Johnny’s… uncomfortably sharpened pencil
Since our recording schedule and the Blackwing and Field Notes quarterly release schedule didn’t line up, we’re keeping it short today to talk about fresh points: zines, old city street guides, and an exciting announcement about the 8th issue of Plumbago Magazine.
Find a transcript of this episode here.
Your Hosts
Johnny Gamber
Pencil Revolution
@pencilution
Andy Welfle
Woodclinched
@awelfle
Tim Wasem
@TimWasem
(Download)
Episode 159 Transcript
Thank you to Marissa Concepcion, Susan Gray, Dianna Morganti, Donny Pearce and Erin Willard for their work to ensure this transcript is accurate and readable.
(Erasable intro and music)
Tim: Hello, and welcome to episode 159 of the Erasable Podcast. I am Tim Wasem on hosting duties tonight. We're going to be talking about just whatever's been going on in our, our fresh points. We're going to be talking about the pencils that don't yet exist that we were expecting to have by now. So, we're going to have a pretty exciting announcement about an upcoming issue of Plumbago.
So, but before we get to all that, my co-hosts Johnny and Andy, how are you guys doing?
Andy: Pretty good.
Johnny: Fantastic.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. How about you?
Tim: I'm doing great. So I am three weeks vaccinated. So that means I got my second dose. So now I am fully in the clear and Jane gets hers next week. So it's all very exciting.
Andy: Tim, do you want to share a little bit about what listeners just heard in the intro before the theme music?
Tim: Yeah. Dinnertime gets a little crazy at our house. I have a four-year old and a seven-year old. And usually what ends up happening is that my four-year-old daughter gets my son belly-laughing by just hamming it up, just saying ridiculous things. And so yeah, well, that's what you just heard. That was some form of the game “20 Questions” in which we were guessing things and it quickly fell apart and it was no longer animals we were trying to guess. It became just anything. And so what you heard was Henry telling us that he was thinking of a pencil and we had to guess what it was. And that was not coached. So there were no cue cards in my hands when he said “pencil.”
Andy: We should have a main topic sometime where we do “Pencil 20 Questions.”
Tim: Oh yeah. That'd be fun.
Johnny: That's a good idea. That'd be a good activity.
Tim: That’s actually a great idea. Yeah, we can just do that. Like once per episode.
Andy: That's true. Yeah. Just end every episode with it.
Tim: Take turns doing it, you know, whoever's hosting has to pick a pencil and then they play “20 Questions.” We'll just keep score over time, over all the episodes. And, at the end of the year, we have our totals and see how bad Johnny beat us.
Andy: Oh, gosh.
Tim: All right. What do you guys want to just dive right into it with Tools of the Trade?
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: Johnny, go for it.
Johnny: So I read a book that sounds hokey, but it wasn't hokey called “The Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer” that was published by the non-profit/magazine Poets & Writers, I think, right after the pandemic started. So, I'd pre-ordered it and it showed up in April and I didn't know what to do with it because, you know, COVID.
But I finally sat down and read it and it was really readable for a long book and full of a lot of very good information that you might not have if you didn't go to an MFA program, or if you drank your way through an MFA program. Neither of which I did, but yeah, there was a lot of good stuff in there about, you know, the industry, the whole, over and over again, “you're not going to make money doing this to be able to live on, so you have to be okay with that.” Okay, that's good. I feel like no one tells you that. So yeah, I don't know if the paperback’s out yet, but it wasn't a super expensive book and it was very well-made. It was very pleasing and it was written by a husband and wife who seemed to like each other a lot, which is not always true of marriage.
And that made the book a lot more, I don't know, cuddly. And, on the other end of the spectrum, I finally read Michael Ondaatje’s latest novel, called “Warlight,” which one reviewer called a non-romantic B-side to the “English Patient,” because it's set right after World War II.
A lot of folks talk about the way that Ondaatje reveals information about characters in his novels in a really, really controlled way. And this was the perfect example of it. If I talk about it too much, I'm going to blow it so if you like Michael Ondaatje at all, definitely pick up “Warlight.” And that's really all I've been up to lately, aside from reading zines and blogs and stuff. Yeah, making zines too. And I'm writing with a long-pointed Paper Mate Mirado Classic that I sent a picture of to Andy and Tim that's got an inch and a half of collar cause it smells really good. And I'm using my brand new Leuchtturm1917 BuJo in Pacific, which is not green and not blue so I'm just going to go with Pacific. It's really pretty. It's a very dark teal that leans heavily toward the green. It's very, very sweet.
Tim: Nice. Pencil showing some skin.
Andy: Yeah, somebody circumcised that pencil.
Tim: That's like a low-cut pencil, I guess we call it. The v-neck.
Andy: That pencil has a deep V.
Tim: Deep V pencils. Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny: The “shave your chest” pencil.
Tim: Andy, what about you?
Andy: Ooh get that picture out of my mind. I don't know, the last couple of weeks, I feel like I've just been really busy with a lot of random projects I've been trying to take on and other things to do. I just finished, at the end of last week, a 12-hour workshop with Michael Metts, my coauthor and coworkshop presenter. Whenever that happens, my brain is just dead on days when I'm not giving that workshop so I haven't really dug into a good novel or a good book. Yeah, I've been watching just a lot of random “House Hunters” renovations and the new season of “Fixer Upper,” which is that show that Chip and Joanna Gaines do on their new home, the Magnolia Network, on Discovery+. So I've been watching that. There's a really, really good show on Netflix that they're into the season 2 of or the second collection of, and I completely missed the first collection. It's called “Taco Chronicles” and it's one of those really kind of beautiful food shows that they do kind of like “Street Food” where there's just really gorgeous shots and they talk to a few people who are experts in the field and it's all about different kinds of tacos. So we just watched the first one and it was about al pastor tacos. Oh yeah, Johnny, there's a DP.
Johnny: I’m pulling it down.
Andy: You just won yourself an episode, an album cover.
Johnny: Alright, delete that.
Andy: So, love al pastor tacos. They went to Mexico City and talked to a bunch of taco people. It's all in Spanish. It's really good.
Tim: So, you know, it's good, talking to the real thing. Their al pastor tacos are the greatest.
Andy: Oh, it's so good.
Johnny: So do you guys do Taco Tuesday at your homes?
Tim: Yes.
Andy: No, I do not.
Johnny: If we ever skip it, my kids totally get pissed.
Tim: Yeah. We actually pulled off a switch and last week did burrito bowls instead of tacos. And that was really delicious and fun, but yeah, we're quickly moving back to tacos for tomorrow night.
Andy: That sounds really good. So then I started watching that. Really good if you just want beautiful, for lack of a better word, food porn. Much of it is probably in a different language so you're probably gonna have to read it if you speak English. “Taco Chronicles” is really good. The other thing I'm just catching up on is a series of zines called “Cat Party” by Katie Haegele. She is pretty attached to Microcosm magazine, which produces a lot of zines and actual real-life books too. She wrote a book for them called “Cats I've Known” and this zine is sort of an intro to that book. And she just writes little vignettes about cats that she's known, like the cat that belonged to a nun that she had in grade school that sometimes came to school and Shot Cat and her friend's cat and her cat and just really good little vignettes. And, as with really great writers and that sort of stuff, it's kind of a story about her life too. So, a really good series and that's issue one. And then the next few issues are just specific stories around cats. Sometimes they’re comics. Sometimes it's a memoir style, but just a really good book if you like cats and, I'd argue, even if you don't like cats, *cough* Johnny *cough*. It's a pretty good read.
Check out these titles by Johnny Gamber: “Cats That Have Made Me Sneeze,” “Cats That Have Swelled My Eyes Shut”...
Johnny: Yeah, they’re big books.
Andy: We have to get you one of those genetically engineered cats, Johnny, that, you know, have an awful personality because they're genetically engineered, but don't have allergens in them.
Johnny: Oh, that sounds like a nightmare.
Andy: They're like $6,000.
Tim: Sounds like the beginning of a Stephen King novel or something.
Andy: GMO cats! And I am writing with one of Johnny's favorite pencils, a Tombow 2558. If you remember, from two episodes ago, it was on his “pencils I wish I loved but don't” list. It's the cat of pencils.
Johnny: I'm not allergic to that.
Andy: And I'm writing in my Leuchtturm blue notebook, but this is the same one that I've been using since one year ago today. Which, yeah. We talked about this before. I go through notebooks pretty slowly. Especially in COVID times, I don't leave the house or like carry notes with me or anything really.
So this is mostly just sort of like work and project to do lists with like a little bit of . . . I start at the beginning. This is something that I'll tease for the next disposable magazine, if you are a Patreon supporter. I talk a little bit about this. I started trying to keep a COVID journal in here.
I wrote, like every day I wrote down the infection rates and the death rates for the U S and the world, but it rapidly got too depressing. So now it's just like work stuff. Yeah, that's me. So let's hear it one year anniversary toast to the notebook.
Tim: There you go.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah, glass of water. Cheers!
Andy: Yeah, Tim, how about you? What are your tools of the trade?
Tim: Well, I have been listening to a ton of Band of Joy, which is one of Robert Plant's post Zeppelin bands. I think I had read something . . . it was like the original name of Led Zeppelin, or it was the name of Robert Plant's first band before they became Led Zeppelin.
And so he brought the name back and has a new band. That's kind of, it's just full of like A+ session musicians from Nashville. Buddy Miller is probably the most famous. He's played for everybody. He's been on Lucinda Williams, and I think he's been on some Dylan albums, but yeah, so there's an album they made called Band of Joy.
And it's excellent. If you like Zeplin, but also like the stuff that he did with like Alison Krauss, that was like a little more acoustic and kind of laid back. So it's kind of a balance between. Sometimes it does sort of sound like it could have been as a Zeppelin song and there's some really good concerts online too, on, on YouTube.
They played at the, what was it called? It's like the Artist’s Nook, or something. I don’tknow. It was some . . . if you look them up and look for a full show there, they're very entertaining. Patty Griffin, if you know her, she's the backup singer or co-singer. And then reading, I've been reading, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which I had never read before, and I'm considering teaching it next year. It’s an absolutely wonderful book.
Andy: Such a good book.
Tim: If you haven't heard of it by now. I mean, most people have. It’s such a, like Andy, you were saying it's a classic. I mean, it definitely is. But it's a mystery novel about the death of a dog in a neighborhood. And it's told from the perspective of the 15 year old boy with Asperger's, who finds him and decides that he's going to solve this crime.
And through him trying to figure out what happened to the dog, all this kind of stuff. It’s really awesome how he lets you know a little bit more about himself through the story of how he's trying to get information about the dog. And so you're kind of gathering who he is and gathering what's happening in his family life.
It's a beautiful book.
Andy: And you follow the thought process of this boy who has Asperger's too. So I feel like you learn a little bit more. I mean, if you have somebody with Asperger's in your life and you just are having trouble like empathizing with them or understanding how they think, I think it helps with that really well.
Tim: Yeah, as a teacher, it was a pretty profound book to read because we have students who, of course, are on the spectrum and sometimes it is kind of hard to just imagine what's going on in that barrier between you and them, that sometimes pops up. So it is very helpful.
I'm assuming that it's accurate. I'm sure he did his research, but yeah, it's a fantastic book by Mark Haddon. And for the only really new thing we've watched recently, we watched the new Disney movie Raya, and the Last Dragon. Which is their new animated movie.
And it was, it was very good. It was very entertaining. I think we need to watch it again. And we were distracted during it. We had been playing games and stuff, but of course, unbelievable animation. It just makes your jaw drop. And it's got that classic mix of jokes the kids won't get and then stuff that the kids will laugh their heads off at.
So, yeah, definitely recommend it. It's a little expensive, but stimulus money rented Raya, and the Last Dragon, from Disney+. I am writing with one of my Hardest Job in the World Blackwings (collaboration with John Dickerson), and I just started a new pocket notebook yesterday and I've got the Field Notes Gemini Seven edition, the space travel ones.
Cause I've been watching that For All Mankind show and it just looked like the perfect choice for right now. All right. So let's get into our Fresh Point slash main topic of the night. Johnny get us started.
Johnny: So, I mentioned that I have a new bullet journal, which means that I finished my previous one, which was the official Bullet Journal 2.0, which has that super thick, basically smooth cardstock paper. And I really liked it. And then by the end, I freaking hated it, because every ink I used on it looked washed out.
I had to use softer pencils than I really wanted to use to get it to make a good mark.. And then as soon as I got this one, I'm like, “Oh, that pink ink that I bought from J. Herbin is not too washed out to possibly see, and they should never sell it. It was just the paper. And that all of my nice vintage # 2’s are singing again.”
So, I don't even know if they got any more in. I think they underestimated people's interests, but, you know, don't go out of your way unless you use a lot of markers, which is what they designed it for, in fairness. The only other fresh point I have is that I finished the most recent Pencil Revolution zine that was about walking.
And it was a lot of fun, but I had to cut out a lot of stuff. So I don't know what to do about that. Like I have three walking tattoos. I had to cut that part out and,
Andy: Why did you cut it may I ask? Just to make it not as thick?
Johnny: yeah, in the last one someone mentioned it was short, so I made this one a lot longer. And then, I had laid it out for 20 pages.
And then at the end it was like, “no, like I have to start all over or cut this. So it had to go, because I did this one differently in that it was all paper. So every time I want more, I have to copy them, which is time consuming. But my printer copies faster than it prints, if that makes sense. Because you know, it feeds itself back in like, “Oh my God, I can't believe you just made one!” But yeah, for folks who are on our Patreon, I think we're going to use the same color for the covers, which is . . .
Andy: That's a good color.
Johnny: If you look up,
Tim: Looks great. I got mine today.
Johnny: green in the dictionary.
Andy: I got mine too.
Johnny: Oh, good. And I forgot to send you guys the little tiny notebooks that I made to go with them. So, there are
Andy: I can't believe I paid for this.
Tim: I'm hanging up the call.
Johnny: I've been like all over the place, trying to make cool notebooks for walking, but I wanted to make ones that people could make out of stuff they had laying around at home already.
Andy: Like La Croix boxes.
Johnny: yeah, I used like cereal boxes and Perrier boxes in the back of these. And I mean, I cheated cause I have cardstock laying around because I do, but anyway, I didn't want to sell them, but I didn't want to make a hundred of them.
So I just made a couple of dozen, but then they ran out quickly. Cause I miscounted. No, I had to make more, but I don't think I want to do it again. It's really a pain in my butt, but anyway, they're selling quick and I'm almost out of those little notebooks. So knock yourself out. I thought this was my favorite cover by far. I got to use a lot of cool maps.
Tim: I think it looks great.
Johnny: I thank you, yeah. That's that's all I've got tonight. Yeah.
Tim: Andy, how about you?
Andy: Let's see, I guess I have some followup. Last episode, we talked about the launch of our 2020 (2021) t-shirt campaign. And that ran for two weeks and it concluded today. And no last night. So the way that that bonfire works, they are the store that we're selling them through. They create like two week campaigns so they can print in batches and our main campaign that we ran for two weeks and ended last night with like several dozen t-shirts in it.
So it ended and then today, somebody. Placed an order, which launched a new campaign. So there's another two week campaign going if you missed out the first time around. And I think that that would probably be, probably deliver mid April So if you are a Patreon subscriber or a supporter at $10 a month or more you are getting one of these automatically. I just placed a bulk quarter for those today.
And I should get them toward the end of the month. And then after a few days, get them sent out to you. So, yeah, we have a bunch of t-shirts being made and they're awesome. And I'm sorta surprised. The two main colors that we had was a kind of like a heather gray and then there was a gold, like a marigold gold, and the gold was much more popular than the gray.
I was surprised about that. So, yeah. I mean, it's a really lovely color, so, Yeah. So thanks again to Ali Serra for designing this for us. Just kind of on a lark, I saw it in one of his notebooks when he was Instagramming about the episode that he was on. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, can we turn that into a design?”
So, thanks for being game about that, Ali. Cool. So that's, that's t-shirts people should be getting them. If you ordered through bonfire or if you ordered through Patreon or whatever - probably late March or early April - you should get those. I was going to mention, I had in the fresh points, but I guess we talked about this already about how we should know something about the Blackwing two 23 by now, but apparently we don't.
Johnny: What's it been, three weeks?
Andy: Three weeks. Yeah. So Chris Jones in the group posted about how we still don't know anything. And Dave Tubman said they're probably furiously rewriting the backstory for them since we pretty quickly guessed that it was about Woody Guthrie.
Tim: And ends up being about the photographer who took that picture.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's pretty funny, but they actually had another kind of collab that has come to light since then, which is the ScrawlrBox pencil. Did you guys see this?
Johnny: Oh, I saw it on Facebook.
Andy: So the scrawlrbox is one of those, it's kind of like art snacks or BarkBox or whatever, like those mail subscription boxes that you get.
This one is for like art stuff or no, this one is about writing stuff right, Johnny?
Johnny: Oh, I have no idea
Andy: Tim. Okay.
Johnny: looked at the
Tim: haven't seen this.
Andy: Yeah. I don't know much about it. I haven't ever really paid attention to it, but they did a custom Blackwing and it is really lovely. It's like a teal color. It's a little bit bluer than like the turquoise InkJoy pen.
But not much the erasers teal it's called ScrawlrBox. How do we spell this? S C R A W L R B O X .uk. Okay. It's a British thing and it's okay. It is, it is art supplies. It's the monthly art supplies subscription. So, if you are a subscriber, you get one of these you get one of these, these pencils.
I think that you can also buy these individually. It's £17 and the January 21 ScrawlrBox comes with some markers; it comes with one of these Blackwings. And it's just like, if you like that kind of teal color I would say it's very Pacific blue Johnny. It has a fade from like dark Oh, dark turquoise, the bottom toward the point with some like kind of scribbling marks on it, which is their brand up to kind of a lighter turquoise. I’ll have a link in show notes in case anybody wants to see what this baby looks like.
Tim: When you said £17, I didn't realize that was for the whole box. And I was like for one Blackwing?
Andy: Those are expensive! Now these £17 Sterling for a ScrawlrBox, which includes some markers. And it doesn't seem like you can get them in boxed dozens, at least not yet, but it's just very lovely. It's one of, I think it's not too fancy and hipster. I guess, and it has a really beautiful turquoise eraser, which I'm sure that hackwingers will really like.
Tim: yeah.
Andy: Yeah. The hackwingers.
Johnny: Hackwingers are like, that's the thing.
Andy: Yeah. It is a thing
Johnny: Dang old hack winger.
Andy: I tell you what my aunt got.
Tim: If that doesn’t get sold by the dozens, then those heckwingers are going to have a hard time. That’s going to be an expensive hackwing.
Andy: I mean, with, with the quantity that that ScrawlrBox must have had to order, I can't imagine that they wouldn't sell them in dozens, but who knows?
Tim: Just whet everybody's appetite with the box and they'd be like, Oh, and by the way, we sell them.
Andy: Like who knows like that ‘montclair’ or ‘moncler’, or however you say it for you, you know, those custom additions are just impossible to find.
So you know that there's just dozens and dozens of boxes sitting around somewhere in some warehouse. Yeah. So that's a cool custom Blackwing. If you haven't had enough custom Blackwings that's still a way to.
Tim: We're struggling to make it until the Blackwing 223 is released.
Andy: Yeah. If you need your fix.
Johnny: Never mind. We're just gonna do it for summer.
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: I made my own.
Andy: Yeah. So check that out. I also wanna mention something really cool, Johnny, that you sent me.
You? Yeah, just came in the mail kind of by surprise the other day. It's called a street index guide of Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is my hometown. Which is funny because, Johnny, you found it in like an antique store in, in Baltimore?
Johnny: Oh, no, I found it on eBay.
Andy: On eBay. Oh, wow.
Johnny: And I don't remember what I was looking at when it came up.
Andy: It just came across.
Johnny: Probably vintage pencils or something like that.
Andy: Yeah. It's very cool. I have no idea how old it is, but I think it's probably pre-1940, because that's when my parents' house was built. And the block that my parents' house is on is not referenced in this. So, it's basically I think I mentioned this on Facebook.
It's almost like a city map without the actual map. It just has a list of streets. And it has a list of cross streets of that street and then like what, what hundred the addresses. So, you know, like, Fairfield Avenue, it has 500 Superior Street, 600 Greeley Street, 700 Main Street, which is like the hundreds mark near that cross street.
And I cannot figure out what you would have used this for.
Tim: Like a walking guide that doesn't have all the, like, if you're walking through Fort Wayne or trying to find your way around, but it doesn't have like crazy amount of detail. It's just kind of like a
Andy: Nope, the street names and their cross streets. And the hundred block that that cross street is. We've speculated that it could be like a guide for cab drivers. So they know if somebody is like, ‘Oh, I live in the corner of Washington and Calhoun.’
Tim: So you're saying that it doesn't have any sort of like direction, but it's just a list. Okay.
Andy: Just a list. Yeah. Somebody else, somebody else thought maybe it was for like door to door salespeople, you know, if there, if they were going around making sure they hit each block. That's a, that's an interesting guess, but
Tim: was for all the like violent gangs in Fort Wayne...
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: ...negotiating their turf and they're like, ‘ah, we got Franklin and 4th.’
Andy: Split it up, split this up. Yeah. It's a really interesting, just old document. It goes really well with what I've been looking at and thinking about lately with my great-grandfather's notebook, it's kind of ish maybe around that same time period. So thank you Johnny for sending that. Yeah, that's really fun. Last thing I'll mention is talking about zines. My issue 2 of 404 magazine is out, which was my zine where I take examples of UX writing from various apps and websites and stuff. And I kind of turned them into poetry. And this one, I promised myself that I'm not going to get too fancy with this zine is just going to be just like a little fun project.
I can do my printer, but I do get a little fancy with it. I really, yeah,
Tim: He can’t help himself, people. He's just a little fancy
Andy: Can't do it.
Johnny: The cover of this is amazing.
Andy: I really, really wanted to figure out how to like print green ink on black paper to sort of simulate a green-screen. Cause I really wanted to use a graphic from an old Apple II era Oregon trail, like, something that glows and I was looking into rubber stamps, like rubber stamp ink that I could.
Ink onto a black paper, but nothing is quite opaque enough. I think we talked about this a little bit here. I talked about it a lot in the RSVP group because that's just full of people who know about rubber stamp ink. So I couldn't figure out how to do that. And eventually what I landed on was I'm just going to take a bright lime green Nina paper and just print all black on it.
Like. Overlay, except for like the spots, you know, that I want to show, so almost like a negative. So the trouble is I can't do this on my printer because yeah. It just eats through the ink and I don't think it lays it down consistently enough. And I also wanted to do end to end, like, to the bleed, which my printer won't do.
So, our good friend, Ed Kemp who is a zine extraordinaire suggested this website called Docucopies, which is sorta like a Kinkos, but online and for a pretty small amount. Relatively speaking, I got a bunch of copies of these printed on like it's basically one color on one side of cardstock with a special paper.
And it was like 80 bucks for 150 sheets, which each sheet has two copies on it. Cause it's a half sheet zine, quarter sheet zine. So 80 bucks for 300, basically 300 copies for the cover stock. And that was, that was good. So, yeah. Look for this. Also what I did was I, the middle spread, I printed that on also in green paper.
And I, I made that about like, with some original poetry, I rewrote some Emily Dickinson, poem poems. And I tried to write an Elegy in the style of John Donne for a basically if, if you had a hard drive that lost your data.
Tim: Hmm.
Johnny: Yeah.
Andy: It's very bad. I did not do a good job, but that's kind of the point. So, yeah, so 404.computer, if you want to order a copy of the zine. And those are my fresh points,
Tim: Andy, how many URLs do you have control of?
Andy: Oh, gosh, I don't know. I don't know at this point. For a while, every time we recorded an episode of dot grid, I bought a funny domain for like a 1.50 for a year to go with it, and I since have stopped doing that. And I yeah, so nowadays it's, I think so to plumbago.XYZ and 404.computer aren't hosted domains.
They just forward to like a separate, like a special page on the erasable site or on our site. Or my site, but like, yeah. I don't know.
Tim: I was just cause I remember in our early days I just remember there being like a spurt where you had talked about like several, several in a row that you had bought. So I was wondering if that's just something you do .. bought 200 domains...
Andy: I, if I can get a good. Yeah, like often Namecheap will have some of the weird domains for cheap. So you can get like a dot-whiskey or dot-ninja domain, and you know, you buy it for a year for like $1.50. And then the next year it's full price. It's like 40 bucks. So sometimes I'll compulsively buy it for $1.50 or whatever.
And when I see that I'm not going to use it for anything I just let it expire, But I've done. I've done some good ones. I have andy.coffee, which was kind of an impulse buy, but I was like, I like this, I'm going to use this. And I have Andy.WTF, which is my sort of like personal site. And I think that's a fun buy.
I don't even know why, how I came up with 404.computer, but I like it.
Tim: Like all my favorites. Yeah.
Andy: Yeah, there's some good ones. There's a web comic artist named Jeff Jack who writes this comic called crap!? What's it called? Yeah, it's a pretty famous web comic. I'm just drawing a blank right now, but he owns all these like weird domains that just forward to his website. So he'll tweet like new comics app.
And then it says like fart.tennis or whatever, which is his domain name there. I think one of his domain is asked. pizza. So I take inspiration from him.
Johnny: Oh, geez.
Tim: That's
Andy: I wish there was a dot pencil domain. Cause we would go a little wacko.
Tim: Oh man,
Johnny: Oh yeah.
Tim: Saturate the market, you know, you're like,
Andy: new original episode, but fart, fart dot pencil,
Tim: Erasable.159.pencil.
Andy: Circumcise that pencil. All right. That is it for me for Fresh Points? How about you, Tim?
Tim: Goodnight guys.
Andy: Tim has the most exciting update of them all.
Tim: Yeah. So we've, let's just keep talking about zines and their intersection with the things we love. And yeah. So we're going to talk about the newest upcoming issue of Plumbago, which is Plumbago eight. Andy's amazing handiwork and Harry just made so many great issues of that.
And I suggested an idea for this next issue that we're going to go with. And so I'll be
Andy: We were like, that's a great idea. You have to do it.
Tim: And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah. Yes. But I'm, I'm super excited and it is the music issue.
Andy: Yay.
Tim: We've got like ideas kind of floating around. So I think there are a couple of different things it could turn into, but we know that at the core of it will be recorded music.
And so it's going to be the Zine portion of it will be, you know, at least in my head, almost like liner notes, like a book of liner notes. And we're planning to try to make a physical CD with a cover and everything that is made up of original songs or compositions or spoken word over music or whatever it is that you do music from our listeners and from our readers.
So, I'm really excited about it. We're going to, we're going to be working within. I mean, I don't know about the booklet yet, but within the length of one CD. So if you remember what those are one compact disc that holds, you know, roughly 80 minutes of music. So it will be some kind of selection process, but we were just really excited to hear what you guys come up with.
There is a see Andy, how did they find out about it? I mean, I know there's the email,
Andy: Yeah, I sent a big email just today posted in the group something about it.
Tim: Is there a URL?
Andy: Yeah, Plumbago.xyz is another domain that we own.
Tim: Well, well, I was just there. I didn't think so, but...
Andy: Yeah. I don't think I have that updated yet.
Tim: Yeah. Yeah. So you can be, you can contact us through the website@plumbago.xyz and pitch your idea. I mean, you know, whatever, whatever you're dreaming up.
Andy: Okay. So if you're a songwriter or a singer or whatever and you have, or once you write a song, that's sort of, Plumbago-related, right? Like something that has to do with pencils or stationary or pens or analog pursuits of creativity, like definitely get in touch with Tim and talk about that.
Cause we want to like have maybe a little interview with you and include your music in our, our album or whatever. But also if you're not a songwriter, if you're just, you know, a regular person like me, who is definitely not a songwriter and you, but you love music and you want to write about music or comment about music or.
Illustrate about music or whatever. Still submit. Cause I think that we'll probably still have regular Plumbago content about music kind of around this big, main feature. So.
Tim: Yeah. And those of you who do make some music, and we've heard from several people who are interested in both writing songs and composing, like instrumental things, and you want to write a piece. To pair with your music, like a short written piece, that'll kind of set up the song that you wrote as much as you'd like to.
Or if you're just not interested in doing that, that's totally fine. We are also considering, or we're also open to, hearing from those of you who might be, you know, interested in being a sort of liner note writer for one of these other people who've written a song. So if somebody submits a song, it's like, I don't wanna write anything.
Here's the song. We can share that song with you ahead of time. And then you could do a little writeup for us to pair with it and it could just be whatever you like. We just, I mean, with it being a music issue out of concern that it shouldn't just be audio, right? That wouldn't make any sense.
We've opened it very wide open. So as long as it's music related and how it conjoins with analog pursuits, then we really want to hear what you come up with. Okay. I'm working on my, as the joke goes in our email, I'm working on my Hamilton-style musical about So,
Andy: I wrote couple stanzas of what that might,
Tim: Oh yeah.
Andy: might sound like. May I read that to you?
Tim: Please do. Please do.
Andy: Let me load my messages up a little bit. My name is Nicholas Jacque Conte, Catch me in the patisserie, eaten Croissante, check out my pencils. Imma flaunt they. Use my hardness scale from Paris to Vermonte.
Tim: I think that's the seed for the whole thing. Now you just have like two and a half hours that you need to fill.
Andy: Just that Harry had some good had some good pencil-related American pie-related stuff.
Tim: That was good, that.
Andy: But I think the best was by, by shreds of wood and graphite used my Blackwing now it's lacking and it no longer writes and then good old days have come and now they've gone by, so I'll drop it in the jar and then cry, drop it in the jar and then cry.
Tim: That's fantastic.
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: I had another one, which is this one's much more of a deep cut, but like my first first idea that pops in my head is that I was listening to a lot of Big Star, which is like, You know, one of those bands that never made it, but everybody loves him.
You know, we're just kind of an underground influence on a ton of people out there. And they have a song called the ballad of El goodo and I was like, Oh man, the ballad of El Casco would be so great. Write a song about trying to find and afford this crazy sharpener and like, but, despite these jokes we're making, we are not expecting us to be like a Weird Al album, you know, like parody up.
So I mean, it it's, it's very
Andy: We want your original music folks. Although I would totally do a feature where we just write the lyrics from like pencil parodies within them within the zine.
Tim: Yeah, totally, totally. And don't feel like you just let the song be whatever it is that you want to write. Don't feel like every line of the song needs to be about stationary. Every line of the song needs to be about one thing. I mean, it could be a storytelling song that just mentions a few things or, or describes things in a way that would kind of hit home with a Plumbago reader or Erasable listener.
Andy: Yeah. So we're trying to get this the deadline for this is June 1st, but we really That's kind of like the deadline for having to finish pieces. Right. Then you can start editing. So if we would really love to hear from you, if you have a seed of an idea or you want to talk it through to figure out how to develop it more.
Cause you know, I think that generally makes for a stronger submission. So that's the case. Please try to get that to us earlier than June 1st because yeah, cause we'll wanna help you walk through it.
Tim: Yeah. So if you email us your pitch, you can include an MP3, like a sort of demo recording using your phone or whatever. It doesn't need to be the final one that we use. Or you can just pitch the idea in writing and say, you know, this is this at this point. And just say, this is the style of music.
I'm thinking I'm going to write a song that might be something like this, and the conversation will start and we'll go from there. And especially those of you who are considering doing instrumental music, It definitely would be great to hear your thoughts in writing so that we can even work back and forth with how to present that and how to communicate that idea in the, in the written portion of your of your submission. I'm very excited. I'm super duper excited. I know somebody who's already, I have one song already submitted. I'll tell you, I'll tell you guys about off, off Mic. It's not me. But anyways, I'm super excited. So Plumbago 8 can be hitting your mailboxes in June. The music issue, Plumbago the mixtape.
Andy: New mixtape dropping. New Plumbago drops.
Tim: Yeah, put it on SoundCloud. There we go. Yeah, that's all I got. That's that's the big one. And that's how I was just looking forward to sharing that. So it's been good to talk to you guys. It feels like it's been longer than two weeks.
Johnny: It does.
Andy: A lot's happened since then. Except for there being a new Blackwing.
Tim: Yeah. Thanks. That's why it feels like it's been so long because we've been waiting. So.
Andy: Just waiting.
Johnny: And Field Notes should be dropping pretty soon.
Andy: Yeah, that too
Johnny: 50.
Andy: Originally, when we were like, Hey, let's just do fresh points because we're surely going to have, you know, newField Notes and a new Blackwing by then, but we don't and don't call me Shirley.
Tim: Yeah. When we talked about the, or we didn't talk about the Field Notes thing, where they had reached out to subscribers and asking about like your favorite editions, like what that all means, like, what does that,
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: Have not been able to answer that because I can't pick ten.
Tim: I don't. I'm so curious to see what they do. It's definitely not going to be something as basic as just giving you a mixed pack with four different notebooks or three different notebooks in it. I'm guessing they're gonna do something a little--I wouldn't be opposed to that, that actually sounds pretty great. If you got like, you know, the three most beloved ones reprinted and put into a pack, or if they jumbled them all up, you know, like that.
Andy: Oh yeah.
Tim: That'd be incredible if it was like the top 10, and they had--well, that doesn’t make sense, because multiples of three, but,
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: But yeah, that'd be, that'd be actually really amazing, and it would definitely poke a hole in the market for collecting some of those.
Johnny: (laughing) I like that idea.
Tim: Pop the bubble.
Andy: Yeah.
Cool.
Tim: Cool. Well, you guys want to wrap it up?
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Keep it a shorty.
Tim: I think hopefully we'll have a couple of things to talk about, some extra-exciting things to talk about in the next ones. We'll just see. But yeah. So let’s tell people where they can find you on the internet. Andy, why don’t you start us out.
Andy: Yeah, I'm at andy.wtf. As we discussed.
Tim: or plumbago.XYZ, or andy.coffee or
Andy: 404.computer or erasable.us, whatever.
Tim: or fart.ninja.
Andy: I am andy.wtf and on Twitter and Instagram as @awelfle. How about you Johnny?
Johnny: I am at only one URL, pencilrevolution.com, and on social media @pencilution. And you can buy my magazines at etsy.com/shop/pencilrevolution.
Tim: I am Tim Wasem. You can follow me on Twitter, @TimWasem. I'm on Instagram, @TimothyWasem. And you can support the erasable podcast by signing up at erasable.us/patreon, where you can support us at many different levels. We have multiple levels, all of which will get you some extra content, some perks. We do a pen podcast just for our Patreon supporters--it's called Indelible--that you'll get access to; we usually do about one a month or so. And then we try to also offer special kind of swag, like these t-shirts that we were talking about earlier. So if you're a supporter at $10 then you will get something sent to you each year, something special that we've put together, sometimes with the help of our community.
So, if you also support us at that Producer level, you can get your name read on the show. Here we go: Adam Perbola, Alex Jonathan Brown, Ali Serra, Allison Zapeda, Andre Prevost, Andre Torres, Andrew Swish, Ann Sipe, Bill Black, Bill Clough, Bob Oswald, Bobby Letsinger, Chris Jones, Chris L, Chris Metskis, Dave, Dave MacDonald, Dave Tubman, Diana Oakley, Donny Pearce, Erin Willard, Fourth Letter, Hans Nudleman, Harry Marks, Hunter McCain, Jacqueline Myers, Jason Dill, Jason Santa Maria, Jay Newton. Jemellia Hilfiger, Joe Crace, John Beynon, KP, Kathleen Rogers, Kelton Weans, Kyle, Mary Callas, Measure Twice, Michael Dealosa, Michael Hagan, Millie Blackwell, Miriam Bookout, O A Pryor, Paul Morehead, Random Thinks, Stephen Fexali, Stuart Lennon, Tana Felise, Terry Beth, and Tom Keekley.
Andy: Damn, so many people. That's amazing.
Tim: Amazing. That's very overwhelming, so thank you to those of you supporting us on Patreon and thank you to those of you listening. You can follow the show on Instagram and Twitter @erasablepodcast. We are online, the show notes for this episode are at a erasable.us/159.
Our Facebook group is at facebook.com/groups/erasable, and our Facebook page, which you can like and get updates about the podcast, is at facebook.com/erasablepodcast. Please, if you have a second, take a minute and rate and review us on iTunes or recommend us on Overcast. It makes it much easier for people to find us in the ocean of wonderful stationery podcasts that are out there. As if they're our enemy, and we're, like, competing with them right now.
Andy: We'll get you, RSVP!
Tim: We're coming for you. So thank you for listening to episode 159, and we will talk to you soon.