February is already a short month, so
since I didn't want to cheat my February Pen of the Month, the Pentel
Energel 0.5 needlepoint, of a whole week of use while I was on a
cruise, I made sure to pack it, along with a few other trusty pens
for good measure.
The highlight of my Energel's cruise was
when it got to meet
John
Hodgman. As I stood behind some friends who were speaking to
Jonathan Coulton's lovely wife at a ship bar, a guy walked up to
Hodgman, also sitting at the bar, and asked if he would sign
something. Hodgman agreed, but the guy asked "Do you have
something to sign with?" Hodgman calmly replied, "No."
A girl nearby said she thought she did and began rummaging around in
her bag. After a minute with no pen produced, I helpfully unclipped
my Energel from my lanyard and extended it into the group. Hodgman
accepted the proffered pen and showed it to the autograph-seeking
gentleman: "Oh, I was thinking like a Sharpie." As Hodgman
handed the rejected pen back to me, the girl finally produced a
marker and I hear Hodgman ask what the guy would like signed. "I'm
a cross dresser," the autograph-seeker explained, "So I was
hoping you'd sign my silicone breast insert." Hodgman obliged,
and I had to laugh when I considered the extreme unsuitability of the
Pentel Energel
needlepoint to autograph a silicone breast.
I, myself, didn't seek out any
autographs on the cruise, despite being amongst many of my favorite
minor celebrities. But if I had, I wonder what lucky pen I would have
chosen from my arsenal to place into the hands of
Jonathan Coulton or
Randall Munroe? Should I have chosen pens on a
per-celebrity basis, or picked the best overall signature-signing
option? This is exactly the kind of over-thinking that prevents me
from even considering asking for an autograph! That, and the
weirdness of asking another human being for proof of our meeting.
And this is why it takes me so long to
write anything! I didn't mean to go off on a tangent, pondering the
purpose of autographs and people's fascination with them. I didn't
intend to read
Wikipedia
for ten minutes and learn about which presidents have used
autopens
and when. I didn't need to
begin cataloging which pen I suspect each celebrity would like best
(
John Roderick
strikes me as an inky pen kind of guy, so I'd probably say a
Pilot G2).
I just wanted to tell you a little story about John Hodgman and my
Energel.
