Editing The Pen Addict 636/transcript (section)

== Mickey Mantle's "These Pens Suck" autograph story ==

* Go ahead. So this is a contribution this morning. This is a late addition to breaking news. My wife sent me a link this morning. She's like, check this out. And it's called these pens suck. And it's basically so the story goes. So there's a baseball player. So this is this is right up my alley. For those who are not baseball inclined, there was a baseball player in the 50s, 60s, maybe into the 70s. I can't remember when he retired. I think in the 60s named Mickey Mantle. Even if you're not a baseball fan, you might have heard of Mickey Mantle. Very, very famous baseball player.
* Played for the New York Yankees. Was a superstar. One of the best. One of the best to ever do it. Hall of Famer. That kind of guy. And he, you know, like a lot of athletes or stars, they'll do autographs and sit for autograph sessions and, you know, sign a bunch of autographs to be used for a lot of different things. So Mickey Mantle is one of the most famous sports athlete autographs because he has a very nice signature. You can actually read what he does when he signs his name. And it's very consistent. So we'll have an image in here where he's gone through a sheet of 100 signatures that he's using a black marker of some type. And so there's 100 stickers on here. It looks like 20 rows of five stickers each. And he's writing his autograph. And it's just beautiful over and over and over again. And so consistent. And then let me read you what he does here. So on the 47th segment, Mantle wrote a change up. Instead of his signature, Mantle wrote, these pens suck.
* Then he signed 53 more segments, still as neatly as scripted as ever. Mantle was a perfectionist about his signature. And despite his protestations about the quality of his pen, his signatures are absolutely gorgeous. So it's a sheet of 100 signatures. It is a good piece of art, man. Yeah. 99 signatures say Mickey Mantle. And one of them says, these pens suck. And it's just glorious. When you zoom in, like there's images that are zoomed in, you can see that these pens do in fact suck. They do. So it's not a Sharpie because the black ink is grayish. Like that's how you know the pen. There's a lot of variation, like a lot of color variation going on, which you wouldn't necessarily expect or like want from something that would be akin to a Sharpie, I guess. It's just amazing. So it's like, all right, 43, 44, 45, 46. These pens suck. 48, 49. It's just hilarious. I love this so much. What is great about this is he did this protest before even getting halfway. Like he's not even halfway done.
* I don't just, I'm tripping out over this. So this whole sheet's being auctioned. It's how much? It's up to $77,000. So if you're interested in this piece of history, it's going to cost you a little bit. But I just buy a better Sharpie for like $2 or $3 and just then just go with that. Maybe practice your own signature instead of going bidding. What if we pull together? You can have it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
* We could share it. We just ship it back and forth. Yeah. Just one day for shipping in between. That's why we'll split it into the seven-day week. Yeah. Yeah. So I obviously got a huge kick out of this and my wife loved it this morning. So that was our enjoyment this morning. Hilarious stuff. All right. Let's finish out with a couple of our CPA questions. Let's do it. Raylia asks, do you have any suggestions for a multi-pen of colors vibrant enough for somebody with red-green colorblindness? The Jetstream multi-pen is too muted for me, though it writes and resists smudges really well.
* Yeah. I love this question. So I'm thinking, so what we want here as someone not totally familiar with colorblindness, we want to keep the red and green, but we want them to be a more saturated color so there's some separation, right? Yes. We're not looking to change. We don't need a blue, right? Correct. We need a red and green to be better. So that's the way I'm answering this. Hopefully, I'm correct. And if I'm not, please let me know. Red-green colorblindness, just by doing a little bit of Googling here, can actually make certain shades of green look more red. So I think what we're looking for is very saturated, therefore separated colors. That would be my expectation of what Rielia is asking for. Yep. Yep. So the problem that they're finding is the Jetstream is a ballpoint ink and red and green ballpoint inks are generally flat, right? They're just green. I'll straight up. Y'all know I love the Jetstream. You know I love the Jetstream multi-pen. The Jetstream green refill in the multi-pen is horrible. I hate that color. It is not a good color. You have to go to Gel Ink to get a good color saturation. That's hopefully going to get you some separation for colorblindness to see the visually different red and greens. So you want to go to like a Pilot High Tech Sea Coleto where you can build your own and you can pick the red and green.
* There's even some lime greens, which I don't know how that would work, but I would stick with the regular greens. Zebra makes probably like the best gel ink multi-pens. I just don't know right off the top of my head if they do a four color with a green option, but they might offer a green refill that's separate that could fit into those pens. But basically you want to go and look for gel ink multi-pens because the red is going to be really vibrant with the gel ink much more than the Jetstream. And that's going to give you a lot of separation, I think, from the green gel inks, which are also going to look much, much better. And then you can get that separation. So I would skip ballpoint multi-pens completely. You're not going to find anything that's going to be good enough. And I would go to the gel. And I would start with Zebra. If you can find something there, if not, I would go to build your own with a Pilot Hitec C Coleto or a Uniball style fit, depending on which one you might prefer aesthetically. So go to gel ink multi-pens. And Helen asks, listening to your conversation about the wing back with a clip, my thoughts were, and I wondered, if you prefer a pen with no clip, how do you secure it to a pen loop? Which then had me wondering, do you even like or use pen loops? I always look for clips on pens so I have the added security when using a pen loop on my leather cover. This is such a good question. Like, we could just do the whole podcast on this. I use pen loops begrudgingly. Sure. Right? Because I'm not a pen monogamist. Right? Yes. Pen loops are so restrictive. Yes. You have to. This is your pen choice, right? Yes. Yeah. You have to pick the pen that fits the loop, not the other way around. And to me, that's a challenge for me as someone who uses, you know, six pens a day. That if I'm going to have the one notebook with the one pen today, that's fine. But that pen is going to be different tomorrow. And then the day after that. And I'm still stuck with the same loop. And there's some, I think Leuchterm has, I think their loop is a little bit flexible and it's stretchy, right? You can get some, get a few different pens in there. So like those add-on loops, those tend to be good. But the ones that are built in and come with like the leather notebooks, those are almost always too tight for any good thing. So I secure it in my pocket or in a pen case. I'm actually very okay. And this is totally personal, right? For Helen. Like this is totally personal. I'm good if I'm going, let's just say I'm going to a cafe and I'm going to write. I'll bring a notebook and a pen case. Like I'm okay with two things in this scenario because I'm just going to fight with the pen loop and it's not going to hold what I want it to when I want it. And that's just a me thing. I get the convenience of them, but I find them overall too restrictive. So I don't have to, clips are not a deal breaker for me.
* If they have a clip, I'll use the clip, you know, I'll clip them to the cover of the notebook, right? Instead of using a pen loop. If a case has a pen loop and I have a pen with a clip, I'm more than likely going to stick the clip in the pen loop and not the pen in the pen loop because it's not going to fit. And if I prefer to use a pen or a pencil without a clip, well, I'll just find a different case to use it there because they're just not universal, not universally available to fit many, many different pens. So I don't know. I, I guess I have strong opinions on pen loops, but it's just, no one's made something that's just really perfect because there's too much variety out there in the pen world to fit many different pens. It's got to be like my Caran d'Ache 849. That's an awesome pen loop pen because it's skinny and it has a clip. I, that, that pen goes in most pen loops that I have, um, just to, just to fill them up just so I'm using them. So there we go. Yeah. I don't use pen loops. Um, it's just not really something that I find to be satisfying to like clip a pen in like that. But if I was going to use a pen loop, then I would want to secure clip. Yeah. Like, cause I agree with Helen. Like if you are using a pen loop, 100% your pen needs to have a clip on it. Like, cause you need that security of it not falling out and they always can, but they're less likely to fall out if it's actually clipped to the loop. Right. So that makes sense to me. That's why from a design perspective, I'd almost always design with a pocket or a pouch or a sleeve than a loop. Just, you're, you're going to have more options. Okay.
* So, but there's still like, it's, it's, it's hard to get a pen loop right. And it's hard to get a pouch right. That's internal to a case. Like, um, we should have a, we should have a design episode, uh, crossover with thoroughly considered one day.
* We all have opinions. We all have opinions. So yeah, it's yeah. There's, there's always, there's always a give and take and pen loop. If I'm designing a product, it, it wouldn't even make the initial feature list because you're not, you're going to make so few people happy that it's not, it ends up not being a feature at all. Yep. I agree. All right. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, you have some follow-up or feedback from today's episode, just go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can send that in. There's also a link for this in the show notes, which you can find in your podcast app of choice or at relay.fm slash penaddict. Go to penaddict.com, spokedesign.com, twitch.tv slash penaddict and at penaddict to find Brad Dowdy. And you can find me here on relay at cortexbrand.com. And I'm at imike, I M Y K E. Thank you to Enigma Stationery and Uni for their support of this week's episode. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]