It’s a Twihard-Knock Life

WTF? So you can sleep with Edward??

When I was waiting outside of the Scholastic store in Soho to buy the 7^th Harry Potter book, I saw a reporter from the New York Post who was walking up and down the massive line and interviewing people for a story about the book’s release. I overheard him speaking with one guy who had a lightning bolt scar on his head.

I know what you’re thinking—“All right, it’s kind of odd that an adult man would dress up for the release of a kid’s book, but it’s not totally unheard of. That dude probably wasn’t any weirder than any of the other people in the line.”

Wrong. This nutbar didn’t just draw a lightning bolt on his forehead—as he told the reporter, he had literally carved the scar into his skin with a razor blade.

And to make matters worse, I was ahead of him in line. Yes, I had arrived at the bookstore before the psycho.

So needless to say, I know a thing or two about what happens when fandom gets extreme. Even so, Twihards—people who are obsessed with the Twilight books and movies—take things a step beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. As of Wednesday, at least 2,100 screenings of New Moon, the second movie in the series, were sold out—and those are only the showings measured by MovieTickets.com. There’s also a ton of Twilight merchandise available all over the web, stuff that ranges from normal (t-shirts, posters) to full-on batsh*t crazy (A shower curtain screen-printed with a giant picture of Robert Pattinson’s face. A life size vinyl wall decal of Edward Cullen’s silhouette, accented by the words “Be Safe.” A pair of underwear that’s illustrated with the sexy vamp’s face—inside the crotch). Read More »