How You Know You're Hooked

One of my favorite columns in one of my very favorite periodicals is Stephen King's "Pop Of King" column, that appears every other week on the second to last page of Entertainment Weekly. Recently, Stephen commented on my personal drug of choice: "pop-dope" (as he puts it - it's what you gotta have). For example:

Lost
The Sopranos
"discographies"
Harry Potter (either medium)

...you get the idea?

So when you're hooked on the pop-dope, how you do know it? Does getting midnight tickets to the new Harry Potter movie at your local IMAX theatre make you an addict? Does waiting until the recording of the season finale of your favorite show has been significantly delayed so you can watch it on your DVR while it's still airing but still fast forward through the commercials, mean you're hooked? Maybe. I thought I'd try to characterize some ways in which you can determine how bad you gotta have it.

1. You think DVR is the single greatest thing since the internet.
2. You think Nicole Scherzinger is wasting her time and really needs to do a solo jazz album.
3. You honestly believe that Megan Fox is (currently) the most beautiful woman on earth.
4. 20 hours of 24 is something you might be interested in.
4a: You get both parts of #4.
5. To you, Google is a verb.
6. Every gadget that has a lowercase "i" in front of its name is on your "must have" list.
7. If you can't go to the midnight showing on opening night, you're going to wait for the DVD.
8. Your favorite websites include popoholic, lostpedia, google news, imdb and somewhere in the area of fifty-three other blogs that only YOU read. (but whose items you tell your friends about, without citing as sources - this makes you "hip")
9. You'd like to have a roundtable discussion with Chuck Klosterman, Rachael Ray, Damon Lindelof, and maybe David Chase. There will be alcohol involved. Think about it.
10. You quote movies, almost verbatim, after you've seen them only once. After the second time, you start telling people what the commentary tracks said about specific scenes.

So there they are. Certainly not the only ten ways to know you're hooked, but these are the ones that came to mind this morning.

If you can think of more, comment it up suckas.

See you in the funny pages...

PS: Read the column I'm talking about here