes glass nib pens in like a fountain pen style. It looks like they might even be like cartridge converter. So that looked very cool. I was not familiar with that brand. I love hearing about new pen brands like this. And then Hiroko from Bocomundo. Bocomundo, Myke, which you've probably seen her work, not knowing what it is. I've seen her work for the past couple of years because I have friends that show it to me because they know I like that type of work. Someone asked me recently about Grail pens. And if you mean by like super high end expensive, something that I really, really want but can't afford right now, it's going to be a Bocomundo pen. And what she does is lacquer work and Arushi work on existing pens for the most part. She does a lot of things like she's got some knife handles that I've been staring at or which are for pocket knives, which are just stunning.

Brad Dowdy: You're going to be hearing a lot about her in San Francisco, Myke, when we go. You'll get to see a bunch of her work there. There was, I know Dromgools had some at the Atlanta Pen Show. They had a Sailor 1911 that I picked up several times but just couldn't justify. The work is stunning. So you just have to check this out. So I want to know more. Give me more people that I can shine a light on. This is, I may not be able to do everything for everybody, but I can shine a light on people that deserve it. And I want to do more of that. I talked about some things I want to do in refill this week that I, you know, don't know if I can actually technically or physically or can do. But it's a goal of mine to continue to make pen shows and the pen community as inclusive as humanly possible and shining the light on anyone I can who's doing great work in this community. You can absolutely count on me spotlighting them.

Brad Dowdy: Before we get on to that last question, Myke, I snuck a little something in there. I saw this. That just happened to drop today, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: From one of my good Japanese friends. I have lots of friends, Myke. Did a review that just happened to post today that they got their pen back from Bocomundo. And guess what? Mm-hmm. What pen was it on, Myke? King of pen.

Brad Dowdy: I've seen this.

Brad Dowdy: Thoughts? It's unbelievable. It's crazy, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean, I followed a few-day fan a while ago because you were recommending them.

Myke Hurley: And I love their Instagram feed so much. Yeah. But I saw this king of pen earlier today and almost died.

Brad Dowdy: It's amazing. Mm-hmm. So this is Bocomundo. This is the work you get. So pretty amazing. So, yes, let's continue down this path and do more because it's something I very much believe in. So let's do it. Last one, Myke. Dr. Lambchop, what was the name of that Kunisawa notebook you liked on the unboxing? Do you know where it's available? Thanks. So I put this in here for a couple of reasons. One, it's because I can tell the Kunisawa story, which I don't know if I've told on the podcast, but I've definitely told it on the Twitch stream. And we'll have a link to the YouTube video of the Twitch stream that I did. But Kunisawa, if you remember and you're a stationary blog follower, which if you're listening to this podcast, you are. You saw a lot of notebook reviews from Kunisawa over the past year. They put on a big, big push. They make really beautiful notebooks, but the paper quality on the interior was inconsistent. So they reached out to me and said, we find this troublesome and we want to work to fix it. We want to have better paper in our notebooks. Can we send you the paper that we're thinking about using to test out? And I'm sure they sent this to other people too. So they actually sent me a physical bound, like a paper bound notebook. And it's just crazy cool looking. I didn't know what to expect. I thought it was just gonna be like loose sheets of paper when I opened this live on the feed. And it's actually this really nice, like, I don't know, teal, turquoise-y construction paper stamped cover. That is just completely rad. So I felt bad about sharing it because Dr. Lambchop, I don't know that this product exists. Like, this was supposed to be my tester to say, hey, is this paper any good? And I'll tell you right now, spoiler alert, the paper is spectacular. It's fantastic. It's way better than what they've done in the past. But I don't know what their plans are and when they're going to cut over to this type of paper. So that was the story about Kunisawa. I wanted to make their paper better and they're trying. So I appreciate that about companies. Like, you know, not everything, anytime you can take your existing products and work to make them better and like are active in that process, man, that's just a good sign. I really, really appreciate that. So, and this also gave me the opportunity to plug my Twitch channel, twitch.tv slash penaddict. I did, I addressed envelopes for like two hours on Monday, Myke, and it was awesome. That's like one of my favorite things to do. So that has been posted out there to the YouTubes. I try to cross post them at some point after I'm done recording. It might be a day. It might be a week whenever I can get time to send that over to YouTube. So you can catch those types of things there. So, yeah, that was it.

Myke Hurley: All right. If you want to find the show notes for this week's episode, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 357. You can find Brad online as well at penaddict.com, knock.co. He is dowdyism on Twitter, penaddict on Instagram. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you so much to Squarespace for their support of this episode. And as always, thank you so much for listening. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye.