If you’re a Real Simple fan (much like us), be sure to check out “The Guide” section, featuring our Money Receiptables in their June issue, on newsstands now!

It’s their “Organizing the Small Stuff” issue, and one you probably won’t want to miss out on. People overuse the cliché, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” as if it’s oh-so easy. But these insignificancies inevitably add up to colossal proportions—and who wants to deal with all of that?

Issues of "Slake" for sale.

As you know, we at Knock Knock are passionate lovers of pencils, paper, and printing presses. I was therefore thrilled last Friday to attend a party for Slake, a new Los Angeles literary quarterly that proudly exists only in paper form. That is, it exists only in real life.

Slake started in summer 2010, and is currently on its fourth issue (“The Dirt”). The journal is new, but has already won several awards (and hit the Los Angeles Times’ bestseller list) for its content—which combines visual art, photography, poetry, long-form journalism, fiction, oral history, and memoir. Its founders, Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly, were formerly the editors of LA Weekly. (On a personal note, I worked with Joe and Laurie for years as a writer and editor for the Weekly, so the party was a homecoming for me.)

"Slake" founder Laurie Ochoa, taking a picture of me while I take a picture of her, because it's just so fucking meta.

Slake is all about fostering a community of writers and artists who are deeply rooted and in—and in love with—Los Angeles, and it’s also about staking a claim for paper as a beautiful and viable medium. As their website proclaims, “Slake sets a new template for the next generation of print publications—collectible, not disposable; destined for the bedside table instead of the recycling bin.”

As previously mentioned, paper is something that exists only in real life. You know something else that only exists in real life? Free beer.

Quantities of free beer were available at this party; the evidence of this is in the blurry, slurry photos I managed to either take or pose for. It may or may not be worth mentioning that free pie was also served by Suicide Girls.

A blurry, blinky shot of Joe and me.

Besides live music and dance performances, other stuff on offer included an exhibition of beautiful photographs of the Occupy L.A. encampment; video footage from the LA riots; and a station where people could create album art for the new vinyl LP by Detective (a musical project from Guided By Voices member James Greer, who is also a Slake contributor).

Laurie Ochoa says that Slake is meant to be enjoyed slowly, in bed or otherwise in a state of repose—and then kept. It should be noted, another advantage to the print-only format is that after inevitable disaster strikes, taking down the “grid,” and we are all shivering in our homes with candles and limited water, Slake will remain to provide us survivors with hours of meaningful, thought-provoking, mind-enriching entertainment. Hey, it’s L.A. Anything could happen.

People making album covers for Detective, the musical project from "Slake" contributor (and ex-Guided By Voices member) James Greer.

Free-pie porn.

Last Friday, while our IT guys were updating our Creative Suite software, the Knock Knock creative team decided to play (classy) hooky.

We took a field trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), to see the “California Design, 1930-1965: Living In a Modern Way” exhibition, a part of the museum’s Pacific Standard Time series. The exhibit embodied the furniture, graphic design, fashion, and overall creative outpour of post-World War II culture stemming from California. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, definitely check it out. (And if you’re an Eames enthusiast, you don’t want to miss it.) The exhibition ends 6/3.

The entrance. That’s a 1936 Airstream Clipper on the right. And our creative director Craig to the slight left of it.

Our designers. Alexis looks at before and after pics of the Los Angeles population boom between 1922 and 1930. And Brad reads about how the era influenced graphic design.

The Ice Gun is one of my personal favorites.

The original 1962 Barbie Dream House.

Our assistant editor Kate watches a vintage commercial for the Polaroid Swinger.

Inspiration.

We also had a chance to see Metropolis II, with 100,000 toy cars “driving” around the city. With scaled-down, frenzied traffic that’s undoubtedly overwhelming, us Los Angelenos can certainly relate to the piece. Check out the video of it below.

Finally, we wrapped up the afternoon with lunch and sangria at the Original Farmers Market. What a delicious day.

I’m an avid journal-keeper. I have seven volumes of journals listing the books I’ve read and their star-rating. I have dream journals going back to 1995. Art journals. Floor-plan journals. List journals. And many, many more. You can guess that all of these journals can take a lot of time to keep up with! So suffice it to say that I was super-stoked when the brilliant and creative minds at Knock Knock devised the One Word a Day journal.

This totally cute, charming little book is the answer—it quenches my journaling needs amid my busy schedule. All that’s required is one word per day. That’s it. No long sentences or drawn-out descriptions of my day, just one simple word to summarize everything I feel and all that happened. To take it one step further, I decided to take words from printed pieces around me to help recount my day. These could be from those pesky newspaper inserts, or magazines, or whatever.

Let’s take a peek in my own journal, shall we?

This was a workday, for sure. Laughing with my fellow coworkers, giggling at silly Internet memes, chuckling at the cleverness of editorial. (So, the usual.)

Day 17 was much more of a mystery.
Without revealing too much, I'll just say there were things that didn't make any sense on that day.

Day 25 cracks me up because it was such a perfect find in the magazine I was reading.
Does the exclamation point count as part of the word?

And as a final sample, Day 27 has a slightly more complicated word.
Completely relevant, but complicated nonetheless. (And that’s all you need to know.)

At the very gist of it, consolidating my day into one term is like my mind’s own exhale, the final cherry on top before I hit the hay.

So don’t be shy—nab one for yourself and tell us what your word of the day is!

Like a brace-faced adolescent being asked to junior prom, we felt a heightened sense of elation when this postcard came in the mail a few months ago. Our head honcho Jen said herself that it’s one of her favorite customer correspondences ever. She really did use “ever”—and for good reason: (Go on, read it.)

I really wanted to use this post to give a personal thank you right back to this FOKKer, since it made us feel all warm and bubbly inside. All the jadedness in the world couldn’t dent the gratitude we have for our customers, even if he or she makes grammatical person, punctuation, and spelling errors in their messages (who would we be if we didn’t notice that as well?).

Unfortunately, he or she left out a name. Anyways, here’s my attempt at a thank you in return for his or her thank you:

Dear Bronx, (We decided to call you “Bronx”, since Bronx, New York is the closest characteristic of your persona that we can grasp—other than the fact that you might be a borderline-nihilist, which is possibly a good thing in our book.)

Thank you for your lovely, handwritten postcard. We are so grateful to have fans like you who help us pay “for rent and all the other protections needed against those ghastly natives.” What can we say? Sometimes even the Venice-born, dog-loving, bike-riding, orgaddict (that’s a combined word for “organic addict,” which our marketing and digital coordinator just made up) surfer can be intimidating.

And we also know how it feels to be misunderstood. Do you know how many people mistake our banter for snarkiness? We wouldn’t be able to keep track, even if we put our twenty-five pairs of hands together to keep count. (That’s 250 < people who mistake Knock Knock as being pure snark—in layman’s terms.) But still, we are what we are, and you are what you are. We’re just happy to fold laughter into what you call “The Joke” itself.

Also, thanks for your suggestion. Perhaps we could use that quick one-liner if we ever update our Insults & Comebacks for All Occasions book . . . Or if we’re ever confronted by frienemies in a battle of verbiage (a follow-up snap would be necessary in this case). Furthermore, we wonder what your colleague-relationship is with this said “cop.” Are you also a cop? Or are you maybe a gumshoe? Because having a FOKKer working undercover would be oh-so-rad.

Thanks again and hopefully you will allow us to call you our “peep” from Bronx in return.

Sincerely,

The Knock Knock Team

Case in point: FOKKers, you are wonderful. Keep the snail mail coming and you could see it on our blog!

The other day, our manufacturing coordinator Chelsea and our graphic designer Alexis spent a few hours in Irvine, California to help oversee the printing of our beloved Spring 2012 catalog at LT Litho & Digital. The catalog was in the works since mid-August, so it was a feat to see it in its final form.

The board that adjusts the colors. It had to be perfect.

Chelsea said it was easy to "lose track of time when you have those big, loud, totally distracting machines going all around you!" This is beautiful nonetheless.

Michal Broomfield (beautifully pronounced “mcHAIL”) is one of our customer service specialists. In fact, you just might be lucky enough to talk to her if you have questions about your order! She’d like to show-and-tell about her recent trip to NYC. Go Michal!

Me in front of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. Beautiful!

I just returned from my trip to the New York International Gift Fair, which was filled with many firsts for me. It was my first tradeshow, my first trip to New York, and my first business trip ever—the word exciting doesn’t even begin to describe this wonderful experience! Between the mafia stories, the amazing selection of knockoff bags, and the overall go-getter mentality that the city puts you in, my trip was everything I could have hoped for and then some!

I started my experience with a full day of sightseeing, which took me to the top spots in the city: Central Park, New York University, Ground Zero, Chinatown, Battery Park, Wall Street, Bowling Green Park, Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem, and the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle. I quickly realized that the parks are where I would want to spend a lot of my free time. They are truly amazing, and the green from the trees mixed with the backdrop of the New York skyline is almost poetic! It’s pretty overwhelming once you realize how much there is to see. However, I found that the best way to find things would be to ask the locals. Cab drivers, bellmen, store clerks, and street performers became my tour guides throughout the great city.

You could say I was in an “Empire state of mind.”

It was fun to play on my first day, but let’s not forget the reason why I was there—the show! Two days were dedicated to show setup, which went by pretty quickly. It’s amazing to see a huge convention center like the Javits Center go from boxes and forklifts to lights . . . catalogs . . . and action! When the show opened, we were ready to sell, sell, sell! This tradeshow was a very important one for me, as it was my first opportunity to reach out to our retailers and speak to them face-to-face instead of via phone or email—something that added a personal touch to the outreach that we are able to do from the office. I also had the opportunity to meet and work with the hardworking sales reps that help distribute the Knock Knock line every day, which was a great experience, especially since some of them live on the East Coast and were able to give me advice on making my way through New York’s main attractions.

It took us all of Friday and half of Saturday to set up the booth. It was a hit, though, and the show attendees kept us busy!

The show lasted for five days and I feel we all did a wonderful job of promoting to new and existing customers. Many laughs were had in our corner booth by customers who found our products not just funny, but hilarious! Finally, we wrapped up the show on the last day, but not before being questioned multiple times by other exhibitors who were longing to gain some free Knock Knock “swag,” as Randy, our national sales manager, called it.

The end of my trip landed me in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and in North Philly, where a good friend of mine and her extended family live. It was very interesting to see what a huge difference there is between Manhattan—the bustling city—and New Brunswick, a very green, almost countrylike town.

The Knock Knock team, minus Trish Abbot, VP of brand development. We may Photoshop her in later. (Left to right: Michal Broomfield, customer service specialist and post author; Randy Erlandson, national sales manager; Craig Hetzer, chief creative officer; Jim Papscoe, chief operating officer; Dave Sokolove, NYC pinch hitter and charisma king; Carolyn Andrews, VP of sales.) Jen totally got out of this one and stayed home with the dogs; we won't be Photoshopping her in later.

I felt like a real New Yorker by the end of my stay—from riding the subway and hailing my very own cab to hustling to get the best deals on my knockoff bags. I hate to toot my own horn, but I could be considered a professional at this point! Ultimately I had a great time and hope to visit again in the near future.