.

This is it. Wow. It's amazing to think that the company held no value for anyone aside from liquidators.

The Bluths make HuffPo

When I first came across this, I did the Internet surfing equivalent of a double-take. And then I looked for a "partner post" or some other indication that this was a paid advertisement. Nope, it's the real deal:

The Huffington Post has an Arrested Development page. Seriously.

Perhaps this isn't much of a stretch, though: when you consider that other HuffPo pages are devoted to such topics as the U.K. phone hacking scandal and U.S. politics, the Bluth clan seems to fit right in.

Counting down

In my worst estimation of the Borders mess, I didn't imagine this. I have a location just down the road here -- as I've written before, the staff can be (and has been, on numerous occasions) a pain in the you-know-where, but it's nice to know I'm so close to so much great literature. At the rate this thing is going, though, that store is going to be replaced by an auto dealership in no time.

Joyless

I must have "bookstores on the brain." The following from indie bookstore employee (and blogger) Emily Pullen in southern California, about the closing of Borders locations there:

" ... there ain't no joy in a bookstore closing. Ever."

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Borders and bankruptcy

I've been pretty clear in my remarks in the past about Borders: bad Internet strategy, arriving late to the e-reader game, poor customer service ... there's no way to ride out such bad decisions (and, yes, poor customer service is a decision). But I couldn't help but read the news about the company's filing for bankruptcy and think about those dedicated employees who not only loved their jobs and cared about the customers, but also loved books and cared about promoting them, selling them, getting people excited about them. I think there are fewer of those than you might suspect -- I've put in many, many hours in bookstores (including a 27-hour shift once; don't ask) and was surprised that so few of my co-workers shared my passion for the printed page -- but if there are only a few hundred among the thousands of folks who will lose their jobs, that's still sad.

People liked to rail against the big box bookstores back in the day, and I myself heard a lot of that. But without places like Barnes & Noble, where I worked, and Borders, where friends of mine worked over the years, many book lovers might not have been able to get jobs in the book retail industry. At the few independent bookstores in the area, there weren't many available jobs and turnover was rare. Meaning: far fewer jobs for folks like myself. When the big stores came into town, they brought jobs with them. Jobs that meant the other folks who loved books had a chance to play "kid in a candy store."

Hopefully, the real book lovers out there will find another job selling books in their area. And the others -- those who were working at Borders, but just because it was a job -- hopefully there's an opening at the Chico's down the road.

In the meantime, let's keep our fingers crossed that The Powers That Be at Borders have a turnaround plan that will keep the remaining stores open ... or at least many of them. I'll freely admit that I buy a lot of my books at Amazon.com nowadays, but a community without a bookstore is a sad, sad thought.

Gervais asked to host Globes again

Of course he was. Irrelevance is far worse than a catty host.

[Update] Or perhaps not. My prediction: no Gervais next year, and the broadcast dips 10 percent.

Exclusive Thor poster

I guess I'm in a poster phase (if talking about the Japanese Black Swan poster and the following can be considered a "phase"). Here's another I like:

 

Printed exclusively for folks who worked on the film. Get the full story here.