(C’mon, if you had to hang out with these dudes, you’d be wasted too)

Apparently the New York Times is getting lazy and has started hiring over caffeinated soccer moms to write editorials in which they argue with themselves over whether something is worrisome.  Today’s issue?  Does Harry Potter promote teen drinking?  The annoyingly named Tara Parker-Pope writes…

Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem?
In scene after scene, the young wizards and their adult professors are seen sipping, gulping and pouring various forms of alcohol to calm their nerves, fortify their courage or comfort their sorrows.
Previous Harry Potter movies have shown drinking, but this one takes it to a new level.
In one scene, Harry, Ron and Hermione order butterbeers at the pub, and Hermione ends up with a frothy mustache. While it’s never been entirely clear whether butterbeer is alcoholic, it seems to have an effect on the normally uptight Hermione, who acts tipsy walking home as she throws her arms around the boys.
As the mother of a 10-year-old Harry Potter fan, I was taken aback by the reaction of the young people in the theater. They snickered at Hermione’s goofy grin and, later, guffawed when an inebriated Hagrid passed out.
“Hermione is such a tightly wound young lady, but she’s liberated by some butterbeer,” [Liz Perle, editor in chief of Common Sense Media] said. “The message is that it gives you liquid courage to put your arms around the guy you really like but are afraid to.” [NYTimes]

(*gasp*) Oh my, not the truth!  How vulgar!  Where’s the sparkling white vampire to save them from temptation?  Meanwhile, the other day, I saw hobo using the New York Times as a diaper.  Now, I realize I may be playing devil’s advocate here, but I think whether the New York Times promotes hobo diapers is a discussion we as a society need to have.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince topped the box office, earning $159.7 mil in five days, making it the best start of all the Potter movies and the sixth highest 5-day gross of all time.  It also broke a foreign box office record with $237 mil in 54 countries.  But this is America, we don’t care about that.

[Pictured: Some vandals dorks in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin have spread Harry Potter fever to the city's stop signs.  I'd assume they had something better to do but it was either this or butter sculpting.]

Elsewhere, Brüno dropped almost 73% in its second weekend, which is a shame because I saw it and wasn’t disappointed in the least (a talking urethra, people!).  It fell to number four and though it’ll earn out, it’s not going to pull Borat numbers.  Meanwhile, The Hangover is a phenomenon at this point, staying at number five in its seventh week of release (Up is the only other movie in the top 10 that’s been out longer, at eight weeks) and grossing almost $236 million total.  And lastly, I Love You Beth Cooper is almost out of the top ten with just $2.7 million, which is $2.7 million more than that flaming diarrhea deserves.  Full top 10 after the jump.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince earned $104 million worldwide yesterday, setting a one-day international box office record.

The U.S.-Canadian tally, which includes a record $22.2 million from midnight showings, marks the second-biggest Wednesday opening domestically. Only last month’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” scored a bigger midweek first-day gross, with $62 million in domestic ticket sales on Wednesday June 24, according to Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com.

The latest “Harry Potter” ($58.18 million in North America) also ranks as the fourth-highest single-day gross for a film release in North America, behind No. 1 “Dark Knight” ($67.1 million), No. 2 “Transformers: Revenge,” and third-place “Spider-Man 3″ ($59.8 million).

The first five films in the franchise, one of the most lucrative in Hollywood history, have so far taken in about $4.5 billion collectively at the global box office. [AP]

Meanwhile, box office records weren’t the only records Harry Potter was breaking, as Daniel Radcliffe broke the record for looking like a porcelain doll that rapes.

[Harry Potter tattoos via GWS]

The Huffington Post recently posted this article from something called The Borowitz Report:

A rabid Harry Potter fan took his life yesterday after inadvertently learning a plot spoiler from the soon-to-be-released J.K. Rowling movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”
Jude Ralston, 32, of Hudson, Ohio left a suicide note indicating that since overhearing the plot spoiler at a shopping mall earlier in the day, “I no longer have a reason to live.”
Family and friends who gathered for a candlelight memorial outside Mr. Ralston’s house remembered a man who seemed to live only for Harry Potter – and wondered if they could have done anything to prevent his tragic fate.
“When Jude got that vanity license plate that said ‘Hogwarts,’ that seemed harmless enough,” said Polly Clovis, who attended Model U.N. with Mr. Ralston while the two were in high school. “But when he started wearing that wizard hat around town, we really should have seen that as a cry for help.”

Now, I’d never heard of the Borowitz Report before I read this article, but I figured anyone who’s not a total idiot could figure out this story is an Onion-like satire, i.e., not real.  Like the other article on Borowitz’ website, about how John Ensign wants someone to stimulate his package.  But it turns out the internet has lots of total idiots, including:

TheInsider, who reported the fake story, adding, “Do you personally think such an act is possible and necessary?”  I love when blogs ask you questions at the end of posts.  Questions say, “I’m too lazy to do my job, what do you think, anonymous person on the internet?”

ICYDK.com, who just copied and pasted the entire story.  Well done.

PerezHilton, of course, who seems to have taken his article down since then.  See?  Even the unfunny sociopath with the mind of a 3-year-old figured it out.  (eventually).

BunnywithFangs, who calls the fictional guy who killed himself “a Moron.”  Would that be considered irony?

And those are only four of 1,684 posts of this story.  Anyway, sorry to get all blogging-about-bloggers on you guys this morning, but I thought it newsworthy that people could still surprise you by how dumb they are.  And as for Huffington Post, if you guys want to report real news, you might want to take more precautions with your fake articles.  Like me, I require all my readers to wear helmets.  (Mostly because of the head butts).  [Thanks to RoboPanda for the tip]

Emma Watson is super purty, and thank God she’s 19 now so I can say that without whispering it while looking over my shoulder.  If ogling girls born in the 90s is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

These were taken at the premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in London last night.  Daniel Radcliffe also showed up, and holy sh-t can we get this kid a stylist?  You couldn’t possibly make him look more like Little Lord Fauntleroy than this.  He’s paler than the ginger kid, he’s sporting a haircut that would’ve gotten your ass kicked even in the 80s, and that suit looks like if a jockey got a job as an undertaker.  I love the three shot where Emma Watson is completely dry and looks like a fairy princess and they other two look like trolls they dredged from the moat.

[via DailyMail]