Necks are for sheep

With fans turning the area outside the Nokia theater in L.A. into a tent city in advance of the “Eclipse” premiere, the Los Angeles Times examines the phenomenon of fans whose lives are upended by their fierce love of the vampire books and movies. The Times found women who have nearly lost their marriages by neglecting their husbands in favor of “Twilight” fan sites, blogs, and message boards. One woman gushes that she’s seen the movies “over 300 times.”

So-called “Twilight addiction” proliferates on the Internet, where a fan can take any of hundreds of quizzes to self-diagnose their condition, and websites sell hand-made crystal-encrusted T-shirts that say “Twilight Mom.” Some “Twi-Moms” as they’re known, have even argued that their love of Edward and/or Jacob has actually improved their marriages.

“If there is a chemical that’s released when you’re falling in love, your brain has it when you’re reading or watching ‘Twilight.’ You get that utopic feeling of first love and you want to experience it over and over again,” one 50-year-old former engineer who has experienced her own “Twilight”-related marital problems, said. The names “Bella,” “Jacob,” and “Cullen” are climbing the popular-baby-name lists every year as more and more parents make their “Twilight” fandom a permanent part of their families.

While the phenomenon of life-altering “Twilight” obsession is mostly confined to women and girls, the Internet reveals that even some men are falling victim to the vampire love triangle. “How do I go about combating my husband’s ‘Twilight’ addiction?” reads one desperate plea on Yahoo! Answers. “He even has a Team Edward sparkly shirt.”

It seems that the super-fandom known as “Twilight addiction” always reaches a fever pitch, at least in the media, right before a new movie in the franchise is released. With “New Moon”, we learned that “Twilight” mania wasn’t just for teen girls, but their moms as well. With “Eclipse,” we’re seeing grown-up married men afflicted by the obsession. With two more movies to go (“Breaking Dawn” parts one and two, in 2011 and 2012), could the entire U.S. population eventually succumb to this crippling disease?

The Office is past it’s prime anyway.