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[ J O Y C E_.M I L L M A N__O N_.T E L E V I S I O N ]___ _______C L O S E . E N C O U N T E R S _______MTV's "FANatic" helps fans invade their stars' space. The term "obsessed fan," like "disgruntled postal worker," is one of those modern shorthand phrases that conjures volumes of psychotic behavior. An obsessed fan is the jerk who shot John Lennon, or the crazy lady who kept breaking into David Letterman's house and telling people she was married to him. But when you think about it, isn't every fan, by nature, obsessed? From the bleacher bum who lives or dies by his favorite team, to the girl who goes to sleep with Leonardo's picture under her pillow, to Rosie O'Donnell using her talk show to meet her idols Barbra Streisand and Tom Cruise, fandom -- fanaticism -- is a very personal thing. We all have reasons for zeroing in on our favorites. And, maybe, we all have fan-o-meters inside us that are preprogrammed to allow us to go just so far to stoke our particular jones. Some people, of course, have amps that go to 11, and that's a scary and dangerous thing. But the rest of us are content to waver between a 5 and an 8, collecting picture sleeve 45s of our favorite bands, sleeping on the sidewalk to score concert tickets, waiting at the stage door for an autograph, writing impassioned fan fiction about Mulder and Scully -- that sort of stuff. The nice part about being a fan is that when you're deep in your private daydream, you can't see how nutty you must look to the rest of the world. Or to your idol. Which is what makes MTV's new series "FANatic" so fascinating and, sometimes, so cruel. For this nightly show, fans (aged 17 and older, please) submit videotapes on which they tell MTV why they need to meet their favorite star. In each episode, an MTV camera crew (with the help of a family member or friend, who gets to go along for the ride) surprises two fans at home or work. The fans are then spirited off to interview their fave face to face in some far-flung corner of the world. Inevitably, the star has a new album or movie to plug, hence his or her cooperation in what has the potential to be a very awkward brush with the public. N E X T_P A G E _| Quintessential MTV