FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Ill-conceived ‘Too Cool To Do Drugs’ pencils are BACK!
02.21.2014
03:57 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Back in the 90s, kids were given these pencils at schools and what not with the anti-drug slogan “Too Cool To Do Drugs.” Problem was, once they sharpened these puppies, the “anti-drug” message quickly changed to “Cool To Do Drugs,” “Do Drugs” and “Drugs.” Apparently, all of these problematic pencils were recalled in 1998. Boo!

The site BRRYBNDS decided these pencils needed to make a comeback and is selling five packs for $6.50.

Via Geekologie

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
02.21.2014
03:57 pm
|
The Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602: ‘Legendary’ pencil preferred by Sondheim, Nabokov and Stravinsky
08.14.2013
09:52 am
Topics:
Tags:

Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602
 
What is it about the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 that is so bewitching? Is it the austere and yet lush black finish? The flattened eraser ferrule, which lends an architect’s sense of vocation to even the most mundane writing task? Perhaps it’s the curiously unselfconscious way the pencil has never actually been promoted as such; as a blog dedicated to the pencil put it, “Any search of ‘Eberhard Faber’ yields all manner of vintage advertisements for products such as the Van Dyke, Microtomic, and the Mongol, but virtually nothing for the Blackwing.” Fucking Van Dyke and Mongol, soaking up all that attention and budget, which rightfully belonged to the Blackwing…..

Most searches on the Blackwing 602 are likely to elicit a list of the hardy pencil’s devotees: Vladimir Nabokov, John Steinbeck, Stephen Sondheim. Apparently the peerless Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones once brandished a Blackwing 602 at Charlie Rose and cried, “A pen is full of ink—this is full of ideas!” I haven’t been able to track down a video of that appearance (Dec. 29, 1994), but I desperately want to.

That Blackwing blog page I linked to above might be the most entertainingly exhaustive treatment of any subject I’ve ever seen on a single Internet page, and that includes anything on Wikipedia. Dip into it and you scratch the surface of a dedicated pencil-obsessed coterie that rivals anything seen at GenCon. It is the nature of the Internet to produce communities of intense devotion, who, having found each other, can obsess over the details of their chosen object of faith to the exclusion of all else.

At some point the Blackwing 602 became synecdoche for perfect writerly dedication. The smoothness of the delivery yields a perfect opacity of use—once a writer has settled on the Blackwing 602, he or she can concentrate solely on the task at hand: the work. It’s easy to see why Sondheim, Nabokov et alia liked it so much. In more recent times, by buying one, using one, and talking up its virtues, you could talk yourself into being a Nabokov by association.

Here’s the bad news: the original Blackwing 602 ceased to be produced in 1998, and that promptly led to a mad scramble among Blackwing addicts to secure caches of the prized pencil on eBay, where small batches routinely fetch selling prices in the hundreds of dollars to this day. The Boston Athenaeum has a stash of a few hundred, which it sparingly doles out to members.
 
Blackwing 602 eBay
 
One of the enduring themes of our age is that you can’t recapture the ineffable simplicity of certain midcentury artifacts. You see that everywhere, a call to the more straightforward thinking of the postwar era, whether it’s Chuck Taylor sneakers or Bakelite radios or the gritty coffee residue produced by a French press. Sorry, the latterday purchase of a Volkswagen New Beetle, no matter what else it accomplishes, cannot possibly restore regular hardworking ethic the smell of your dad’s well-oiled baseball mitt elicits, or the stolid pre-Vietnam assumptions that enabled NASA to reach the moon.

In 2010 the Cal Cedar Pencil Company released what they called the “Palomino Blackwing,” a “tribute” to the fondly remembered Blackwing 602—as with so many such exercises in commercialized nostalgia, the diehards weren’t really satisfied, there were small differences that appeared to mean everything, the graphite was a little different, the eraser ferrule not identical to the one Igor Stravinsky used. So Cal Cedar started over, introducing in 2011 the “Palomino Blackwing 602,” which came a few steps closer to reproducing the original’s irresistible charms. Mark Fraunfelder of Boing Boing has given it his seal of approval, while the Wikipedia in all hilarious blandness merely adds, “The new Palomino Blackwing 602 has also had a negative reception.” You don’t say.

I still want one. And I hardly ever use pencils.
 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Don’t Steal Pencils From Damien Hirst!

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
08.14.2013
09:52 am
|