I have a friend. He’s got a name but suffice it to say he’s a he and he’s obsessed with movies. He’s quiet, but can reel off actors, awards, directors, dates, producers, trivia and lines from almost any feature film. I use him as a sort of walking IMDb – “What’s that movie with the black guy who’s a comedian but serious and he wears glasses–” He’s already halfway to the kitchen before he answers, flatly, “I Think I Love My Wife.” He’s the only person I know who prints the Oscar ballot and tallies along. He’s always down to go to the movies. And he loves popcorn – a happy coincidence if I ever knew one.

I like – no, love – people like this, people with definitive interests. People who, when you bring up a band they like, immediately start rattling off all their favorite songs, lyrics, albums, music videos. They tell you about a live performance from ’97 you’ve got to look up and in the same breath ask if you knew the group is from Cleveland. And before you can recount this one time you got carsick in Cleveland they want to know what you think of the latest album, anyway. They can list entire discographies, in order, plus any side projects and probably even a cameo the lead singer made in a 2001 movie with Halle Berry (“She’s from Cleveland too, you know.”)

I love people like this, people who get sidetracked by their curiosity. People who pull up Safari to check their bank account and wind up, two hours later, 15 Wikipedia pages deep in an article about Mackenzie Phillips, the daughter of the guy from The Mamas & the Papas. Not only that, people who want you to know what they know. You’ll meet for lunch and they won’t drone on about who hooked up with or threw up on who over the weekend. They’ll ask if you knew Mackenzie Phillips – the chick in “American Graffiti” who drove around with that high school guy the whole time – is the same chick who played Fiona’s mom in “So Weird?” Isn’t that SO weird?

My dad’s like this, only amplified. At any given time, he’s mildly obsessed with model rockets, the Civil War, Michael Jordan, baseball cards, carpentry, Adolf Hitler, Roman history, grassroots politics and/or flotation devices. He collects classic cars, assembles scaled  Formula 1 racers (which he sometimes uses to harass our beagle), builds sets for the high school’s theater productions, distributes self-authored PSAs acclaiming or berating local congressmen, oversees a line of fashion-forward life jackets and, most recently, welds – a skill he taught himself in our garage, via YouTube videos.

Naturally, I like going home partly just to see what the guy’s up to. I count on him dragging me into his office for a thorough survey of his latest projects; the mid-century clarinet he plans to refurbish, the 5,000 piece Victorian doll house he’s building for my nieces. It kills me. But before I can declare the absurdity of it all, I’m sitting down with a paintbrush and a miniature window pane.

And so lately I’ve been thinking about passions. Not just likes and dislikes, but real – granted, healthy – obsessions. Things people go nuts over. Things people are absolute fanatics for. Things people shamelessly adore. I love when you can tell someone really gets a kick out of something. And I think the whole phenomenon is a chief reason I study journalism; to have an excuse to, you know, ask people what they spend all their time on, and why.

Fascination with other people’s fascinations is still a fascination, right?

– Emily Huizenga can be reached at [email protected]