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.