Harry Potter clones

Harry Potter is here! Harry Potter is here! Sing it from the rooftops! Yell it in the streets! Send owls to everyone you know but, most importantly, buy your tickets now and stand in line for two hours because if you don't see it now, you may have to wait till next weekend, or sometime within the next three months when it will still be in theaters!

Thousands of Americans have caught the Potter fever, a disease with contagious symptoms of painting lightning on one's forehead and buying pointy hats, plastic wands, and black glasses without lenses.

The Potter fever created a horde of three-feet tall Harry Potter clones which descended upon the Uptown, transforming the D.C. theater into a Hogwarts wonderland. All the theater lacked was computer-generated effects and an even amount of students from school houses besides Gryffindor. Even the owls were not lacking; a few mini-Harrys were spotted carting them around and strangling them while Voldemort was being dusted in true "The Mummy Returns" fashion.

According to the Washington Post, the boy wizard earned $31.6 million on Friday and took $93.5 millions for the three-day weekend, stealing the opening-day crown from "Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" (28.5 million in 1999) and taking the opening-weekend honors from "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" ($72.1 million in 1997).

Name a record and Potter grabbed it faster than a golden snitch: biggest first day, second day, third day, biggest November opening and non-holiday opening, and so on. "Harry Potter reached the $100 million mark faster than any other film has."

When Book 2, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," hits theaters in autumn 2002, the phenomenon will most likely be repeated twicefold as a new generation will have read the book in anticipation for the first film.