A photo of Bob Dylan’s used pocket notebooks. Image from the Bob Dylan archive at the University of Tulsa
Today we’re keeping it simple with just a Fresh Points episode, covering everything from Blackwing’s rerelease of a pencil they’re still selling, Bob Dylan’s pocket notebooks, pencil t-shirts, and a bevy of recommendations for what Andy should pick up after he finishes his current notebook.
Show Notes and Links
Your Hosts
Johnny Gamber
Pencil Revolution
@pencilution
Andy Welfle
Woodclinched
@awelfle
Tim Wasem
@TimWasem
(Download)
Episode Transcript
(A big thanks to Sarah Yang, Erin Willard, Marissa Concepcion and Sarah Yang for editing our auto transcript to make it readable!)
Johnny: And speaking of notebooks, I had a bug up my butt, it was like two weeks ago? To make some notebooks and throw them up in my Etsy shop.
Andy: Was it a cicada?
Johnny: No, they were just colored notebooks with really heavy paper. And they -
Tim: How long has it been there?
Johnny: - really quick.
Andy: Are you all right?
Johnny: Huh?
Tim: We're still on the bug up the butt.
(Erasable Theme)
Tim: Hello folks. Welcome to The Erasable Podcast. This is episode 163. The cruelest month is over. And by that, I mean, we've almost made it through February of 2020, and it is Spring-ish, depending on where you are in the country, but we are here to have a good old-fashioned, Fresh Points episode, catch up on some stuff and talk about some things that we're anticipating.
Yeah and so glad to be with you. And I'm of course joined by two of the finest gentlemen I know, Andy and Johnny.
Andy: Hello? Where’s the gentlemen? It's just us. I thought,
Johnny: Yeah, you didn't make more friends, man.
Tim: Yeah, I was just being nice. But never mind.
Andy: We used to call these fresh point episodes “Fresh Points of Bel Air.”
Tim: Oh yeah.
Andy: Remember that?
Tim: We need to get back to that.
Andy: Yeah we do!
Tim: “Fresh Points of Bel Air.”
Johnny: Oh man, now I’m gonna have the song in my head all night.
Tim: I say we reinstate that tradition.
Andy: In West Pennsylvania, born and raised...
Tim: Nice. Cool. So you guys doing all right?
Johnny: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah. It's been a long week. It's only Tuesday.
Tim: Yeah. Even my son was sitting up like getting ready to go to bed and he had his PJs on asking him to brush his teeth. And he's like “Is tomorrow, Friday?” No, man. I wish dude. It is Tuesday. You're not even close.
Andy: You can see the spirit just go out of the eyes of a child.
Tim: Yeah. Should have just been like, yes, it'll be here faster if you go to sleep.
Johnny: I'm going to try that. Yeah. You never know - “Kids go to sleep. Tomorrow's Friday”
“It is??”
“Yeah”
Tim: We're doing something fun!!!
Johnny: I’ll just tell them on the day that they dreamt that.
Tim: Yeah. Guess you guys fell asleep on the couch, I carried you to bed. Yeah, man.
Johnny: You guys were OUT last night. Wow.
Tim: Nice. All right. Well let's dig in. Let's start with tools of the trade and Johnny. Go for it. Tell us what you've been stealing and showing.
Johnny: So I've - I think I'm late to the game, but I've gotten really into Austin Kleon’s work. So I just devoured “Steal like an Artist” and “Show your Work” and the third one “Keep Going” is here. It came today, so I'll read it like tomorrow because they're pretty quick reads and I - how do I say this? I feel like sometimes the terminology that he uses can sell himself short. Does that make sense?
I know - there's the pine on “Show your Work”, but it's really about getting your work out there. And I feel like if you don't read the back of the book, then you just kind of miss it - and same with “ Steal like an Artist”.
I'm like, “Oh, the book is way better than it sounds like when you look at the cover” the first time, I thought it was like, “that doesn't sound interesting I don’t want to read that”, but it was super great. I love it. And he does a lot of cool zine stuff and he likes pencils so he's just a very fun person to follow.
And I read “World of Wonders” that also everyone else in the world has already read - I didn't know what that book was about, either from the cover. I thought it was about interesting, you know, entities in nature that are full of wonder, like Narwhals, but it's not, it's really just personal essays, which were really good.
That was also a book that was way better than the cover title would lead you to believe, but totally recommend it. That was really a page turner and there is a section about narwhals and I did learn a lot about narwhals, and they're so adorable.
But there was nothing in there on koalas, which almost ruined the book for me. Cause I love koalas. But yeah, that's my boring life lately. I'm rewatching “Shetland”, because why not
Andy: Did you get to the part about the ponies?
Johnny: I don't think there’s a single horse in the whole series. A lot of those - and I've never been to Scotland so I can't say this is just the show, but it seems like everybody in Scotland has three French presses in their kitchen and that's it
Which like - “Oh, another reason I had to go live there”, but my allergies have been ballistic lately so I’m just shut in with the air conditioning on, even though it's like in the forties at night, watching a Scotland show, with coffee at 11 o'clock. Cozy life
Tim: We’re living the dream.
Johnny: Yeah. And so I'm writing with a Staedtler Noris because I forgot what an awesome pencil it was. And I picked one up recently and I'm like hot, damn, it's just perfect. And I'm just writing on whatever scraps are sitting around, which is a lot of stuff. How about you, Andy?
Andy: I was talking to Katie before we started, just to see, just to remember what television we've been watching and we've been watching a lot of things that have like short seasons have either of, you heard of “Mayor of East Town”
Johnny: No.
Andy: So there's the - it's this HBO show. And it's if you took one of those just really dreary, British murder shows. Oh, like that one with David Tennant that I can't remember the name of
Johnny: Broadchurch?
Andy: Yeah. If you take something like that, but set it in Pennsylvania and they - and so Kate Winslet stars as Mayor, and she's a police detective in this small town in Pennsylvania called East Town.
Tim: I thought it was about a horse
Andy: Haha yeah. And the it's just a really small town dreary but also very good murder, murder mystery. And it's funny because SNL last week parodied it because everybody has this very specific accent that to me, sounds like a Baltimore accent. There's a lot of like “nurrr” Like I can't even do it right. Just
Johnny: East PA is like that.
Andy: Yeah, it is. It really is. And the parody was like, it was, this guy's daughter was murdered. And so it was like “You murdered my daughter” It was like “Ma-do-dah was murdered” “We found her in the wur-dah”
Johnny: “and my daugh-der in the war-durr. Gawwd”
Andy: And so imagine Kate Winslet, this British actor trying to do this accent.
It's very good. It's very bleak, very bleak. It's always super gray in this town and raining, I assume that's what East Pennsylvania is like. We're in episode four. If you like the Catholic church, I wouldn't recommend watching it. Let's just say that.
Johnny: It's just like my show, I'm going to check this out.
Andy: I think you would like Johnny, I think you would really like - the first episode Katie and I were like, “I think Johnny would like this.” Also watched and finished a season - the final and third season of “Shrill” that is that show with Aidy Bryant from Saturday Night Live that’s set in Portland is really good.
They just posted all of that at the end of last week, I think. So we watched all eight episodes cause they're short, went fast. We didn't have a lot else to do this weekend
And finally, there's this other show that we are in the middle of that is on Peacock, it's a Peacock original show, which is NBC’s streaming app, have either of you heard of “Rutherford Falls”.
Johnny: Sounds familiar, but I have no idea what it is.
Andy: Yeah. This one - it's really good. It's starring Ed Helms who played Andy in “The Office” and this guy lives in this place called Rutherford Falls, which is named after his ancestor.
Tim: That sounds like a fake name that Andy Bernard would come up with.
Andy: We're not sure that Andy Bernard is not just, you know, playing this character. It's really good it's kind of a quirky comedy. It has a lot of Parks and Rec vibe to it, I think. And it is a little bit about colonialism, interestingly, because his forefathers built this town, but they built it kind of using this like this trade agreement with a native American tribe.
And that tribe is still in existence. They run like a casino in town and it's, it's a little bit about that. It's a really good show, it's funny and it makes you think and it just seems kind of sweet. So I'm liking it so far. And the last thing I'll mention is this book that I started reading a couple of nights ago called “The Effort”
It is a science fiction-ish book. It takes place in the - I think it takes place during the Trump administration because they talk about that. But it's a dystopian fiction book.
Tim: Like every book of fiction written during the Trump administration.
Andy: There is a comet currently hurtling toward earth, and this is about like different nations trying to pull together in an effort to stop it. So it's a little bit “Armageddon” that movie meets - have you ever seen Station or read Station 11?
Tim: I need to, I have it, I haven't read it yet.
Andy: It's a really good book that focuses on characters, but in all sorts of different sort of circumstances, and it talks a lot about sort of what happens to society when there's just sort of a mass panic and, you know, a comet might just destroy all life on Earth.
Yeah so, so far so good. It’s a really well-written book and I am writing with my Palomino Blackwing Palomino. Which we'll talk a little bit about in fresh points. In my - some of the final pages of my blue Leuchtturm, which we will also talk about and fresh points. Tim, how about you?
Tim: Nice. We have been - first and most importantly, we've been rewatching Gilmore Girls.
Johnny: That's nice.
Andy: I feel like you have what - this will be like your second run of Gilmore Girls since we've been doing this podcast.
Tim: Oh yeah, definitely. Cause the first time was well, like we had started it twice I think. And so the first time I've watched it in the podcast, I was finishing it - finally finishing it for the first time, but I had seen some of them more than once.
And then I've watched random episodes since then, but we just started right from the beginning, so we're on like episode eight or something like that. So that's been a really good fit for, like, what we need right now. And we're also - because it's also an antidote to the other thing we're watching, which is Yellowstone. Have you guys watched Yellowstone?
It's so good. It's got Kevin Costner. And basically he's this like super-powerful rancher in Yellowstone who owns an absurd amount of land and who's going to crazy means to keep control of the land. So it's, there's part of it where he's this like righteous dude who's trying to save the land from modernity, like taking over and turning it into casinos and hotels.
But he's also got like a sort of Walter White side to him where there's just, he's willing to do some evil stuff if he has to. And so there's these developers that are trying to encroach on his land, but there's also the local Native American tribe that's trying to take back sections of the land.
And it's just a family drama about his family that runs this ranch called the Yellowstone. And it's very good. It gets pretty dark, but, I mean, we love it. It's on, I think you can watch it on Peacock. But it aired on Paramount originally. So the third season comes out--or the fourth season comes out this summer sometime, and we're somewhere in the second season.
It's a fantastic show. Yeah, it's really, really good. So if--it's sort of like a mix between a Western and like a Breaking Bad-style show. Which is right in my wheelhouse.
Andy: Deadwood Breaking. Breaking Deadwood.
Tim: Yeah. It's like modern-day Deadwood sort of, I don't know. Breaking Deadwood. Yeah.
Okay. And then I'm reading, I'm finishing up that Hank Williams biography, which I had told you guys about. I think I've got like 20 pages left, which has been really good, but also really sad ending. Cause it's like the whole last chapter is just about his really pitiful death. Like he just, I mean, he just sort of drinks himself into oblivion and just fades away and dies in the back of a car. And they don't know he’s dead for four hours and just drive, ’cause they're just assuming he's passed out. It's yeah. I mean, it's a pretty bleak ending. Yeah. I mean the whole book is, I'm glad I read it and I would recommend it to music fans, but I mean, it is just basically a book explaining just how much he drank, which is really wild.
I mean like people describing it as him drinking bottles of whiskey like you would drink a bottle of water. I mean, just incredible amounts. And then he had these like quack doctors that would follow him around. And basically after he'd drink, they'd give him these weird shots that would make him throw up and then they'd give him like amphetamines to go up on stage and then he’d get done with a show and then he'd just start the cycle again.
It was just, it was awful. And he died at 29.
Johnny: Oh God.
Tim: And so he died of heart failure from drug abuse by 29. It's really wild. The movie, I think I talked about that last time, but the movie gets it right. So you can just watch the movie if you're not interested in a 300-page book about Hank Williams. I Saw the Light.
And then I'm reading--so the other, the last two things I'll mention is I, we were in Asheville recently and I got the New and Selected Poems of Ron Rash, who I've talked about on here many times, but I got the physical copy of his Selected Poems, which is really, really great. And that's been a good source for songwriting inspiration the last several days that I've been looking through that.
And then once I finish the Hank Williams book, I am going back and I am reading the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. The Name of the Wind. Did we talk about that on here before? I don't think so. It's this one fantasy series that I've been talked into by enough friends to read and not hate fantasy as much as I typically do.
So I've read most of the first one. I thought I had finished it, but I actually didn't, but I'm going to, I'm just gonna start over. I'm gonna read the first one and I bought the second one. They're massive, but it's just kind of like this big fantasy trilogy--the third book's not out yet--but just that has a huge cult following.
And the thing that got me stuck on it after reading the first like 30 pages is that it's fantasy, but he's also a really beautiful writer, which he's not--One thing that usually drives me crazy about fantasy is that they hide behind their weird, made-up words all the time, or they're world building, but they don't worry about just writing a good sentence, you know, and he's just a really good writer.
So, that's what I'm reading. That's what I'll be reading. I listened to some of the audiobook to get it started, but I bought a physical copy recently, so I'm gonna read that.
And I am writing with--also while I was on that trip to Asheville, the brief trip to Asheville, I finally got some Blackwing 840s.
Andy: Oh yeah.
Tim: Which is the coast, like the surfing one, right? Is that what it was?
Johnny: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim: So this place was selling them in singles. So I just got a couple of those.
Andy: Remind me which core that is.
Tim: I think it's Pearl. I didn't even look it up, but it feels like a Pearl. But yeah, I like it. It's a way--I kind of regret not buying a dozen of them.
I mean, I have more pencils than I could ever use, but they're really, really gorgeous in person. I really like it. So I'm a fan officially, so, surprised. Yeah. Legitimately surprised. Cause I, I straight-up avoided them. I was just like, no, thanks. Don't want that one. Which I dunno. I dunno why I was so definitive on it, but then when I saw him there in the cup, I was just like, Oh gosh, those are actually cool. And I'm glad I got them. So I'm writing with that.
I do have my Blackwing Palomino here as well. And I am using, which I'm going to talk about soon, I'm using a Maruman notebook that is the Maruman--oh gosh--C R O Q U I S. Which maybe means something. Like “crow quee,” or “crook.” I don't know, but it's a really cool notebook that I'll talk about in a minute. That's me.
So let's do, let's do some fresh points, Fresh Points of Bel Air, or the fresh point o’ Guinness. And I'm trying to think of some other, some other puns. So Johnny, why don’t you get started.
Johnny: Okay, I have some points to point out. I think we, Andy mentioned the Brood X books that Head Bone and Story Supply Company put together. My set got lost in the mail for a while. They just showed up yesterday, but they are so freaking awesome in person.
Andy: What's the paper like?
Tim: These are the cicada ones?
Johnny: Yeah. It's, I'm pretty sure it's their regular paper. So it feels like Write Notepads, but cream colored and a little thinner? It works fine for fountain pens. I, as soon as I got ’em, I was like, What can this handle? But it handled it all well. But the picture was so good, I showed it to Frankie and she was like, No, uh uh, get that away.
Andy: It's very realistic.
Johnny: Yes. Yeah. And I think you can get like a sticker pack with a couple extra stickers that were skulls. And one of them is the perfect sticker of a cicada. So I'm glad I got that.
Andy: They emerged yet, Johnny?
Johnny: I haven't found any yet. We've had you know, the weather keeps going up and down and it's been cold at night lately. So like any day and right outside, my tiny desk is by my bedroom window, which is by a lot of trees. So it's going to be interesting. Probably next time we record, I'd be able to put the mic on the window and hear ’em. Oh God, that's a creepy thought.
Yeah. So, last I checked when I went to go get the link for the document, they still have some left, so I'm, I have no idea if they made lots or little or what, but they’re--definitely go get some, especially if you live in Brood X area, because--creepy.
And speaking of notebooks, I had a bug up my butt, it was like two weeks ago, to make some notebooks and throw them up in my Etsy shop.
Andy: Was it a cicada?
Johnny: No, they were just colored notebooks with really heavy paper. And they sold
Tim: How long has it been there?
Johnny: really quick.
Andy: Are you all right?
Tim: We're still, still on the bug up the butt. Yeah.
Johnny: You know what? I only made 20 packs. I should have done 17 and called them the Cicada Books. Now I gotta make some more. Every time I play with a paper cutter, I'm one step closer to losing a finger because
Andy: Oh yeah.
Johnny: It's going to happen. I've caught my finger in it before and lost a nail. And I'm like, Whoa, that was close. There's a finger guard, but I have small fingers and it didn't work. But yeah, I found some really, really good paper that works well with everything, including fountain pens, and made a bunch of notebooks. And they went really quickly, which made me happy, except that they were really heavy and hard to ship. So hopefully they got to everybody safely.
And my--I'm late with my pencil zine this month because I sent out a survey and I’m switching it up a little bit, so that instead of each issue being like one long like meditation on a theme, it's going to be something more like a newsletter or magazine, newspaper-type thing where they're different columns and then also a themed column once a month. So yeah, I got the paper, it's bright yellow. It's going to be awesome. Hopefully.
Andy: Did you already talk about your Tuesday zine last time?
Johnny: Did I? My really obscene . . . So every Tuesday I put out a zine that's a buck. And it's called the Tuesday Zine, and this week's is called I F-ing Hate Frozen Waffles, and it turned out to not be about frozen waffles. There's just like one line about them where it says, “plus they taste S H I T.” But the rest of it was about family.
So yeah, every week I think it gets a little better and every week I sell a couple less, so I'm just gonna keep doing it, because it’s fun. I'm not losing any money or making money. It just evens out. So it's all good.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah. But yeah, I have, I mentioned quickly that I'm super into Austin Kleon right now, but if you go to his website, he’s got some really cool posts on there.
Like The Comfort of a Pencil, which I really appreciated. And a lot of cool stuff on there about making zines and journals and I dunno, it's not inspirational. It's really motivational. “Hey, I'm doing some awesome work. You guys can do some awesome work.” And that's, that's good. That's what we need right now.
Tim: I think, like, my favorite Austin Kleon thing is just when he, like, periodically shows back up on Twitter and is “What are you people doing here? You know, this place is terrible, right?”
Johnny: Yeah, he doesn't get on there much.
Tim: He's “Get off, start a blog, send a newsletter, get off this website.” And then he just disappears. I always loved those moments.
Johnny: Yeah, he did.
Tim: Yeah. “Telegrams, just send telegrams. Postcards, postcards!”
Johnny: He’s got a nice Instagram account. He just, he weighs the notebooks when they're finished, like on a scale to weigh, like, all the stuff that's in them. It's pretty funny.
Andy: Interesting. Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah. And he has a post on there where he links to all the stuff he uses. He's “Before you ask me, here's all the stuff I use” and links to it. I'm like, that is thoughtful and probably took a long time.
Yeah. And definitely go check his stuff out if you'd like creativity at all and also subtle humor. Right. Which I super appreciate.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: He also has a post on there about how to break in a Sharpie, that's totally legit. Yeah. So I got to find links for these, sorry. So, those are all my few fresh points. What do you have, Mr. Andy?
Andy: I actually have a bunch this time around. The first one that I'll mention, I think is the, the one that, I think this came out like literally the day that we published the last episode. And so I wish it came out just like slightly before, but I'm talking about the newest of the Blackwing Era collection.
Which, if you remember the last Blackwing Era, it was made to look like the first Blackwing, right? Like, the kind of like, the black with the darker ferrule and then the stripe. This one is kind of going in the other direction. It is a Blackwing Palomino and it basically looks like this Palomino HB that the late Sean Malone sent a few pencil bloggers about 10 years ago. Johnny, you got one of these too, right?
Johnny: No, I don't think so.
Andy: I, I thought you did. Well, he sent it, we had, there was like a little email chain going around before social media was like a really huge thing. And back when he was still sort of like engaging with the pencil community, and before Blackwing re-released the Blackwing, before Cal Cedar re-released the Blackwing. I can't. Yeah. And so he didn't have any sort of animosity toward them, but said he, and he loved the the Palomino HB and he basically took a blue capped Pal HB and sanded down the ends and put a Blackwing ferrule on it and made--we didn't call it a hackwing then, but it was the first hackwing that I've ever seen. And this one looks exactly like that. It's a, it looks like a Palomino, blue Palomino with a Blackwing cap on it.
Tim: I used those, like, almost exclusively for three years, like in the middle of our podcasts where I just wouldn't, I made tons of them. I still have them like all over the house. So it's like really bizarre to be holding one that's like official. And it
definitely
Andy: Go on, Tim. I want to hear what, like your thoughts are as a, as a big fan of the Pal HB. I want to hear what your thoughts are.
Tim: Yeah, no, I mean, it's cool. It's--my main thing is it's confusing because they just brought back the Palomino HB. Right? So they just brought that back. So are they getting rid of it again? And they're just doing this temporarily? Or is this just Hey, you know, that pencil we sell for $15? If you want that pencil, but with a different eraser, it's twice as expensive and here's the Era.
Andy: Yeah,
Tim: That's basically what it is.
Johnny: I thought it was a joke because I mean, the Palomino made people pay attention to them and made the Blackwing possible. And it's, you know, basically gone by the wayside. So they're like, I thought it was a joke to them and be like, Hey, guess what? F you, Palomino.
Tim: And it's the name. The name bugs me. I'm sounding more negative than I feel. Cause I actually really like it and I'm happy with it, but like the name also bugs me because it's like, it's like a car coming out that's called the Mustang Ford,
Andy: Yeah. I mean, they've dropped the Palomino Blackwing from the branding
Tim: The Camry Toyota. yeah.
Andy: Yeah. It reminds me, there's this, like, meme that's going around and, and I don't even know if it's real, but it's this like clothing label called Marc by Marc Jacobs for Jacobs by Mark Jacobs by Marc Jacobs, just all on this label.
And it's just, yeah. So it's the, I, I joke when I say it's the Palomino Blackwing Palomino. Cause we don't call it the Palomino Blackwing anymore. It's just Blackwing,
Tim: Yeah.
Andy: but we're just going to go ahead and slap Palomino back on it.
Tim: but I mean, it's, it is cool. And I've been using it for several days now and enjoying it just fine. I mean, it's not one that I, I mean, it's kind of nice. It's like getting a bunch of pre-hackwinged HBs, and then I don't have the, as much of the stock-up impulse on it because I had been making them for years before, but
Andy: You still have some yeah,
Tim: Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, I've got, yeah, I've got, I still have 80 HBs left.
Andy: Yeah. I think, I mean, it's a, to me it's a really, you know, if this were like years down the line and the Palomino had kind of gone by the wayside, it felt, it feels like it'd be a really nice tribute. But you know, you could still buy the eraser, buy Palominos at the store, and this is still pretty recent memory. So I, I feel weird about it because it, as you mentioned, Tim, and I think some pretty cynical person in the group said this too, is they're just looking for a way to sell, you know, a $12-a-dozen pencil for $30 a dozen.
Tim: Yeah, just put a different hat on it. It's such a huge jump from Hey, here's the first Blackwing ever that Walt Disney used and here's a pencil we made in the 2000s. You know, to jump--like, I thought they would do more, I mean, I was hoping maybe there'd be like a, I don't know, like a Van Dyke. I don't know if they have the, if they have the permission to do that kind of thing, they might not.
But other versions of the Blackwing. Just stick with the Blackwing. You don't have to--like you said, this is one for like maybe 20 years down the road. Again, I don't mind that much because I like it.
So I'm still gonna, I'm still gonna use them and love them, but it just was a really odd second choice for the Eras.
Johnny: Yeah. When the Era came out, did they sort of announce that it was going to be a series? I thought it was a one-off thing.
Tim: It seemed like it was going to be a recurring kind.
Andy: I wanna say, yeah, the way that they said it, it seemed like it was going to be, like there were going to be several, or more than one, sort of in that collection, but they really didn’t
Johnny: Oh, interesting.
Andy: commit to anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tim: Just like, Occasionally we'll revisit one kind of
Johnny: Occasionally we'll put out three different pencils in two weeks, like jeez,
Andy: Meanwhile, they're still assembling, like, pages over at Field Notes.
Johnny: Yeah. I think somebody who works there has to have an interesting sense of humor about completists to be like, Hey, you know what? Let's change the imprint. Let's, like, put a different eraser on it, right? Let's change the box. Let's really mess with these people. Cause, like, you would really just go so broke, chasing all their stuff down.
Andy: Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we, the three of us, kind of split a subscription or not a subscription, but a box, and you can get them in both the orange and the blue, which I think is, is like, a cool idea because you could get the original Palomino in the orange and the blue. But yeah.
Johnny: Yeah. I wonder why they did it that way instead of just doing one box of, you know, six of each.
Andy: Why do you think that would be?
Johnny: like that would be, that would
Andy: How do we get people to buy two dozen
Tim: So $60, instead of
Johnny: I don't know how many people who are going to buy them are only going to buy one box anyway. Like I need three for later, one for now and six for eBay.
Andy: It really does feel like this is these, this collection is for you know, the wonks, like the, like the people in our group and our listeners,
Tim: Oh
Andy: Does anybody, does anybody just out there who might pick up, you know, impulse-buy some fancy pencils from an art store, do they care that this is like an homage to a pencil they made 15 years ago? I dunno.
I do wish, I was saying to the group that they don't seem to be doing a tribute to the, like, foil stamps on it, but I really wish it had that California Republic logo on it. Like in tribute.
Johnny: Oh, that would have been awesome. You're right.
Andy: I miss that brand. I thought it was cool.
Johnny: Yeah. Did the original Blackwing have that on there? Or did it just say Palomino? I can't remember, even.
Andy: Um, gosh. I don't remember. I'll have to look at that. I have a couple old fleck Blackwings in my stash. Yeah. Oh, just, you know what, let me pull up my little box right now. Nope. It had the horse, but I don't believe it had the California Republic logo on it.
Johnny: Oh, that was classy. I loved that.
Andy: Yeah. So, yeah. Interesting, interesting new Era from Blackwing. We talked about the Independent Bookstore Day pencil last time. When I was distributing these, I also included one of those in it, even though I know y'all hate it, I thought I'd try it.
Tim: They're even worse in person, by the way. So, I mean, I appreciate the gesture
Andy: I've grown to like that.
Tim: Okay.
Andy: I've grown to like that really weird little like random gold stripe that's at the bottom that the base of it, about a third up. I don't know why. Just weird. Okay, cool.
So, I also want to mention, I think I talked about this a little bit in tools of the trade. I am coming up to the end of my Leuchtturm and we're getting--I'm in the part where the pages start getting perforated. So, coming up toward the end.
And it's been so long since I've started using this, and I have not really thought about using another sort of, like, daily notebook. I don't know what to do next! Do you have any suggestions, either of you?
Johnny: I'm in the same boat. And in my Amazon cart, I have a brighter colored one for spring. So I'm flirting with that or a Rhodiarama or one of those cool vintage French notebooks, because I found a seller on eBay that makes plastic covers for them. So I'm beside myself. I can't decide either. I might just wind up letting the kids pick it.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah I can't decide if I should go back to Confidance, which I usually do, or if I should stick with Leuchtturm or if I should look look up one of those other like brands Log & Jotter or Mark and, not Log & Jotter, Mark and Fold, or yeah, I can't decide yet if anybody has any suggestions. Yeah.
Johnny: Write notepads hardcover book. That's also on my possible list.
Andy: Oh yeah,that's true. That's a good point.
Tim: And you're specifically looking for a hardback book in that style.
Andy: Not necessarily, but that's kinda what I was thinking. I want it to be the A5 size so I was also thinking maybe one of those like large Field Notes, like the Roastery editions that are like much thinner, but A5.
Tim: Yeah. One, two things that popped into my head where one was the one I'm going to talk about later, which is a Maruman. It's a spiral notebook, but it's a really nice spiral notebook. Like a real, it's like a larger size when I say really nice. I just mean like it's shaped like the cheapo ones that you would find at the Walmart or whatever, but it's really nice quality and it lays really nice and flat and the paper's great. And they come in graph paper too. But the other one I was thinking about was the notebook that Blackwing put out with the Woody Guthrie pencils that like...
Andy: Oh yeah. Yeah. The...
Tim: Yeah, that thing's pretty cool. So.
Andy: Yeah. That's good to know.
Johnny: Are you gonna use any pens or just pencils?
Andy: I use a little bit of both. I think probably every day, mostly it's my pencil, but I tested out that fountain pen in here. Sometimes when I'm making a list, I pick up a fountain pen just to play with or I'll ball point. So probably a little, little bit of everything.
Johnny: The Clairefontaine book that Tim sent me when we did the...or those other guys did the thing on Indelible, where they brought each other pens. On Amazon, they're like nine bucks and they come in a lot of colors and they have amazing paper.
Tim: That's a good, I actually, another spiral one that I still love. And I've talked about it on the show, like a long time ago. It's Clairefontaine. It's a little larger spiral notebook that I bought at an art store. And I'll send you a link. They're like nine bucks, but they're in the papers. Incredible. I'll send you a link to it because these are...
Johnny: Yeah, the one that Tim sent me was hard to open, but I just broke the spine in a bunch of places and it flips open and it's solid. It's really fricking nice book.
Andy: Interesting. Okay.
Johnny: Okay. I think I just picked my next book. This was helpful. Thank you, Andy.
Andy: Thank you.
Tim: Now he's got his picked and you're still like trying to figure out what you're going to use again. So here's yeah,
Andy: Johnny goes through notebooks so much faster than I do like this. Like this, I started this notebook right after quarantine started last year and I am just now getting to page 233. So I go through ‘em pretty slowly.
Johnny: Started that one.
Andy: Yeah. Speaking of notebooks, there's a couple new Baron Figs that I wanted to mention. One of them is that we're making a really pretty Periwinkle Confidant now of their stock colors.
Johnny: Oh, that is a pretty color.
Andy: Yeah. I just got an email about that today. Light purple, kind of dusty, Periwinkle. Fun to say, fun to use. Um, it's a really good one. They made, and they introduced another interesting one that is one of their like structured notebooks. It is called and they don't call it a structure notebook. What do they call it? They call it a Guided Edition. So, this one is called a Deploy and it is a code notebook and I was kind of looking at it that it's basically has just some like tabular pages for you to write code into.
Johnny: Do people write code in notebooks?
Andy: Yeah. And so, and so that was my question. So I took it to the Baron Fig fanatics Facebook group, where I know that there's a bunch of people who are working code for their jobs, like John Morris and Mark Cohen. And I'm like, is this useful to anyone? And, oh, and Seth Macombs, who's a guy I’ve been talking to about mechanical keyboards, but it's just asking them all, is this something that people would use and everybody was just like, it's an interesting idea, but no. So I'll be really interested to see how Baron Fig kind of suggests people use that and also if people buy it because it's like, it's cool. It has a very cool, you know, kind of vector image spaceship on the cover. It looks kind of like a retro video game black Confidant. The pages are like pretty, just regular ruled. So it's probably pretty easy just to use it for regular stuff, but yeah, unlike all their other notebooks, this one doesn't feel to me like it has a really actual good use case. Yeah. But I would definitely be interested in hearing if anybody here yeah, actually like any listeners actually find use out of this. Cause I've just really I haven't seen much from Baron Fig lately. This is the first in a while.
Johnny: Yeah, that's true. So it's like the fall when they had the orange one, is that right?
Tim: Yeah. Yeah.
Andy: Yeah. That's, it's been awhile. Also I want to mention, I just bought on Etsy the other day, some t-shirts that Bob Truby from Brand Name Pencils is selling. He made, in the same sort of style as those Musgrave t-shirts, have the pencil designs on them. He's made some pencil, some t-shirt designs out of like old brands. Like he made a Futura shirt, he made a US Pencil Company Electro shirt. He has one of the Wallace Pencil Company, Black Oak, and a bunch of other ones. Super cool. If you want to get your t-shirt collection to be just, you know, different types of old pencils. Like you can totally make that happen.
Tim: Got seven days of the week now. Yeah.
Andy: Yes. Linking show notes to the Brand Name Pencils Etsy shop. And he has some stickers and stuff there too. He's kind of becoming a whole little enterprise. Yeah. So, yeah, the last thing I'll mention and I, you know, eventually I think it would be cool to have like a main topic about this, but I have sort of been getting into mechanical keyboards and I know we talked about this. Did we talk about this the last time?
Tim: Yeah, a little bit. And it was, Oh, god.
Andy: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I finally made a purchase. It is a this Chinese keyboard, this Chinese company called IQUNIX. And it has really cool colors. I picked out the, the kind of like switches, the keyboard switches that I want to use that are kind of click-y, but aren't too loud. So, next time we record, I should have a review of this. I should be getting this next week.
Tim: Cool. I'm interested. So I'd like to hear how you like it.
Andy: Yeah, just following up on that. I can't remember if last time I talked about how I discovered that there's a website where you can print your own key caps and essentially letting your design your own keyboard and still obsessed with that.
Tim: When you first started talking about it, you were like, I've heard that you can get really fussy and like change colors, all this crazy stuff, but I'm not really into that. And then the next thing I know you're like, so you can put your own font on top and then, what, dove in really quickly, which I respect because I probably would have to, I probably will too at some point
Andy: Yeah, that is, yeah, that is kind of the depth that I went to. There's a couple, I was talking about this guy now he comes to the San Francisco Stationary Meet Up out here. And he has this keyboard that is both ergonomic in that, like you, you know, the sides of the keyboard are separated and they're also ortholinear, which means that the keys are in a straight line instead of like slightly offset, like most keyboards.
Gotta type with your teeth. And then he also uses a layout called a Workman layout, which is more balanced between the left and the right side. Whereas the QWERTY is very like left-hand heavy. And I was just reading about that. And he's a guitar player so his wrists are just like ruined. And so apparently the ortholinear keys and the Workman layout has a better distribution and like less movement of your wrists so. And it’s also a really good way to prevent people from using your computer because nobody can use that keyboard. Yeah. So, yeah, as deep as I've gone, Seth has shown me that one can go much, much, much deeper. Cool. So that is it for my very long list of fresh points. How about you?
Tim: Yeah. Uh, the first one I want to bring up was some notebooks that I've kind of referenced a couple of times, but I got sent some notebooks from Michelle, with Maruman USA, which thank you, Michelle, for sending these. She just kind of reached out and said “I've got some notebooks wondering if you'd be interested, what kind of thing are you into?” And she just sent this like really awesome assortment of notebooks, which is really funny, like a super coincidence, cause the last episode we did, very pretty much my only fresh point was about that Hank Williams notebook. Remember about how, like I was looking for a certain kind of spiral notebook that Hank Williams used, not finding it. I'm still not finding it. I'm probably never going to find it, but I ended up going on Jet Pens and found a craft Brown spiral lined notebook that was made by Maruman. And so I ended up getting one. So I bought a ruled one and love it. It's like really, really great, really tight spiral. It lays perfectly flat. The cover is nice and stiff. But she also sent me a graph paper one. So it's a really nice 80-sheet 5mm squares. And so I've really been enjoying that, but they've also got some other really neat things in a smaller... are you familiar with the Mnemosyne company or like a Mnemosyne brand? So, that's made by Maruman. So, yeah, so the same company, and so you have made in Japan. There's another one that, I haven't messed with it much, but it's, I guess you could use it as like a blank planner where you just put in the dates or you can also use it as like meeting notes cause it has like sort of an organization to it. There are three sections, you title it, there's a date section or you can number, which is pretty neat. But they're really, really cool looking. This is one's got like a black plastic cover. And then one other, you know, stand out for me was also, I'm trying to get better about writing letters back to people this summer. It’s something that's a goal and she sent a, they call it the report pad, but it's just a lined pad that is, let's see, what size is this? It's in millimeters. So I have, no, I don't know what this means, but 257 by 182. So if you can tra...oh, B5. There it is, B5 is the size. But it's perfect paper. It's super smooth. It's fine, almost like a, you know, like Bible paper or whatever, like Library of America paper with lining on one side and has a line for the date at the top. And this is going to be my new letter writing paper that I'm really, really super excited about using that pad for. And then the last one from there that I was going to mention is the one I mentioned earlier that I've been using today and it's called the Croquis. By the way, a lot of these are available. She had mentioned cause the place she asked me to look at, to see what I was interested in are on JetPens. So you can find these on Jet Pens and really all reasonably priced. And I love buying things from JetPens, it's a good place. But this one is… you wouldn't call it a perfect bound. I mean, it has like the square binding on it, but it's basically just like a wraparound sticker on the binding. What do you call that? It's not stitched. I don't know, but you know what I'm talking about. But it's the, but the like the tape binding or whatever is super easy to manipulate. So it basically, it lays perfectly flat, which is really cool. Right. This, it lays perfectly flat and has really creamy, like a creamy yellowish paper. And I got it with blank sheets in it. So that's something that I thought about maybe using it as like a songwriting notebook, like a lyric thing, kind of keep at my desk down here at some point, once I worked through the ones that I've got here, but I'm just, I'm really impressed.
And again, she sent me these to let me take a look at them and so I'm not just saying it because I got them, but I really am impressed with a few of these a lot. And especially that big spiral notebook, that's by far my favorite and that's the next notebook I'm going to use? Cause I'm about to finish, um, I'm about to finish up my Leuchtturm that I use for like work stuff that I've had forever, you know? And so I think I'm gonna jump into the spiral notebook and see how it holds up. The only question I have about how it holds up is that every page is perforated. So I don't know, I haven't tested the strength of the perforation to see how well it'll hold up. yeah. So it, and it might not. It might be sturdy because the paper's a good quality and not like super duper thin on this one. So it might be, it's really well-bound with a tight spiral, like there’s just a ton of holes so it might be stronger than it looks. I don't know. So that's yeah. So that's that from Maruman USA there, you can follow them on Instagram. I think it's like @maruman.usa. Yeah, is that how you say it - Maruman?
Andy: It sounds like a Tolkien character.
Tim: Yeah. Man, that's, we're entering that world in our house right now. Oh, Pokemon. Henry's getting obsessed with Pokemon and I'm going...
Andy: Oh really?
Tim: And he, but it's amazing cause he's obsessed with it, but he's never played it. He just like has a book, like a encyclopedia of Pokemon that he like loves looking at. And he has like a few little toys. And so his end of the school year “made it out of second grade” gift is I'm going to get him the new Pokemon snap switch. Cause it seems perfect cause it's like nature photography. It's not like battling and it just seems a little more like relaxing. So we're going to try that out.
Andy: Yeah. Do you have the Pokemon Go app on your phone for him to play with?
Tim: Because Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like...
Andy: It’s like giving cocaine to a...
Tim: ...here’s a lifetime supply of Pop Rocks. Here you or like here's a, here's an endless bucket of fun dip.
Andy: Go wild, kid.
Tim: Um, so I'm a little, yeah.
Andy: Tim. Do you ever want your, yeah. Do you ever want to see your phone again? Do you ever want to have a charged battery?
Tim: Yes, exactly because it’ll get him outside, which I think is great, but I'm literally afraid that he's going to take my phone and just walk out into our neighborhood and just get himself lost. Yeah into traffic getting, not even, yeah, that would be bad, but just end up in somebody's backyard, end up trespassing or something. You know? Which I could totally see happening. Um, Yeah. So the only other thing I've got, and this is pretty cool, but, and this is also another connection to the Hank Williams stuff, but I was, I’m trying to think of how I ended up finding this. I think I was looking up stuff about the Bob Dylan archives that are opening up that are connected to that, like Blackwing that came out the, the blue pencil. And in it, I found out about something that has been part of Bob Dylan lore for a long time that I had never come across. But I found out that he is a pocket notebook user and has some famous pocket notebooks in his collection that people have discussed for years and have actually sold it at auctions and stuff. And that in the main ones, of which there are multiple, and there's a really cool picture that shows like all of his different pocket notebooks, but the main ones were the notebooks that he wrote the lyrics for the Tangled Up in Blue album. And so, so basically like Dylan's archives are becoming available through this, the center, for the first time and people are seeing, with these little glimpses, that he is so much more meticulous than people would have assumed. Like that this stuff isn't just coming out, that he was doing draft after draft, after draft, after draft, after draft.
Right. And he has this like tiny little handwriting in these little pocket spiral notebooks that he was just carrying around and writing all these songs. So there've been, I've heard references that they're gonna, that someday there will be a book that'll probably come out. That'll basically be like a facsimile kind of thing where it's all of the pages in the Tangled Up in Blue notebooks, kind of annotated, which would be super awesome to be able to see. And also there's lots of, you know, he writes lots of lyrics that don't make it into the song. And oh, the, the interesting connection to the Hank Williams thing, that's where I kinda got off track, but, is that his pocket notebook in that link that I sent you guys to that No Depression article. Did you notice that it has the same The Spiral logo on the front of it? It's the same, The Spiral. Yeah. Yeah. And he is a...
Andy: It's just teasing you. It's following you. Yeah.
Tim: ...you know, self-professed Hank Williams fanatic. And so I just had an intense burst of pleasure in my core, thinking about the possibility that he had sought out a notebook because he had seen the notebooks used by Hank Williams. That he was like, I need to find one just like Hank Williams had you know, I had that brief, I guarantee that's not true, but...
Andy: Oh, I see that
Tim: ...it was really fun for a second to be like, Oh, what if he was hunting this down just I'm trying to hunt it down. Like I'm just part of a tradition. The Spiral it's the same...
Andy: The Spiral, there it is.
Tim: ...icon or whatever.
Andy: Now I want to read it. If it's like, if there's a lyric, that's “tangled up in Perriwinkle.”
Tim: That would be a great, like he's ah, no, that doesn't sound right. Yeah. Tangled up in royal blue *singing*.... No, no tangled up in violet *singing*, man. I can't get this. I forget about it. It does say in that article that Tangled Up in Blue was originally called Dusty Blues and then it was called Blue Carnation One, which is... he made a good choice there. The revisions paid off, but this is a great, this is an unpublished lyric from his pocket notebook. So it says, “perhaps you've seen me walking on the highway in your mind, had some big ambitions, but they all broke, like glass, always done my duty and tried to be kind, it couldn't stop the progress of a nation going blind.” It's like, it's dang, that was his throwaway. That's it? That's the stuff where he's like...
Andy: Yeah. So again, this isn't good enough.
Tim: But that's very cool. So there's a, I encourage people if you're interested in Bob Dylan, just to Google Bob Dylan's pocket notebooks. And there's actually a lot out there of interesting pictures from his pocket notebooks and there's a little bit of lore behind a few of them that, yeah. Oh yeah.
Andy: Yeah. Sometimes I forget he's still alive. Like we talk about Bob Dylan he's you know, this genius...
Tim: Yeah, he's just so intensely private, you know.
Andy: ...he's still making pocket notebooks out there maybe.
Tim: It's wild and here's yeah, here's the, to be a good cover photo. I'll share it with you guys, but this is a picture of his, basically a stack of his pocket notebooks from the archives. So, here, this is great podcasting, but I'm going to paste...
Andy: It would be good cover art.
Tim: ...I’ll paste to let you guys see it, and then maybe if you're listening we can edit this out, but are you guys ready for this?
Andy: This is riveting, this is what the people want.
Tim: Get ready. There it is.
Andy: You're ready. Are you ready? *sing-song*
Tim: Oh, well it's there - Google's lying to you.
Andy: I don't see anything.
Tim: Loading. Okay.
Johnny: It's loading.
Andy: Reload. There it is. Oh yeah. Look at these guys.
Johnny: Yeah,
Andy: Yeah,
Johnny: That's pornographic
Andy: That one, that like little, really beat up leather one that just says notes and embossed - like debossed .
Tim: Then that's all, that's all I've got. So if you're a Bob Dylan fan, Google Bob Dylan pocket notebooks and there's a whole bunch of stationary goodness out there to wade through. Anybody got anything else you want to bring up before we close things up?
Andy: I don't think so, Johnny?
Johnny: No I can’t think of anything - Oh, Field Notes, where are you?
Tim: Yeah, I don’t think so.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: We'll be able to talk about them next time. So that's good.
Tim: I think they’re just going to be Kraft Brown.
Johnny: Well, they do have a weird tease on their website with this beautiful green and letterpress that says 50. It's like it wouldn't be like them to tease about that and for it to be nothing.
Tim: We’ll find out.
Tim: ...find out. Alright, Johnny, where can people find you on the internet?
Johnny: I am not going to sleep tonight. Oh, you could find me at pencilrevolution.com and on social media at the pencilution.
Andy: ...and I am on at andy.wtf or Twitter and Instagram at @AWelfle
Tim: You can find me on Instagram at @TimothyWasem and I'm on Twitter at @TimWasem. We have a very loving and generous group of people that are supporting us on Patreon. If you're interested in doing that, you can do so at erasable.us/patreon. We have some certain kinds of extra content that we give out. This year it included some really cool shirts - t-shirts that were designed with the help of our friend Ali Sera - and we also have some jokers who do a pen podcast for us. It's called Indelible that is released only to our Patreon subscribers. So there is extra content that is made available to you that's always kind of developing and could change over time, but that's a way for us to say thank you for supporting us at different levels. So if you're interested, that's erasable.us/patreon.
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Andy: Wait I missed that, can you back up?
Tim: Yeah, let me, let me start over. Let me take a nap and I'll go for the summit in the morning.
Johnny: We weren't recording.
Tim: Thank you so much to those of you supporting us on Patreon. There are multiple levels again, support starts from as little as what is it, $2 a month?
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: So, yeah.
Andy: $2, $5 and $10
Tim: So, thank you to our supporters who follow the podcast on Instagram and Twitter @ErasablePodcast, and you can join us on Facebook, like our page at facebook.com/erasablepodcast, or join our wonderful Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/erasable.
If you have a second go over to iTunes or to Overcast or whatever podcaster you use and rate and review the podcast. That helps us a great deal. There's not a whole lot we can do to promote things and that's one of the most effective ways to bump us up in the algorithm by giving us a little review love on iTunes. And also we need to - I think, I feel like we should do an episode one time where we like go some of those reviews and talk about some of our reviews on the episode, we haven't done that in a long time. Ooh, I haven't looked at them and it's...
Andy: I want a dramatic reading of the negative reviews.
Tim: It's probably been two years since I've looked.
Andy: *posh dramatic voice* “These guys talk too much about pencils.”
Tim: I need to, like - I hope we have some real bad ones.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: It'd be cool to get drunk and read some of the like mean ones like “You guys, you guys talk too much and I gotta fast forward it but for some reason I insist on listening anyway.”
Tim: Yeah like uh, Jimmy Kimmel or Fallon segment on like reading mean tweets or whatever - we could do that. But yeah, so review us on iTunes, recommend us on Overcast. The show notes for this episode will be at erasable.us/163.
Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you soon.