The Pen Addict 73/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	73
Title:	Polar Beer
Release Date:	September 26th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 73
Audio File:	Audio Episode 73
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 73
Length:	5858 min <br />0.967 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 73 of The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5, your weekly dose of pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the most limited of all editions, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, I like it. How are you? Good, sir. How are you?

Myke Hurley: I'm very well, mate. Very well indeed.

Brad Dowdy: Good. Are you rested and recuperated?

Myke Hurley: Pretty much. Pretty much.

Brad Dowdy: So you've had a big trip in the past week, world travelling Myke Hurley.

Portland

Myke Hurley: Yep, went out to Portland. Had a great time.

Myke Hurley: How's that flight like? It took 12 hours in total because you can't get a direct flight to Portland, so I had to go through Canada. I went through Canada.

Brad Dowdy: You said hi to Jim Dalrymple. A different part of Canada.

Brad Dowdy: Cool, cool. So you went to the XOXO Fest.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: And there was lots of interesting goings on there. And, you know, I became familiar with the XOXO Fest last year because our friends at Field Notes contributed or had available some neat field notes, neat extra field notes. It's the famed purple field notes edition at the 2012 XOXO Fest. And I noticed on the docket this year, Mr. Kudel and Draplin were also in attendance this year. Did you have any field notes love this year at XOXO? Oh, baby.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: Fuchsia.

Brad Dowdy: Fuchsia. Fuchsia. Bright. I've seen some pictures. I've seen some pictures. Is it as bright in person as the pictures have shown?

Myke Hurley: Yep. I am, as we speak, uploading an image to my Squarespace page. Okay.

Myke Hurley: So everyone will be able to see what these look like. So that will be in the show notes, which you can find at 5x5.tv slash panaddict slash 73. You'll find a link to my field notes page and it'll be right down the bottom. They are a nice, bright sort of fuchsia pink this time. I like it. Yeah, and I've got, I have a set for you.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yes. Thank you, sir.

Myke Hurley: Which I will be sending. And I picked up a set for two more people who asked me in advance of me going. And then I have two sets left for myself and I gave one set to my lady friend because she said, I want some of those field notes things that you've got. So I thought this would be perfect. So I've given a set of these. They also had a, like a draplin stand. I didn't actually get to meet the man himself. Which was a shame because I did really want to, but he didn't seem to be around whenever I was there. Right. Or if he was there, he was like, there was a huge cure on the table. So I didn't want to go up and bug him whilst he was actually trying to sell some stuff. Exactly. But I bought the amazing draplin spaceship t-shirt. The spaceship t-shirt. How good looking is that? Oh, I love that.

Brad Dowdy: It's spectacular, isn't it?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I really love that. So I've actually got a picture of that on my Instagram. So I'll put that in the show notes. And I bought a sticker of that as well. Okay, cool. Put that on my laptop.

Brad Dowdy: I keep debating. I need to go to the draplin site, to the DDC merch shop online and pick up a couple things myself.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think you should. I didn't even know that they did, that he had an online site. Yep. Sure does. So yeah, you should definitely pick up the space shuttle thing if you can. I recommend it. It's one of my favorite t-shirts that I own now. And I also bought a steno pad, the Field Notes steno pad. I've not opened it yet, but I figured while I'm here, let's buy a piece of Field Notes goodness.

Brad Dowdy: Might as well.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I thought, why not? You know?

Brad Dowdy: I love the dimensions of the steno book. I'm a big fan of the steno.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I didn't know how big it actually was. It's a good size.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, five by eight-ish or so. I'm not sure the exact dimensions, something like that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. That sounds about right.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: I also caught up with Mr. Kudal.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: We spent some time, just like a few minutes together. We were talking because he was there for a couple of the days of the conference. And we had a good chat. And somebody came over and they asked if he had told me the new edition. And I categorically said that I did not want to know. That's right. But Jim told me that I will find out. I would have... He told me, you'll find out on Tuesday.

Myke Hurley: Nice. And he was right. I didn't want... I honestly didn't want to know. I assumed that he probably had some of them with him. But I didn't want to... I didn't want to spoil it for myself.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a good idea. And I think that's a good idea. And we're definitely going to talk about that. That surprise. But I don't want to get there yet, almost. Okay. So did Jim talk at the event or anything? No, no. He was just in attendance. He was just there. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. And did Draplin do a talk or no?

Myke Hurley: Nope. He just had a table. They have like a thing called the Unmarket. Which is where sort of independent sellers, they sell stuff. And he has an office in Portland. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's his home base.

Myke Hurley: Which is literally down the street. Like you can see it from the place called the YU Contemporary. Which is where the conference was held. So, you know, it makes perfect sense. Hence why they get the Field Notes editions made.

Brad Dowdy: Cool.

Myke Hurley: Because he's a local.

Brad Dowdy: So I was going through the XOXO Fest. You know, watching the tweets and the tags and the Instagramming. And I ran... I didn't look at... I didn't notice the speaker list. It's like the full speaker list. Did you get to go to some of the... See some of the speakers and things? I was at every single talk, yeah.

Molly Crabapple

Brad Dowdy: Oh, good. So you got to see... Did you get to see one Miss Molly Crabapple?

Myke Hurley: I did, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I'm a huge Molly Crabapple fan. I don't know if you know this. I don't know if I've talked to her about her on the show. But I like her artwork and her writing online. She does lots of different things. And she's done some cool Kickstarter projects in the past that I've supported. And I've talked to her online through email when I was at JetPens and some things like that. About some pen stuff and things like that. So I have a huge crush on Molly Crabapple. I should have told you that before to make sure you attended the Molly Crabapple session. So hopefully that was cool. And she talked about some of her things.

Myke Hurley: It was one of the most peculiar.

Brad Dowdy: That doesn't surprise me. She's an interesting girl. Yeah, it was... I mean, she's... Yeah, it was... She does things from just crazy artwork to these Dr. Sketchy's conferences to... She was recently at Guantanamo Bay for Vice doing an article about that. So she's all over the place doing lots of different things.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I'm looking... I'll leave it at that. I'll look for the video when they come out. They do release the videos eventually for the XOXO Fest, right? Yeah, they will be.

Myke Hurley: They will be releasing the videos.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So I'll look forward to checking that out. I'm glad you found it interesting. Now my interest has peaked to see.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it was definitely an interesting one. To say the least.

Brad Dowdy: Nice. Nice. All right. Well, we got lots of good things to talk about today. And I know one of them we wanted to get to is that new Field Notes release. I got lots to say about that guy. I got them in about 10 minutes ago. I went to the mailbox before we started this show. So they are in hand. So do you want to take care of our first sponsor? Then we'll get into the nuts and bolts.

Myke Hurley: That sounds like a great idea, sir. An absolute great idea indeed. So, of course, this episode is brought to you by the fine folks over at Squarespace.com. This is where you can go to get everything you need. It's the all-in-one platform for creating your own space online. They make it fast and easy to build your own website or online portfolio. Maybe you want a site for your business. Maybe you want somewhere to sell something. Well, Squarespace have got all of that in hand. Sign up for a free trial and get 20% off during September by going to Squarespace.com and using the offer code Tallyho9. Squarespace are always doing great work. Great work. I love the stuff that they do. As we're talking, I'm adding very simply a new image to my Field Notes page on my Squarespace site. And I'm just dragging and dropping it around the page and just very easily resizing it. I needed to rotate the image. So once it was uploaded into one of the image blocks in their drag-and-drop platform in their page-building tools, I was able to just go straight in and edit the image and rotate it from all within the browser. It's all within Squarespace's tools. They have an Aviary plug-in, so they use the fine folks over at Aviary. They use their photo editing tools, and that's built right into Squarespace. It's just one of the many features that they have built in. And on the front end, so for people to see, they have a choice. We have 20 highly customizable templates. They're really beautiful. They've won numerous design awards for these templates. If you need any help at all at Squarespace, it's so easy to use. But if you get stuck with anything, they have 24-hour, 7-day-a-week support, as well as a bunch of knowledge-based articles and tutorials and all that fun stuff on their website, too. And every Squarespace site features a unique mobile experience. It's going to match the overall style of your website, so your content is going to look great on every device, every single time. Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month and include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. I want you to go and start your free trial now. No credit card needed, and you can start building your website. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure that you use the offer code TALLYHO9. That's going to get you 20% off in the month of September. You've only got a few days left to go on that special offer. And you'll also be helping to show your support for the pen addict. We want to thank Squarespace for their support of the show. So thanks to them and the support of all of 5x5. So that's Squarespace, everything that you need to create an exceptional website.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Thank you, Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: There was one more thing that I meant to mention about the show.

Myke Hurley: So I met a listener of the show at a 5x5 meetup. Oh, cool. So he came up to me, he had, believe it or not, he had a 70 decibels t-shirt on. Nice. How awesome was that? Yeah, it was pretty sweet. Jason, I believe his name was. I feel terrible for, I'm pretty sure it was, I feel like I say these things, right? And I don't want to get them wrong. You know what I'm like with this sort of stuff. So I'm trying to check now, frantically. Frantically.

Myke Hurley: Because I'm sure, because when, I hate this stuff. You know what I'm like with this stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Way to go. I know.

Myke Hurley: I'm going to, I'm looking.

Brad Dowdy: I'm looking. I'm looking. I'm the same way when I pull something off of Twitter. I always end up forgetting or end up saying, trying to determine whether to say their Twitter name or their real name or whatever, and I end up butchering both.

Myke Hurley: Yes, I was, I was right, I believe. It's Jason P. Becker. He's at Jason P. Becker on Twitter. So if it wasn't Jason, although I'm sure it was Jason, this person, Jason has got a free plug. But no, I am 100% sure now. Because I had an image, we took a photo together of him wearing his 70 decibels t-shirt, which was potentially the best thing that happened. I'm going to put that picture in the show notes too, actually, so people can see a very happy me with Jason and his 70 decibels t-shirt on.

Brad Dowdy: All right, so you mentioned something in the show notes before we get on to the new field notes about Retro 51 at XOXO?

Myke Hurley: Ah, yes.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: So my buddy Chase, who shared a room with me and Matt, Mr. Chase Reeves, I can't remember how we got onto it, but we were just talking about pens and stuff, and I was telling him the stories of the Retro 51 and how great it was. And when we were sitting in one of the talks one day, he was like, let me use this fancy pen of yours. So he used it, and he said, oh my God, I love this. So I gave him one of mine. Nice. I thought that was a nice, you know, he was very kind to us in the week and helped us have a great time, showed us around the city and stuff. So I wanted to pay him back by giving away a pen from my collection to him, and I thought that was a nice gesture. I've never done that for somebody before.

Brad Dowdy: So yeah, don't you love doing that, though, to be able to share that with someone else that, you know, it's kind of, you know, give them something that's nice like that, and it kind of surprises them. And, you know, here, just keep it, you know, it's yours.

Myke Hurley: Exactly.

Brad Dowdy: Sharing the love. I like it.

Myke Hurley: But I've said to him, you can't lose it.

Brad Dowdy: That's great. Yeah, I love giving away, you know, the products that I like and things like that. So to kind of make someone's day and, or, you know, give them something, you know, people, you know, that are picking up this show for the first time, which we're getting tons of new listeners. We get that all the time now on Twitter. To be able to share just the products that we love with people that, you know, we're just kind of getting into this to kind of give them that push to say, hey, there's really some better things out there. And there's some neat stuff going on in this little realm of ours. It's fun to see, you know, how happy they get and how much they enjoy things like that. So that's awesome. Good job by you, mate.

Myke Hurley: Thank you, sir.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So while I guess this happened while you were at XOXO, did the new Field Notes actually launch while you were gone? No, I was home. You were home when it came out. It came out on when? Tuesday. Wednesday? Tuesday. Tuesday. So you were already back. So yeah. So the new Field Notes, the fall 2013 edition came out and it's called the Drink Local Edition and it's pretty amazing. I gotta say.

Myke Hurley: Oh boy, yeah. Yeah. They did a great job.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. When I first saw this, one of my biggest enjoyments about Field Notes, some of my favorite products in the past have always been the multicolored notebooks, like the one three-pack with three different colors or the six-pack in the past with the National Crop Edition where it was six different color notebooks. And this one, the Drink Local Edition is kind of sort of similar to the National Crop even though it doesn't come in a six-pack. It's called the Drink Local Edition. Even though it's billed as a six-pack for the beers. There are six different colored notebooks. There's a three-pack of Drink Local Lager editions and a three-pack of Drink Local Ales editions. And each of them has a different color cover. Let's see. Let's see. The ales have Stout, which is dark brown, black. Amber Ale, which is warm red. And India Pale Ale, which is rusty orange. And lager features the Pilsner, which is the gold one. Bach, which is the brown one. And the pale lager, which is the pale yellow. And again, they kind of nailed my two favorite things that I've always liked about Field Notes. One is the different colored three-packs, each book being a different color. And two is the different colored grid line. Instead of the standard brown, which actually would have matched on this one pretty well, they went ahead and changed it. What are they calling the color of the grid here? They had a name for it.

Brad Dowdy: Hefeisen. Hefeisen. It's Hefeisen. Yellow-orange graph grid. Yeah. Hefeisen.

Myke Hurley: Hefeisen.

Kaweco Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Speaking of my bad German, I got corrected on the Kaweco. It's actually, as you can imagine, Kaweco.

Myke Hurley: No way.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Oh, well, we have to.

Brad Dowdy: It's got the very V German W. Kaweco.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, work on that. Work on that. There'll be a test next episode.

Myke Hurley: Kaweco. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: That's hard to say, isn't it?

Myke Hurley: Kaweco. Well, it is now that we've been calling it, you know. I know.

Brad Dowdy: But I forgot who sent me the email, but thank you for doing that. It was enlightening.

Brad Dowdy: So, what do you think about this edition?

Myke Hurley: Oh, I can't wait.

Brad Dowdy: What are your initial thoughts? You don't have it yet, right? It's not in hand?

Myke Hurley: No, I will probably have mine before next week's episode. I can't wait to get my hands on it, man. So, it looks so exciting. And you've got the little six-pack thing. I've actually bought another set of each.

Myke Hurley: Because I know I'm going to love it. And I'm only got one set of each, you know. So, but you have yours. I do. So, you can just go ahead and tell me about it. Because I'm really interested in the covers. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I am, too. So, I haven't. I waited to open it until we got on here. Oh, wow.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Subscription Pack

Brad Dowdy: So, my subscription pack came with. I got the pencil and the ballpoint pen and the band of rubber. Which has got a permanent place on eBay, apparently, for $2.99. If you're ever interested.

Myke Hurley: Oh, wow.

Brad Dowdy: That annoys me so bad. Sorry.

Brad Dowdy: But I did get the six-pack holder. Which is really cool. It's like if you've ever had the old subscription editions. Where they've done like the insert for like sharpening the carpenter's pencil. Or, you know, the little calendar inserts. It's that same heavy cardboard. And they have the instructions on building the little six-pack holder. Which I thought was a great idea to do it. So, each three-pack. So, I have a three-pack of loggers. And a three-pack of ales. And each of those comes with its own coaster, too. We didn't mention that. So, like the loggers three-pack. On the back of it. This is inside. This isn't loose in the packaging. This is shrink-wrapped inside the belly band of the three-pack. Oh, awesome. The loggers has its loggers-specific coaster. And then the ales has the ales-specific coaster. So, the loggers is a little bit lighter yellow with a little bit different glass on it. And then the ales is a little bit orange. It kind of has orange writing in the ales glass on it. So, let me open up. What are we going to open here? I'll open up the loggers edition here real quick. Because what they did this time, they did a little different finish on the cover. Are they saying it's a plastic? It's not a plastic cover. Right.

Myke Hurley: So, what we've got is feature heavyweight new page sterling premium 120 covers with a soft touch varnish, giving them a soft, almost rubbery feel. And the logo is varnished with a contrasting gloss. And each book is colored to represent a different brew. So, have a brief history of each style of beer on the back cover. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, the cover's thick. Thicker than, you know, just the basic covers, the basic memo book covers. But most of the colors editions have had some kind of thicker cover than just the regular craft paper. The finish feels great. It's that satiny finish. Like, I did a review today of the Rodia R Premium notebooks. And it's got the same satiny finish cover. I did make a comment on that, how it's prone to getting fingerprints on it. And this is the same kind of finish, although, you know, it's not getting fingerprints on it as I'm messing around with it. But I like the thickness and I like the feel of it. I want to like the durability aspect of it, honestly. I think it's going to be real good.

Brad Dowdy: The graph line, the grid line is awesome. This makes a huge difference for me. I mean, I ordered some extras as well. And this could be, like, my go-to edition for, you know, regular use. Like, I've always said, one of the reasons the grass-stained green has always been my number one favorite is because it uses the green line for the grid. And this yellow-orange grid is killer. They did a really good job with this. All the inside covers are, let's see, is it all of them? Yeah, all the inside covers are black, which is kind of cool.

Myke Hurley: Oh.

Brad Dowdy: It really sets it off well. So the inside is black with white text.

Brad Dowdy: You know, it's got all the great practical applications and things like that.

Brad Dowdy: Let's see. The practical applications. Dive-iest dives. I like that. Breweries visited. Barrel count.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm sure it's all beer-related, right?

Brad Dowdy: It is. It is. Designated driver rotations.

Myke Hurley: And then the back, this is cool.

Brad Dowdy: On the back, it has the Drink Local Lagers logo on there, which is the same that's on the coaster. And then it says, like on the Pilsner book, it goes through the Pilsner description. And then on the Bach book, it goes through the Bach description. And the Pale Lager, the same thing. It lists some of the specs and some of the origination of that type of beer. They kind of boggle my mind with everything that they do for each of these editions and are still charging us the same price. Should I say that out loud?

Myke Hurley: No, I agree with you. It's insane, right? How they manage to do this stuff all the time.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, so for the same price that we've always paid, we get all these extras, all this additional. I know this costs more money to do all this stuff and to add in the coasters and to add in the six-pack holder. Then when you add in all that stuff, the shipping costs more because now the package is bigger to hold all this stuff. And we're paying the same old price.

Myke Hurley: So to go through our usual, they did a 30,000 print run of each. So 30,000 ales and 30,000 lagers bring it to 60,000 total books on the print run.

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Myke Hurley: So that's large.

Brad Dowdy: Is that right? Yeah, I'm looking at it now. That is large. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, 30, 30. And it's actually 120,000 when you count retail, right? People get that mixed up.

Myke Hurley: Oh, really?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So you take the print run. There's a colors edition print run. I didn't know that. Which is what's listed here. Yeah, we've talked about this before. Oh. Because if you get it from retail, the back of them say retail edition.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Like this one says limited edition of 60,000. Now if you buy it from like Jetpens or Goulet or local store, it'll say retail edition of 60,000.

Brad Dowdy: Comprende?

Myke Hurley: Comprende.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So yes.

Brad Dowdy: I was about to say something on that. I can't remember now. But yeah. Oh, I know what I was going to say. America is the beautiful edition still not sold out.

Myke Hurley: Oh, really? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Because I was looking with this to go verify the numbers, the print run. Yeah. It's still available on the limited edition run still available. Which that was a 45,000 run, I believe.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, this is going to do well. I imagine this one will sell out. Heck, I might just buy them all because I really love this edition. And this one, I mean, I know it's the newness of it and that makes me say something like this. But I might like this better than Night Sky for me personally.

Field Notes Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: That might be blasphemous. But it may just be the newness of it. You know, that it's, oh, hey, new shiny thing. But just from a use perspective, I love this edition because I love the grid line, the orange, yellow grid line. That really makes a difference for me. And I'm a huge, huge fan of that. So this, I might, we'll see. I mean, time will tell. I mean, it's too early. But that's what I'm feeling so far. But I will, I'm willing to admit that it might just be the newness factor that's got me all pumped up about it. But right now, I think I will personally like it better than Night Sky. Although I think in the end, I think most people would, in the grand scheme of things like that, it's hard to miss that black cover of the Night Sky. They did a really good job on that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, but when I saw these ones, I thought, well, this could be my favorite. So we'll see.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. As I get used in them and see, I will see. I have a feeling that there's a chance I'm going to, this one's going to rank pretty high, I think, in my rankings. And did you watch the 30-second spot online? You know how they usually do a film or whatever?

Myke Hurley: Yep, I did.

Brad Dowdy: For each edition. This one, they did a 30-second spot, which is kind of like a beer commercial. And for those who haven't heard Jim Kudol talk, that's him doing the voiceover for the commercial. It's pretty hilarious. And it's not meant to be. It's like a dead serious commercial. But you can tell Jim's like, he's doing like his commercial voice. Yeah. For like a fancy beer commercial. Yeah, it's interesting. I cracked up.

Myke Hurley: I liked it a lot. I like that they did that as a commercial instead of just like their usual like abstract video that they do.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it fits in with the whole theme. I mean, it's like perfect. And the six-pack and the coasters. I actually, I ordered a couple extra notebooks as well. And I went ahead and ordered coasters because I'm actually, I'm a coaster guy to begin with. I use coasters. So, you know, I've got, I've got a drink here as we're podcasting sitting on a coaster. And, you know, I have a coaster at work. I don't know. I don't know why coasters are just a thing for me. So, I ordered extra coasters too. So, you can not only just order the extra three packs of the books. You have to order the ales separately from the loggers, right? You get a three-pack of ales or a three-pack of loggers or one of each. And then you can get a coaster set. The coaster set, you get four coasters, two ales, two loggers. And that's only $3.95. So, as always, Field Notes is doing it right.

Myke Hurley: That's how they do.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So, I'm excited for you to get yours in. I'm interested to see what you think about this. And I'm interested to start getting them in the rotation and see how the covers hold up. I think they're going to do pretty well. But we'll see.

Myke Hurley: Anything else?

Brad Dowdy: I mostly enjoy the, no, no. I was just going to say I mostly enjoy the grid lines. That's going to be a huge deal for me. So, yeah. No, that's all on that front. So, I think general consensus was this was a hit.

Myke Hurley: Good stuff.

Brad Dowdy: In the Field Notes realm.

Brad Dowdy: And, honestly, how could it not be? Even people that say, I actually, when it came out, I was like, ooh, I wonder if some people who, you know, don't drink or whatever are going to take offense to this. And they're like, most of the comments I was reading was, I don't drink, but this is fantastic looking. And, you know, I'm all over it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they still look good whether you're a drinker or not.

Montegrappa Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. So, I found some new stuff this week that I thought you might like, Myke. Cool. One of the things, I just happened to see it, Gold Spot pens, they carry a lot of different fountain pen lines that I'm not normally familiar with. And I either caught it on their blog or email or something like that that for a pen brand called Montegrappa, an Italian pen brand. And they do, they make some, I've never used one. They make some regular edition pens. All their pens are really good looking. And then they do some special edition pens based on people or time of year or whatever. And I got an email or I saw it on the blog post. They're doing this Montegrappa skull pen for Halloween. And I just thought that looks super cool. I think I tweeted out about it. It's about a $300 pen, but it's all black. It's got skulls all over it. The cap might be a little much for me. I don't know if I'll get it, but I thought it was really neat looking.

Brad Dowdy: And so I was checking this out and I was talking about it. And then someone tweeted me, was like, well, have you seen the Montegrappa Batman limited edition? And I was like, oh, mercy. I was like, now I remember when that came out. It was probably last year or something. And I'd totally forgotten about it. And I was like, I got to show this to Myke. So have you looked at this Batman pen? I'm looking at it right now. It is nuts. Don't look at the price. I just did. So the skull pen that I was looking at that I thought was pretty cool. I don't know if I'll order that or not. It's borderline. The cap might be a little much to me. The cap's got a single gigantic skull. And the skull looks like he's got like a little shiny rhinestone tooth or something like that. That might be a little much. I like the barrel with all the mini skulls wrapped around. This Batman pen is stunning. Every bit of it. But the difference between the skull pen and the Batman pen is about $2,800. The Batman pen retails for like $3,300.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, no. So it's about $3,000 difference. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: But if you pay $5,695, you can get a watch and cufflinks too.

Brad Dowdy: Ooh. Now that's got you written all over it. Yep. So we'll have all this in the show notes. You have to check out this Batman pen. It's actually quite impressive. I don't think it's tacky or gaudy or something like that. I mean it's obviously monstrously expensive and I would never even consider. But I'm enjoying looking at it and I love the design of it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think it looks awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And like the bats that they have all of the bat symbols that they have all over the barrel, they like they fill in. It's not like consistent around the barrel. Like the back of them, there's just a few and it kind of grows into a bunch around the front side of the barrel. And it's got a really interesting clip on it. I don't know if that's a Batarang clip.

Myke Hurley: It kind of looks like it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: But they've done their best. Like, you know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I wanted to put this in there for people who haven't seen it. Go check out this link in the show notes. You will. I was impressed. So hopefully you will be too. It's pretty stunning. And I remember when that came out and I just I think I just blew it off. And because it was so expensive. I don't even remember looking at it. But now that I look at it, I'm pretty impressed by it.

Myke Hurley: I wish I had that sort of money laying around. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: See, I don't know that I would even spend it then. I mean, if you spent that kind of money on a pen, would you use it?

Myke Hurley: If I could spend that sort of money on a pen, then it wouldn't make a difference. Because it would be like buying a $200 pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I guess so. That's true. Like if it was now, like me or you buying this pen, like spending all this money on the pen, I don't know that I could use it. But I guess if you're in the world where you're spending that much on a pen, I guess it would probably be a good point.

Myke Hurley: But if I was to buy it now, you know, like with the money that I have, I would like just only ever use it at home. And I would empty it all the, you know, I'd empty the ink every time.

Myke Hurley: You know, I would use it very, very rarely.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right, right. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I don't even know that I'd ink it up. I don't know. I'd be hard pressed. So anyway, so that's not the only interesting pen I found this week. Have you seen, did you get as many tweets and emails as I got about the polar pen on Kickstarter?

Myke Hurley: I got a few people contact me just to say, you know, look how expensive this thing is, look how well it's doing, that sort of thing. I got an email actually about it. Yeah, I got an email too. I think it's the most successful pen Kickstarter of all time now.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, suck it, Visionaire. Yeah. That lasted all of about a week. This is gone berserk. It's at 421,000. It's in Canadian dollars, but that's practically a one-to-one exchange rate with U.S. dollars. So it's right around that same. And that's only in 10 days. I think this was a 30-day. Oh, no, it's been more. It started on September 10th. So it's been a 45-day.

Myke Hurley: No, it's 36 days is their funding period.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So it's been alive for about 15 days, and it's already at $421,000. 7,318 backers. I'm shocked at the quantity of backers that they have and how many they've sold. It's pretty stunning. It's a really unique concept. What it is, it's basically a pin that's built off of a magnet set. Is that the best way to put it?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's hard to explain without going to look at it, but it's basically like the magnets build the barrel of the pin, and you're able to use it as a stylus. You're able to use different pin refills in it based on the amount of magnets you buy. I hope I'm doing this justice. I haven't totally done all my research on it. Just looking at it for me personally, I have zero interest in this pin, but it looks pretty cool. I'm not going to back this pin. I just don't think I would ever use it. What do you think, Myke? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It also looks cool. I'm watching the video now, and he's doing a bunch of fun things and cool things with it, but I'm like, this is not at all what I want or need in a pen. Right. Okay. Oh, great. Look, you just made a circle out of it. I mean, okay. That's fine. This is an interesting project, but there's nothing about this. Nothing about this is the reason that I buy pens.

Brad Dowdy: Right. That's why I'm shocked at the money so far. It's pretty crazy.

Myke Hurley: If you think about it, that makes sense because all of the reasons that we buy pens are not any of the reasons that regular people buy pens. Yeah, I guess that's true. If it makes nearly half a million dollars, it will make over half a million dollars. It could make a million dollars. Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: That's what you would want. You would want something that is so out of the ordinary.

Myke Hurley: I don't think this could work like this. I can't imagine it working very well. I'm looking at it, right, and these are tiny modular magnets. What happens if you grip the pen too hard? Do they all dislodge? Right.

Brad Dowdy: Do they adjust side to side as you're writing? Is that what you mean?

Myke Hurley: I would feel like it would be moving around. Mm-hmm. Like the barrel would be contorting as I'm writing. Not a lot because obviously the pen refill runs through the middle of it, but I just can't imagine it working. I don't know. I mean, I'm watching the video as we speak and it looks like a lot of fun, but that's not what I do here. I actually don't think it looks very good.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Have you ever heard of Buckyballs?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I have some.

Brad Dowdy: So it's very similar to this. That's what it reminds me of. Buckyballs, which are just like the magnet balls. It's like a desk toy where you can just build different shapes with the magnets. And then they ended up getting pulled off the market. But like the U.S. government or whichever, I don't know, whichever business unit monitors this kind of stuff ended up pulling those off the market because they said that they were a danger to children, even though they weren't marketed to children. I mean, I'm totally on Buckyballs' side of this thing. It's kind of ridiculous that they got yanked off the market. But this is the same kind of thing, you know, where those magnets are small enough. And the theory is someone, you know, a kid puts those magnets in his mouth and those magnets stick on the insides of their bodies and do bad things. So that's all I can think about with this thing is that it's very similar to Buckyballs. And, you know, it's probably the same type of market that's buying this pen, right?

Brad Dowdy: Anyone who bought the Buckyballs would be totally into this. And the Buckyballs blew up. I mean, they sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of those things.

Brad Dowdy: So it's pretty interesting.

Brad Dowdy: And I don't know what happened on this Kickstarter page, but it's already lost like $25,000 while I'm looking at it.

Myke Hurley: I was just about to say that to you.

Brad Dowdy: It went from $421 to $395.

Myke Hurley: So what has happened there?

Brad Dowdy: I have no clue. It's like it auto-refreshed.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It just did that for me. Oh, man. That's so annoying. I wish I knew how many backers there were beforehand.

Brad Dowdy: I said it on the thing. So right now there's $7167. So we'll just have to listen back to see what I said previously.

Myke Hurley: So the listeners know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I said how many backers there were just a minute ago.

Myke Hurley: I was just about to say. I was like, hang on. That's changed. Now I've gone down to $395,000. This is where you find out that I had $20,000 behind this thing. And then you turn me off.

Brad Dowdy: That would be awesome.

Myke Hurley: That's so weird.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So anyway, we'll keep watching this. And I'm interested to see how high it goes. But it's not a pen for me. But all I can say is hopefully all the people buying this pen need a pen case. That's all I can say. Huh.

Myke Hurley: How close.

Brad Dowdy: We'll close. We'll talk about that at the end. All right. We'll save that to the end. You will be surprised in a good way.

Myke Hurley: I just did a search. And you didn't show up.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, please. You would know if it was live. I don't know. Probably because I would be in the hospital with like a heart attack or something from stress.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, we'll talk about it at the end. And we got a couple other quick topics that I want to get to. And then we'll talk about the Nock launch time. So why don't we get into our last sponsor. And we'll knock out a couple other things. And we'll call it a day.

Shutterstock

Myke Hurley: Sounds like fun to me. So I'm going to take a quick moment to thank Shutterstock.com. This is where you're going to find over 20 million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. Start searching at Shutterstock.com to find the perfect image for your website, ad, publication, or any other creative project. Shutterstock.com gives you a global image collection to find images from across the world to suit your project. Choose between image packs and monthly subscription packages. Whatever fits your needs, you never have to compromise. If you need just one image for your blog or mock-up, you can do that too. Every time you visit Shutterstock, you're going to find something new since they add 10,000 new images every single day. And it's more affordable than you think with no extra charge for large files. Just download any image in any size and pay only one price. They don't nickel and dime you for high-resolution images at Shutterstock. If you need them, just take them. You can easily curate and share pictures via lightboxes, so you can choose your favorite pictures or videos and add them to your own lightbox gallery as you search. And they also have an iPad app if you want to do this too. They also have a huge library of vectors, icons, infographic templates, and video clips, not just images, should you need any of those. And if you need help over at Shutterstock.com, you can get an account rep dedicated to you who can answer any questions. They also have 24-hour support during the week. Go sign up for a free browse account now by going to Shutterstock.com. No credit card needed. And when you find the images you like and decide to purchase, use the offer code PENS9 and you're going to get 25% off any package. Thanks so much to Shutterstock for their support of The Pen Addict and all of 5x5s.

Brad Dowdy: All right, so I went and searched logger on Shutterstock.com this time. So I don't know why this became a thing, but it's kind of fun to do.

Myke Hurley: I was going to ask what you searched.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I'm looking at all the loggers, and it's pretty cool. We got 23,484 results for loggers. It's really cool. The resolution on these pictures is pretty amazing. If you're putting together anything, any kind of anything online, you know, related to, I don't know, not just beer, but gosh, any topic you can imagine has got so much stock imagery on here. It's amazing. Yep. And the vector images on the beer ones are really cool, too. You love the vectors. It's got some neat stuff. You love them, yeah. I love that kind of artwork. Like our compatriot, Joy Raphael, he does the, what is he doing, the logo a day, or I don't know what he calls it, logo, year of logos or something like that. Like I love just those tiny vector images. I don't know why that type of artwork fascinates me, so.

Brad Dowdy: Anywho, speaking of fascinating, I got a magical tweet earlier this week, and I say magical. It was forwarded to me by a follower, Keith Keitover on Twitter, at Keith Keitover, sent me a tweet from David Blaine, the magician. You're familiar with David Blaine?

Myke Hurley: Of course I am, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I guess, yeah, I'm sure most people have heard of David Blaine. So David Blaine on Twitter just posted a tweet that said, favorite pin, and put out a picture of it. And I was shocked. And, you know, I probably wouldn't have received it if it was just some silly ballpoint. But he's got a Secura Pigra Micron, the 005 size, which is the tiniest micron. And he's riding on an ace of spades, you know, I guess for, you know, one of his card tricks. And he's got an Einstein quote on there. Reality is merely an illusion. And I thought that was pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: That's so strange to me. There's nothing about this tweet or image that is normal to me in any way.

Brad Dowdy: I agree. And that's all he says. I mean, it says, it says, favorite pin. Boom. There's the picture.

Myke Hurley: Well, this dude is far from a normal gentleman, though, isn't he, really?

Brad Dowdy: Right. He's very, very strange. He's a very peculiar fellow. I actually find him hard to watch. I can't watch any of his magic stuff. But, I mean, I understand who he is and what he does. But I can't watch him. It's a little much for me.

Brad Dowdy: But I thought that was a cool picture that if you didn't see it, I thought it would be worth including in the show notes just for y'all to check out because it's kind of interesting. I was very, very surprised at the pin choice. And that's cool because that's a great pin. But for him to take the time to put favorite pin out there, I thought that was pretty neat.

Brad Dowdy: We're infiltrating Myke.

Myke Hurley: I'm already lost in the next link.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Well, let's get to it.

Brad Dowdy: I have many problems in my life. Purchasing problems. Pins being the primary one.

Brad Dowdy: Probably my second biggest problem area for spending too much money in things that, of course, I need them, Myke. But, you know, maybe you don't necessarily need them. But it's backpacks and bags. And my favorite paper designer, Mr. Chad Doan, combined with my favorite bag designer and Topo Designs to make a Topo Designs plus Doan paper mountain briefcase. So it's a collaboration between Topo and Doan.

Brad Dowdy: Topo has a mountain briefcase design already. And you can buy it in different colors. But this one that they collaborated with Chad Doan on is very different than any of the other ones. And there was no way I was not ordering this. And I got it in yesterday. It came really quick. It just went for sale on the 23rd. I already got it in. I ordered it the 23rd and got it in yesterday. And it's spectacular. I'm in love with it already. I loaded it up last night, got everything set up how I wanted to. It holds everything I need. I'm mostly using it for work. So it's got my work laptop and notebooks and pens and field notes and headphones and five-hour energy drinks and gum and all kinds of stuff in there. All the stuff that I normally carry for work fits in there easy. What's cool about what I'm loving so far about this is you can carry it three different ways. By the way, it's designed. It's made. It's got handles on the top, like a double handle, so it can be carried briefcase style. It's got a shoulder strap, so it can be carried over the shoulder, like messenger style. And then it's got two tuck-away backpack straps on the backside, so it can be carried backpack style. It's pretty awesome. I love the versatility of it. I'm going to carry it probably briefcase style or backpack style. I've taken off the messenger bag strap for now.

Brad Dowdy: I'll probably carry it one of those two ways. I just love the look and feel. I was actually worried that my wife would give me a lot of grief about it. She stopped giving me grief about pens. She's finally on board with all the pens that I buy. She's like, oh, that's nice, and ignores me. So I had this sitting in a chair last night, and she goes, ooh, is that your new backpack? She said, that's really nice. And I said, huh?

Myke Hurley: What's happened here?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I was like, are you okay? What's wrong with you? So she actually made a comment, and it unsolicited. Like, I get it in, and I just start using it. I don't even show her. I'm not even like, hey, look what I got. Because usually she'd be like, oh, my gosh, another backpack, just what you need. But she actually made a comment. She's like, wow, that's really nice. You know, just unsolicited for me sitting in the chair. So, yeah, I'm really happy with it. I'm looking forward to using it. It's going to be my primary everyday bag. And it's beautiful. It's just the right size for everything, and it looks great. So job well done, Topo and Chad down.

Myke Hurley: It's a shame they don't ship to the UK. I say it's a shame. It's probably for the best.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, I could always ship you one.

Myke Hurley: Well, I'm thinking that, you know, I probably know a guy who's going to design backpacks of his own at some point. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Brad Dowdy: Definitely. Definitely on the radar. And this is expensive. I mean, it's not a cheap bag. It's $170.

Brad Dowdy: But, you know, I think the regular, I haven't looked, I don't have the Topo design up, but I think their standard ones are like around $140 or $150 anyway for the Mountain Briefcase. So, and the regular ones don't have the leather that this one has on it and the other detailing that the collaboration has. So, it's probably the most I've ever paid for a bag or a backpack, something like that. So, anyway, it's pretty awesome. I'm going to, for paying that much, I better use the heck out of it. And it looks like I will. It's got everything I'm looking for in a bag or a backpack. And it's going to be great. I'm excited about it. So, speaking of bags, we have a launch date, mate.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Knock Co.

Brad Dowdy: So, you've been following along. All the readers have been following our, the creation of Knock Co., the pen case company I'm working on with my friend Jeffrey. And we've been spending, I don't know, the last couple of weeks almost twiddling our thumbs just because it takes a long time for everything to get approved. Like, our work is done as far as getting everything made and set and pictures taken and descriptions written and everything. So, to get ready for this Kickstarter launch and we have to wait for Kickstarter to approve and banks to approve and everything to get all synced up. So, everything's on the same page and everything's ready to go for launch date. And I submitted the final Kickstarter project last Sunday for approval. They came back, I think on Tuesday. Came back on Tuesday, said, hey, we need to see some additional things in the project. So, I finished that up last night, resubmitted, and we got their approval today. So, we are officially approved by Kickstarter. So, now what that means is we are ready to launch when we are ready. And Jeff and I are more than ready. So, even though we got the, we got it today, we got approved. So, this is a go. It's going to be a Kickstarter campaign. It's not live today. It's not going to be live tomorrow. Ah! Ah! We don't want to, we don't want to go on a Friday. No. I think that's a bad idea. So, we're going to go on a Monday. We're going to turn it up. We're going to turn it up Monday.

Myke Hurley: Oh, my God.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I'm excited. Yeah. I'm excited, too. I'm nervous.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't know if I'm, I don't know which I'm more of, more nervous or more excited. I'm pretty excited. I think I'm more excited than I am nervous. So, we're going to go live Monday. I don't have an exact time yet. We're still sorting out that details. But it'll be, you know, morning East Coast time. Before lunch, East Coast time. So, that's kind of the plan right now. And we'll have more details over the weekend. And we'll send out, we'll send out a mail with the final link and everything for everyone who signed up to be notified when the project launches. But, yeah. It looks like Monday's a go.

Myke Hurley: So, I wonder what we'll talk about on Tuesday.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't know. It might not be that because I might be like passed out, fainted, like, you know, when we haven't sold any.

Myke Hurley: I hope and I really hope that we come to Tuesday's show and you've been funded.

Brad Dowdy: I hope so, too. I hope so, too. We'll see. There's a shot. Our goal is, I think, very achievable. Okay. So, I hope so. But, yeah. That's the big news. We're finally ready. Everyone's been patient. And, you know, some things are out of our control. And we finally got everything, all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. And now it's in our hands to push the button to make it live. So, we're going to do that on Monday. So, keep an eye out.

Myke Hurley: How long is the campaign?

Brad Dowdy: 30 days. Okay.

Myke Hurley: Wow.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: I can't believe it. It feels like only, like, days ago that you guys started working on this.

Brad Dowdy: Despite how slow the last couple of weeks have been, in general, it's gone by exceptionally fast. And that's, you know, all credit to Jeffrey for getting, you know, all these samples made. I mean, we went through so many tiers of prototypes to get the final ones made. And, you know, he's been working his butt off to get all this stuff done. And getting it all organized. And, you know, and us working together to get all the Kickstarter and all the back-end stuff that you got to get done, too, at the same time. So, we're finally ready for it to launch. And it has gone, in the grand scheme of things, it's gone by super fast. I mean, we've, not to pat ourselves on the back, but I think we've done a good job at getting, going from point A to launch date in a pretty straight line. So, and hopefully it becomes successful. We're counting on it. You know, I think this is going to be a good thing. And, you know, hopefully it'll go well. And then the future will be so bright, you will have to wear shades.

Myke Hurley: Okay, now, listeners. Now, he won't say this to you, but I will. So, this is what you need to do. On Monday, well, first off, make sure you're following at NockCo on Twitter. N-O-C-K-C-O. Or, Brad, at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. Make sure you're following him. On Monday, all of you have but one job. You watch Twitter for the announcement.

Myke Hurley: Actually, I'm going to give you two jobs. Three jobs. I'll just give them three. You have three jobs. You have but three jobs. You watch Twitter for the announcement. This is where you will go. You will follow those two accounts and you will watch. As soon as Brad says that the page is live, you go and you back. You back as much money as you can. And then you share it with your friends. And you will make me proud.

Brad Dowdy: I appreciate you saying that. And you're right. I wouldn't say that. Because. You know how I am.

Myke Hurley: I know our listeners and our listeners to this show. They love you. They also love fine products. And. I want to come on to this show on Tuesday. And you have met your goal. And the people. That should be able to help you do that. At least. Are the listeners to this show. Yep. At first. So I think that the listeners to this show. Should show how much of a pen addict they are. And make sure that they back. Before the show on Tuesday. Remember you still then have 30 days to pay. Or whatever. No money leaves your account. Until the funding date.

Myke Hurley: Back. And then. We can come on to the show on Tuesday. And not only can we talk about the process of it. And how the launch has gone. But we can also. Talk about the future of NotCo. Because they will know that it's safe. So. Make that happen. Listeners to this show. And you will make me and Brad. Very very happy.

Brad Dowdy: Well I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I think we'll have. You know. There's several different products. We're launching with. So hopefully. People will enjoy them. People will think they're good looking. And functional. And see something that's a good fit. For their ever growing pen and paper collection. And yeah. We look forward to. For a good launch. Next week. So. We're excited.

Myke Hurley: And with that. I am iMike. I am YKE. I will of course be tweeting about. Brad's. Kickstarter project. But you know. Follow him. At Dowdyism. On Twitter. And you will see everything that you need to see. And thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you want to go and get the show notes for this week. Go to 5x5.tv. Slash penaddict. Slash 73. Until next week Brad. Are we done?

Brad Dowdy: We are done sir.

Myke Hurley: Good luck.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you.

Myke Hurley: Godspeed.

Myke Hurley: And we'll be back next week. Thanks so much.

Brad Dowdy: Alright. Bye bye.