Celebrity Appentice

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.

At least I can take comfort in that my over-thinking and slowness prevented me from doing anything like pulling a receipt from the garbage and asking John Hodgman to sign it. Or a fake boob, for that matter.