Penned In
You should know, right up front, this has no sports in it. In fact, I have no reason to think you will have any interest in this at all. But when has that stopped me?
This might come across a little bit here… I have something of an obsessive personality. It’s something I get from my mother, who has spent a lifetime obsessing over countless hobbies* and television shows and whole bunch of other things.
One of the most powerful memories of my childhood was my Mom becoming obsessed with refunds. You know, the sort where if you send in eight soup labels or 16 cereal box tops or whatever, and you could get some sort of refund—it might be a coupon or it might be actual cash or it might be a prize of some sort. I think this kind of thing used to be a bigger deal.
Anyway, because my mother is my mother, she created an elaborate filing system for collecting box tops and labels and various other proofs of purchase. And then our friends would literally bring over their garbage (sans the gross stuff) and I would help her file it all, and she would send off hundreds of refund packages. She subscribed to this wonderful little publication called “Refundle Bundle”—she actually wrote something for it once—that told you where all the great refund opportunities were.
My memory could be off on this, but I think one year she made something like $800 off these refunds, a quarter at a time (Mom would know the precise amount; she kept meticulous records, obviously), and that’s like $12 million in today’s money.
*Mom’s latest hobby is diamond painting, and, I kid you not, their house has no wall space left because every inch is covered by a beautiful diamond painting, and there are dozens of finished and half-finished diamond paintings all around the house, waiting for a parking space to open up. And, yet, she keeps on going.
All of which is to say: I have to be super-careful because I have that obsessive gene. For instance, during the pandemic, I became obsessed with chess. I have since spent countless hours watching chess videos, taking chess courses, doing chess puzzles (I’m up to 2300 on chess.com puzzles!) and, occasionally, actually playing chess matches, though that is my least favorite part. Weird, right?
I am not exaggerating even slightly when I tell you that I watch at least one chess video every… single… day. I obsessively watch Eric Rosen’s speedrun and Ginger GM’s speedrun (dude, time to start a new one!) and Alex Banzea’s many “this opening will change your chess life” videos, and everything Gotham Chess and some Hikaru Nakamura’s breakdowns and the Botez sisters and my new friend Daniel Naroditsky’s Develop Your Instincts series and some other ones, too.
You would think that watching SO MUCH CHESS INSTRUCTION and doing SO MANY PUZZLES would make me better at chess. Best I can tell, it has not. Maybe it has in some subtle way, but I still stink at the game. You know what? I’m OK with that. Somewhere along the way, it became clear to me that becoming better at chess, while it’s something I’d like to do, is not my goal.
What is my goal? No idea. I can’t even explain my obsessions to myself.
Weirdly, this is not even about chess. This is about a new obsession, one I feel myself slowly sinking into. My big issue with obsessions—over the last few years, these have included: (1) Magic; (2) Typewriters; (3) Juggling; (4) Apple products; (5) Baseball cards; (6) Books about sportswriting; (7) Baseball caps; (8) Tennis; (9) Bob Ross painting videos*; (10) Mazda Miatas (someday!); (11) Table tennis; (12) Various television shows; (13) Lots of other things—is that there always comes a turning point. I can always see it coming. There’s a moment where I have to ask myself: “OK, are you going all in on this or are you going to do the smart thing and back away and move on with your life?
Sometimes, I do turn back.
Sometimes, alas, I do not.
And I fear that I might not turn back from this fountain pen thing.
*My obsession with Bob Ross painting videos—much like my obsession with chess—is a passive one. That is to say: I have almost no interest whatsoever in actually doing some painting (much like I have almost no interest in playing chess). I just like watching him do it. The videos become repetitive, Bob had like five jokes and nine or so phrases that he recycled week after week, and yet I never tire of watching them and watching him turn a blank canvas into a painting in 27 or so minutes.
Fountain pens? How, right? So this is how it happened… I was cleaning out my desk drawer, and I found two really nice pens that I might have gotten as gifts somewhere along the way. One is a Visconti Starry Night Rollerball; that’s like a 200-plus dollar pen that I just had in the back of a drawer, which tells you how much I thought about pens before all this. Anyway, it’s beautiful, and it writes really well, and finding it was like having it gifted to me all over again.
The other was a black Cross Bailey Light fountain pen. I don’t have any idea how I got it, but I pulled it out and tried to write with it, and I couldn’t—the ink had run dry. So I ordered a new ink cartridge for it, and I put it in, and I started writing a little bit with it. It was fun to write with, you know? The writing experience was smooth, and, yeah, OK, the ink smeared and I probably should have cleaned the pen before using it since it got all over my hands, but I liked it. A lot.
There’s a scene in “The Bear” (another obsession) where Cousin comes to work uncharacteristically wearing a suit. When asked why, he simply says: “I wear suits now.”
After writing a bit with that Cross pen, I thought: “I’m a fountain pen guy now.”
I went to YouTube to learn a bit more about fountain pens. And then I was doomed. Here’s the thing: No matter how silly your would-be obsession might be, there are hundreds and thousands and maybe millions of people out there who are totally obsessed. You could spend the next year watching fountain pen videos on the internet, and you would not run out.
Let me share with you just a few of the YouTube videos I have watched in the last few days:
Yeah, that’s not all of them… but it gives you an idea. And, remember when I said I have watched those videos in the “last few days”? Right. I watched them all in the last two days. I watched some of them twice.
Yeah, I’m a goner. I’ve now bought four fountain pens, and I have another one on the way. As you might have guessed, if you actually read the video titles, I have also bought three different fountain pen-friendly notebooks, including the Midori Traveler Notebook, passport-size. The Midori hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m so excited for when it does. It kind of looks like the diary that Indiana Jones’ father carries in “Last Crusade.”
I have no idea why you would care about this, but, hey, you’re here, so here are the fountain pens I’ve bought, and my early take on them:
TWSBI Diamond 580 ALR (blue): OK, this is the first fountain pen I bought, and it’s my favorite pen so far. I will admit that spending $65 on a pen felt more than a little bit ridiculous—do you know how many box-top refunds that is?—but I’d watched a bunch of videos about how good the pen is. And it’s that good. I just wrote a bunch of letters to bookstores to go along with the WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL Advance Reader Copies that are going out now (!) and I wrote most of them with the TWSBI, and I have to say it’s great fun to use (drawing in the ink is a blast!). So smooth.
Sailor Compass 1911 (olive): I bought this as part of a fountain pen starter kit—it included a couple ink samples and a notebook—and it’s way smaller and lighter than the TWSBI. I like it a lot, though. Also very smooth. It feels like a perfect pen to take with you when you want to write something in a pocket notebook. Although I got another pen for that purpose.
Kaweco Liliput Fountain Pen with extra fine tip (green): Another $60 pen! But this one I had to get… it’s like a James Bond fountain pen. It’s tiny, not much taller than like a lipstick case.* You unscrew the cap to reveal the fountain pen nip, and then you screw the cap back in on the top to turn the thing into an actual pen, and as someone who already obsessively loved gadgets of all kinds, this pen makes me so very happy. It probably doesn’t write as well as either the Sailor or the TWSBI, but it writes really well, and I carry it everywhere.
Lamy CPI (black): Here is my first fountain pen disappointment. Another $60 pen… I love how it looks and feels, but, ugh, it’s no fun to write with at all. This might be because I got the extra fine nib, but the ink doesn’t flow out of it for me, and it writes scratchy, and it’s crushing because Lamy seems to be the go-to pen for so many Fountain Pen obsessives (at least those who are not going to spend crazy money for a Montblanc pen). I’m not giving up on the Lamy. I really do love its look, so I have ordered bigger pen nibs in the hope that I get the smooth writing experience. I have also ordered a Lamy Safari pen (less than $60!) because I just keep hearing how good Lamys are.
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So that’s where I am now. Here’s the thing—even though it clutches at my heart to spend $60 for a pen, the truth is that the REALLY good fountain pens are going to cost quite a bit more than that. The Lamy 2000, which seems to be one of the true fountain pen stars, is $200-300. The Pilot Custom 823 looks awesome; it’s more than $300. The Visconti Homo Sapiens can run anywhere from $700 to $1,000. And the aforementioned MontBlancs, along with some other high-end companies, well, these can go way over $1,000. I mean there are $30,000 pens, $50,000 pens, and then crazy, million-dollar pens.
*I can never hear or write down the words “lipstick case” without immediately thinking, “You better make sure you put me in my place.”
I don’t think I would ever be tempted by those crazy-high-priced pens because I think that what I’m really looking for is the ultimate writing experience, not some collectible thing I can put in a glass case. But some of those sub-$1,000 pens? Yeah, I could see myself totally going all in on those.
The point—if there is a point to any of this—is simply: I should get out now. I have five fountain pens, three I really love, and I’m getting the awesome notebook, and that should be enough.
So why do I have this feeling that it won’t be?
Oh yeah. My mother is working on several new diamond paintings.
This would have been 1000% better if you had written this column in pen, and then posted pictures of it like Joey Votto did.
Why we love fountain pens. A history in 500 stained shirts.