Editing The Pen Addict 383/transcript (section)

== Ask TPA ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' You ready to hit some Ask TPA this week?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. We've got the Ask TPA question to, of all Ask TPA questions to start off today. It comes from Mark. Mark wants to know, what pen should I buy?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So, there's a story here. And, um, you will enjoy this. So, I'm at Drum Ghouls. And this is, gosh, was this Friday? Yeah, I think this was Friday night. So, Mark, who you do not know, except you do know on Twitter. He is the gentleman who, last year, around the time I was going to Drum Ghouls, was listening to, like, 14 episodes a day. And was telling you every time he finished episodes. Oh, I remember Mark. He's pretty sure you hate him because of that. I don't hate him.

'''Guest:''' I don't hate him, but I do remember him.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that's Mark. So, Mark just walks up to me. He goes, Brad, I haven't asked TPA.

'''Guest:''' If I remember rightly with Mark, it was one of those things where I asked him to stop, but he said he wouldn't. If I remember, it was like the way that went. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's it. So, he's like, I'm pretty sure Myke hates me or has me blocked or something. I was like, yeah, maybe so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, yeah, he just walks up to me. We'd already talked a bunch that day. And he walks up. He's like, hey, I have an asked TPA question. I'm like, okay, let me write it down. He goes, what pen should I buy? And I just started dying laughing. Like, it was hilarious. I found that to just be hilarious. Plus, I wanted to tell you, to remind you about Mark's thoroughness in informing you of his listening habits. Because I know you appreciate it. I'm just pleased he's caught up. All right. So, what pen should he buy? What advice do you have for him?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm probably going to dip back into the world of last week for like the all-time fave, the Lamy 2000.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you're not going to believe this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Is that what you told him?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. I didn't give him an answer. I said, I'm going to put this on the show. But later that night, Mark said, hey, I am going to – I'm learning shorthand. What fountain pen do you think would be good for that? And I said probably like the Lamy 2000 or the Pilot Falcon. And he ended up behind the Lamy 2000. So, that's kind of hilarious. Boom. Did it. Nailed it. Kind of hilarious.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I am the king of us TPA now. I just think that – I've said this before. I haven't said this for a long time. I think. But I think if you are a pen addict who has a substantial collection of pens and the Lamy 2000 is not a part of that, you should rectify it. Because it is one of the all-time greats. And it unfortunately gets forgotten about a lot. Mostly because Lamy basically have forgotten about this pen, which they're sitting on. What could be an absolute goldmine for them if they just put some colors into it? Right? Like just release new ones. I mean, it's a real easy fix. Hybrid. It's very easy to fix this situation. It's just hybrid. But they seem to refuse to do it. And maybe they can't. I mean, I don't know what the reasons are. But, you know, I don't really know if there's constrictions around that material that they use. I don't know. But it seems peculiar.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, I go back to my conversation with John from Pilot. But there's reasons that we're not privileged to. Right? Even though we're still going to yell and complain. Believe me. They've had that question asked probably tens of thousands of times by now. Right? So, I just think it's funny.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, we don't typically do shout outs on the show. Because I feel like the show would then just become shout outs. Like that would be like this whole other section. But the serendipity of this email that I received from Stefan made me want to read it. Because I think it's really fun. So, some time ago, my wife April and I were riding in the car together. And I turned on Upgrade. So, that's another show that I do with Jason Snell. She looked at me and said, Is that Myke Hurley? I listened to him on The Pen Addict. And Stefan said, It was our Pina Colada song moment. You know, you're like Pina Colada. You go dancing in the rain. I love this. So, they were both listening to different shows. So, Stefan was listening to Upgrade. April was listening to The Pen Addict. I mean, there's no reason why it would necessarily come up. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's their independent feeds, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And it's also just like I listen to podcasts. Me too. Like you don't necessarily talk about it, right? My assumption would be that Stefan is interested in technology. April is interested in pens. And maybe they don't share a ton of overlap in those interests. Right. So, they just listen to what they listen to. But it must have been such a weird moment for them. Totally. To come across that. But Stefan, he told me a little bit about his wife, who seems like a really amazing person. And I wanted to read just a little bit about this. I thought it was really nice. So, April has recently been identified as a Richmond Times Dispatch Person of the Year in Virginia. I know Richmond, Virginia. That's where Casey's from.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And Goulet Pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah. Casey always sends me pictures when he drives by. Every single time. He's lovely like that. She has developed and runs her amazing Pathways to Science program, providing STEM opportunities for high school-aged Latinas. She also runs her N-O-Y-C-E program. Nice. See, as a fan of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, all I see is noise. But she runs her noise program, working to give college students free tuition in exchange for a few years teaching in disadvantaged schools after graduation. So, she's a little awesome. Yeah. There was actually like a whole list of things. I had to like trim it down. Like, April seems to work very hard for education. But Stefan said, most important to me, she is a great wife and mother. She doesn't do it as the accolades just because she cares about everyone having an equal opportunity. So, I wanted to just mention that. April, you seem like an awesome person. Stefan, you seem like a great husband too for writing in for this. And I just found it all a very heartwarming moment that I wanted to share with our audience.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' True. So, yeah. We don't normally do this. And I feel like awesome to be able to do this sometimes. So, April, you're amazing. And Stefan, thanks for sending this in. And this is just fantastic. Y'all made my day. And, you know, maybe I can live up to be as awesome as April one day. She's fantastic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Next question comes from Peter. Thanks to the pen addict, I'm a new lover of fountain pens. I've acquired my first, a Pilot Metropolitan with Pilot Namiki Blue Black Ink. And I've truly enjoyed adding an analog form of writing and note taking to my life. As I delve further into fountain pens, I'd like to get something that fits with the other themes in my life. As my favorite video game is Portal, I was thinking about how it would be to have a set of Portal themed fountain pens. One orange and one blue. I did a bit of searching, but I didn't come up with anything that felt right together. Given Myke's playthrough of the game, I was wondering if you'd have any suggestions for a pair of pens, even glad I'll sort of approve of. And if either of you happen to have strong feelings about orange or blue inks to fill the pens, I'd love to hear them. Do we have opinions on orange and blue? You know what I'm going to say for the orange and blue? Pilot Orochisuku Kompeki and Pilot Orochisukugaki, they matched the Portal colors very closely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I won't argue with either of those. And for the pen, all I can think about is back when Karas Customs started doing their first round of anodizing, they did orange and blue together. And I think at the time we might have even called them the Portal pens. This was years ago, but that is stuck into my head. So you're going to have to get something like that anodization from one of the metal pen manufacturers to get something to where you can get two pens, right? Like you can get two Sailors or two Platinums or whatever, but are you going to find something that is that complementary? You know, you could kind of maybe do it with the translucency in the Pilot Custom 92, I think it is. The one with the rounded tips, they have a translucent orange and a translucent blue. That might be a fun thing to do. And then those inks would be really good as well. So, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I was thinking if Twisby made an orange Twisby Go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That would be very Portal-ish. Yeah, because it's also clear. I wouldn't put it past them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, like if they did an orange one, you match it up with the blue one. But you could also go with a blue and orange Twisby Eco. Yes, definitely. That would work too. Because they're also like, they've got the great colors to them and they're also, they also have a lot of transparency to them. So they could be cool. And then also, you would see the inks lushing around inside. Right. So that's going to be my pick, Twisby Eco.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Anytime we can like do video game or any type of, you know, let's try to match up the thing questions I'm all about. Even though we're probably wrong, like that's a terrible idea most of the time. So this one I feel pretty good about. So yeah, I think we can get this done. So yeah, it should be good.