Enter the Wizard
Pencil extensions, pencil relations, Gailard Sartain, and stationery advent.
Ted here, with a pencil hack you probably knew about already, an appreciation of the Paris Review and other such staid outlets, and Tulsa-local roots of eggs a-ronious.
A quick note: We are about to publish our annual Take Note Commonplace Zine filled with quotes and one-liners compiled throughout the year. Anybody who supports us via our Patreon will get one, so if you’d like to receive a copy, jump over there ASAP. We appreciate your support for this project of ours!
Pencil, Extended
Maybe a million people already know it (maybe even a past version of myself knows it), but today I realized that my fancy Blackwing pencil cap is also an effective and comfortable pencil extender. (Cheap plastic pencil caps: same). Believe it or not, I’ve had a “bad” experience with a pencil extender. The very affordable Koh-I-Nor “lengthener” with its metal ring clamp system is actually pretty uncomfortable during a critical process in pencil relations, namely when writing with a pencil.
Of course, when it’s time to hit the streets, the Blackwing cap can jump teams and perform its main duty: preventing pencils from punching holes in the lining of my pockets. I realize as I type that doing so will leave an unsightly stump visible for all the world to see. Alas, stationery perfection eludes me again. Every onward!
Paris Review, Daily
I subscribed to the Paris Review a few issues ago, in the continual effort to read good things on the internet by supporting sources of deeply worked longform print (Paris Review, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, I should add McSweeney’s honestly) and to unsubscribe from digital accounts I feel for some odd reason I should have but that I don’t care about (bye Disney Plus). As a bona fide subscriber to the Paris Review, I proceeded to take a closer look at their digital stuff. Turns out, they now send me a poem every day via email, and they post something interesting on their site most days. The quality is top-notch. Recent entrants are: an Annie Ernaux essay and an essay on designer handbags that goes to some interesting places by Simon Wu.
When I get the itch to surf to social media or news, I visit the Paris Review homepage.
Eggs, Erronious
“Ernest, I wanchoo to cut a big knock outta these eggs-a-ronious.” - Jake as played by Gailard Sartain
In Ernest Goes to Camp, my favorite supporting character is the mad cook Jake, who with the Igor to his Frankenstein Eddie slings — literally — the gloopy and repulsive dish eggs-a-ronious, “made with powdered eggs and 17 herbs and spices smuggled into this country by Tibetan monks.” As a kid, I thrilled at these counter-cultural figures and their futile but determined march toward greatness. While rabbit-holing on Jim Varney and the genesis of Ernest (spoiler, he was the brainchild of a comedy-inclined Nashville advertiser), I was happy to learn that Gailard Sartain, who played the feisty camp cook, is still with us (the same cannot be said of Varney, who died before his time in 2000). Check out an interview with Sartain from a few years ago here.
Sartain is from Tulsa, Oklahoma, through and through, and one of the first things he did as a Tulsa comic (before going on to Ernest and Hee Haw and a million other things) was to create The Incredible Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi's Uncanny Film Festival & Camp Meeting. Per a YouTube caption it “debuted Saturday 2 May 1970 on KOTV, Channel 6 in Tulsa Oklahoma. A year later the show moved to KTUL Channel 8, which is where this intro clip is from, airing for two more seasons, ending summer 1973.” Network TV, that accomplishment alone astounds.
Mazeppa Pompazoidi, a wizard, was Sartain’s all-purpose alter ego slash host. Think Elvira in a cheap purple robe. Not every clip is a winner, but I’ve giggled and smiled through more than a few of them (linked below). They are mad-cap, random, rough and ready, and inspired. Sartain (like Varney) injects each character with a slap-dash Southern sensibility that is inherently hilarious, regardless of what’s unfolding around him. He is so ridiculously watchable, like a man struggling to hold together a universe on the edge of spiraling out of whack.
The camp meeting harkens to a time when TV movies were introduced as special events, with hosts that would welcome the viewer and frame the film choice. Echoes of this practice were still around on cable in the 90s, though I can’t remember the details off the top of my head. But it always evinced a feeling of camaraderie that you don’t find with minimized speed-scrolling credits and algorithmically derived suggestions to carry on your binge. Anyway, Sartain seems a kind of alien diplomat from that epoch, and of course he launched into national awareness from that pad.
“My younger brothers and I used to watch this every Saturday night, until I started working for McDonald's at 41st and Yale. On Saturday mornings at about 2:00 AM, Gailard Sartain and Gary Busey would be at Mr. Donut on 31st and Yale having coffee and donuts discussing the show. I never bothered them, but they seemed to be having a ball together! They were local heros!” - YouTube commenter @williamrooth
A few selections from The Incredible Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi's Uncanny Film Festival & Camp Meeting:
More Stationery Advent Pics from Adam
More gems from the Boston General Store stationery advent calendar. The kraft wax cover on the Ro-Biki is a dream!
