Those who know me are familiar with the fact that watching CSI makes me really, really angry. Now I have a new source of anger — Stephen King’s monthly column on the back page of Entertainment Weekly. I’ve never really respected his abilities as a writer, although I read many of his books in high school and enjoyed at least three of them. In general though, I find he’s quite the hack, with a fixed bag of tricks that he hauls out again and again, and the trait of stealing from himself is only getting worse as he ages.

Now he’s got this “Pop Culture King” column and it’s by far the worst part of my most beloved magazine. I don’t know why he gets street cred as a pop culture expert just because he’s a famous author, and certainly, his column sucks so bad as to leave me feeling enraged every time it shows up. His general tone is that of a patronizing father — in fact, he cutsily refers to himself often as “Your Uncle Steve” — and he always acts like he knows so much more than the rest of the world when it comes to TV, movies, and music. A typical column will feature him talking about how much he loves a movie, or a TV show, or a book, and how the rest of the world are either a) morons for not appreciating its glory, or b) morons for jumping on the bandwagon and loving something popular without really thinking about why it’s so good. Even this week, when he tried to support Veronica Mars — something I want the whole world to do — I got angry. It’s the way he wrings his hands in lament that the rest of the world just can’t appreciate genius like he can.

At first I used to just sigh and ignore his column, then I stopped reading it altogether. I crossed the line to actually getting angry at it when he wrote a column in defence of Michael Jackson — not that he doesn’t have the right to defend his friend, but the way he slammed the media for their coverage of his trial — the same media he wants to use to his own advantage — seemed so hypocritical. Since then I can’t seem to stop myself from reading his column but then I’m up late, being mad, just like when I used to catch a rerun of CSI too late at night.

Damn you, Uncle Steve, and your hours of lost sleep! You suck.