Blender magazine officially unplugged

The death mask-- this month's issue of Blender appropriately features Kelly Clarkson on the cover.

Bathroom readers nationwide are donning the black armband and the obsidian veil--after a decade scampering around Maxim's shadow, living off its t-n-a scraps, Blender magazine, the 15 year old music and, ahem, "gentleman's" magazine closed up shop this morning, severing 30 jobs and leaving Alpha Media, its pitiable owner, holding the leftovers.

It may have preceded Maxim magazine chronologically (Blender's first issue was in 1994, Maxim's in 1995), but for some reason, its identity has always been of even more middling sex appeal, and in its last few years, its music reporting was of such shallowness and vapid transparency that, unlike with Maxim and Playboy, no feasible claim could be made that you were buying that issue with Kelly Clarkson on the cover for the articles.

But the newsworthiness of Blender's closing should be taken seriously-- amid a tsunami of newspaper closures across the country, the toppling of print periodical's glossy, spine-bound kin is another alarming step towards that fearsome singularity that awaits just beyond our event horizon. And certainly, the terrifying question must now be poised on thousands of quivering lips-- will Barracuda be next?