You, me, bars, beers, buzzed. Wings. Shots. Drunk. Waitresses, hot. Football - Cornell/Hofstra. Slaughter. Then a quick nap at my place.

Your friendly neighborhood Collective is on vacation this week. We'll be back next Monday with harrowing tales of adventure, or, you know, pictures of celebrities we'd like to bonk. Or something even awesomer. You just never know.

Bonsoir Canards!

Whether things are good or bad or you're simply...eating tacos in the park, there is always the crushing guilt.

Before I say anything else, I think you guys should know something really important: you all scare the hell out of me. Do you know that EVERY THURSDAY, you hold my self-esteem in your hands? Here, I've made a chart* with which to better illustrate:



See? The more you comment, the higher my self-esteem. And the higher my self-esteem, the happier I am. And the happier I am, the less I whine about crap. So my IRL people thank you.

Here's something else: I feel guilty about everything, all of the time. I feel guilty when people are mad at me (even if I've done nothing wrong), I feel guilty for procrastinating, I feel guilty for killing bugs, I feel guilty for buying crap at Target I don't need. AND I feel guilty when I see that someone has done something nice for someone else, because I didn't think to do it first THEREFORE I must be a horrible person. WHAT THE HELL? I'm not even Catholic.

So here's what -- ever since I saw the topic for this week, I've been feeling guilty. See, I post last every week and I'm so scared that I will forget to appreciate someone and they'll feel left out and then they'll cry and then I'll cry and we'll all use too many tissues and that's bad for the environment. And then I'll feel guilty about hurting the environment and cry some more and it's this horrible, ugly cycle that I don't want any of us to be a part of, OK? OK.

I've been thinking a lot about this whole blogging thing. I've been blogging for going on six years now and the reason I keep doing it is because you people are all so awesome. I love the little community that has sprung up here at The Collective. I love that I've had the pleasure of meeting some of you IN REAL LIFE and that you still seem to like me even though I was loud and obnoxious (alcohol was involved) and I made Abigail pay the DJ to play all Oasis songs and then I got in a fight with Jenny about how OASIS IS AWESOME, DAMMIT and then when the DJ finally played Oasis, I'd had so much tequila that I'd forgotten the words to Don't Look Back in Anger but I tried to sing along anyway and ended up sounding kind of like Jodie Foster in Nell, only louder and drunker. True story.

I guess what I'm trying to say is thank you all for being so awesome. Only I used way more words than that and not many of them made sense. STANDARD. Also, I heart you guys, never change, LYLAS**.


*I didn't say it was a good chart
**(OMG, remember LYLAS?)

You wrote the song I want to play.

My original plan was to sing praise to all of you lovely commenters who have ever left lovely comments about me, but not to literally sing of course, as I am afraid that would be more torture than reward, and reward I think several of you deserve for letting me know just how funny and pretty and smart and awesome and all around THE BEST HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET you think I am.

And oh yes, I am.

But then I realized how busy I've been over the last couple of months, and how much time it would take to go through all of your comments to find the real gems, comments like "You're funny!" and "You're pretty!" and "You're smart!" and "You're awesome!" and "You're all around THE BEST HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET!", and really, they are so bountiful that it would take about 52.7 billion years to catalogue them all (I'm also good at math) and like I said, I've been busy. I've been SO BUSY in fact, that I think I've left exactly 0.6346 comments on the internet in 721 days.

Some would say that this does not make me awesome, and to that I would say "You are wrong, mister!" Because you would be. Because in my estimation there are 4.6 trillion readers who read this supremely awesome web log and never comment either, and what makes those 4.6 trillion readers any less appreciated that the (relatively) small percentage that do? Especially since I am one of them!

So, lurkers of the world unite! Be appreciated, gosh darn it!

day 2: reader appreciation week!

Recently, my BFF(IRL) Elle asked me why we never talked about her on this site. I did a double take. "You actually read it?" I asked. She nodded quickly as though we were overcoming some great misunderstanding. "But you never comment!" I argued.

She shrugged.

Readers, here's a secret. I don't know you're there unless you comment. It doesn't have to be funny or intelligent. It just has to be. You and us. I'm a just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her. Oh, wait, wrong speech.

Our first honorees of the day are the good old standbys Vahid and Shari. You might remember them as award winners in our Canadie Awards last summer. And don't think we're playing favorites: Vahid won for Best Buddy and Shari won for Most Comments and we can regularly count on these two to keep playing the part.

Shari comments on every post. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I appreciate that. I appreciate that especially because I am so bad at commenting. Shari, thank you for commenting. Still. Always. Forever. We appreciate you.

Oh, and here's a photo, as proof that these are not just readers who comment, but Shari and Vahid are readers who are best buddies. This is last November when I was in Portland for work and Shari drove all the way from Nowhere (for HOURS) to meet me and Vahid and then Vahid took us on a tour of Portland's Best Places to Get Drunk At and really, I don't think I could ask anymore from readers. (But I'm going to on account of I'm going to go visit them again in August. The best readers are the readers who invite me to their house and promise to cook for me. Win.)


(This is a photo of a photo. Both cameras aren't quite print-quality, so you kind of have to cross your eyes to see what is going on.)

Scott is another reader who we've known since the beginning of time. And yet he has never grown lax in his site involvement. I can always count on a comment from Scott despite the fact his his wife is super busy beating cancer, and he seems real busy twittering all the time too. But still, day after day, he comes here and comments. Sometimes nice things, sometimes funny things, and always clever things. Scott puts me to shame. He is awesome. Send him cookies.

Tam is another high volume commenter. And she's Jennie!'s IRL friend which means I appreciate her even more since my IRL friends NEVER COMMENT. Tam is also willing to call us out on a regular basis. Like recently, she said, " I want a baby, but G-d won't give me one because I'm friends with Jennie. " God agrees with the Collective, Tam, babies are assholes.

Lastly, I appreciate sarah g. For one; she regularly agrees with me and everyone knows I love people who agree with me. For two; she is always positive and upbeat. That's not really the point of this website (are we positive and/or upbeat? not really), but you have to credit the girl for standing strong! Also, I love that she's not just Sarah; she is sarah g. I think the g is probably the first letter of her last name, but I like to pretend it stands for something else. sarah great! sarah good! sarah grocks! (like rocks? I try.)

Thank you, readers who comment! Thank you for giving my life worth! Please don't stop commenting!

(And lurkers: start commenting so we get to know you. We assume you're as awesome as our vocal readers, but how can we know if you don't comment??)

Reader Appreciation Week!

It's always harder to get back to work on Mondays in the summer, right? It's like every weekend is a legitimate mini-vacation and Sunday night just comes as such a shock. We know, and we care. That's why this week is Reader Appreciation Week, a week in which we celebrate you!

In the wise words of Michael Scott:

So, you know, an employee will go home, and he'll tell his neighbor, "Hey, did you get an award?" And the neighbor will say, "No man. I mean, I slave all day and nobody notices me." Next thing you know, employee smells something terrible coming from neighbor's house. Neighbor's hanged himself due to lack of recognition. So...

Today we're celebrating Joe, Peefer, Lindsay, Sir and Amanda Mae.

Joe is Joe of Joe's Apartment, and also Joe of Joe and Jennie. We started loving Joe because Jennie loves Joe, but it didn't take us long to start loving him all by ourselves. He makes us laugh, answers our tedious superhero questions, listens to our rants, and even searches out our favorite comic books for us -- because he is awesome.

Recently on his blog, he ponders the term "celebrity" and feels sad that the late Billy Mays never got a chance to peddle the Snuggie:

Well, apparently last night or this morning Billy Mays died. Not the soccer player, the pitchman. This is a guy who, whenever he came on TV, always made me turn the volume down because he was just so friggin' loud and so excited about whatever he was selling. The ShamWow and OxiClean are probably his two most famous products, though I would have loved to have seen what he could do with a Snuggie. Alas, though, he's gone.

Peefer is Peefer of Peefer's Home. We've been collectively (hee!) knowing Peefer for practically ever. He sends us toys, indulges us by watching our favorite shows (seriously: Gossip Girl), never fails to make us grin with his comments, and would also probably marry us if we needed to get speedy-quick Canadian citizenship for whatever reason.

Recently on his blog, he let us into his Happy Compartment.

Swimming into a rainstorm,
behind me, fluffy whites on thick spilled blue,
sharp lines of a paint-by-number scene;
ahead, a colourless void,
brightness sinking with every stroke.
The sky is falling diagonally
exactly like how you see it from a distance.

Lindsay is Lindsay of Blood, Guts & Melodies most recently, but we've been knowing her ever since her LiveJournal days. She is a nurse with a seriously wonky schedule -- we're pretty sure she works ten 24-hour days in a row, and then has three to recover/sleep/watch TV/catch up on the Internets. And see, that's what's so great about Lindsay: She has her priorities in order. She saves lives and then she writes about television. (We call that a "hero" where we come from.)

Recently on her blog, she reviewed the new John Krasinski/Maya Rudolph flick, Away We Go.

Out of the four summer movies I’ve seen (Da Vinci Code, Star Trek, and Up), this one may actually be the favorite. Sure, that’s not difficult for Da Vinci Code, but I LURVED Star Trek and Up. But this one was extra special. I’m not sure what exactly it was that made me feel absolutely happy the entire way through. And then it ended and I started thinking about John Krasinski on the way to my car and I started to cry.

Sir is Sir of etcetera, etcetera: Home of the whatnot. We pretty much begged and threatened Sir to start a blog for two solid years before he finally caved, and how right we were to demand his words! On the one hand, Sir is a genius thermonuclear space scientist/physicist/chemist, etc. But on the other, he writes like he's in The New Yorker. Sir loves David Foster Wallace and also Harry Potter, which means you should probably be swooning right about now.

Recently on his blog, he recounted his visit to an arts and crafts store.

The lines in this place on the weekend are long. Waiting in them is like some sort of penance, as if you’re earning the right to buy whatever it is you’re trying to buy. I found myself immediately behind a couple and what was either their offspring or their grand-offspring, the ages of the grown-ups being hard to place. The female portion of this couple was large and surly. The male looked defeated, but wore a baseball cap festooned with an American flag and the words, ‘My way or the highway!’, which made me sort of delight in his defeat.

Amanda Mae is Amanda Mae of A Good Man is Hard to Find. Amanda Mae is what you might call a wunderkind. She's got her own radio show, Almanac, she writes for Film.com, directs movies, travels here and there and everywhere, and even has time to love her some puppies.

See?

Do you want a kind of run down? I’m going to Dallas in May, Chicago in June, Ecuador in July (maybe), New York in August, and I don’t know where all else. San Diego this weekend. I get these nutty panic attacks whenever I have to go somewhere I’ve never been for the first time.


I’ve been working on a movie, it’s wrapped now, but before that was Film Festival, building sets and working hard. I go back and forth on whether or not I want to get ahead in film or not. I’m good at it, I feel like it’s the only thing I’m really good at. I am direct, efficient, calm, orderly. The set-dresser is the best one I’ve ever worked with. Two steps ahead is an understatement. Twelve steps ahead, and I’m back at making amends.

Stop by and give these people some love (or do it in the comments). And come back tomorrow so you can get appreciated some more. We love you guys. Let it never be said that a Collective reader went home and hanged him/herself due to lack of recognition.