In 2009, the American Mall was dying. In 2010, the American Mall was still dying. In 2011: Hey, how'd you like to buy an American Mall?

What will save the dying American malls? Costco! Malls will all become Costcos. Better?

To make a few extra bucks, movie star Nicole Kidman has done a sexy, sensual ad for... an as-yet-unbuilt shopping mall in Rio de Janeiro. The ad manages to make Rio look a little ugly and Kidman a lot selly-outy.

The death of the mall has been a meme long enough to have inspired an eponymous website, a documentary, and, with the onset of the recession, a slew of mall deathwatch trend stories. So...how much longer do these monstrosities have?

Libraries are moving into shopping malls in an effort to get Americans to read books.

The parents of a 17-year-old boy filed a police report claiming Jodie Foster grabbed and shoved their son after he took her picture outside an L.A. mall. Spotting a celeb en route to the food court can be dangerous! Updated.

Just in time for Tax Day, the Fed has released the numbers from the Bearn Stearns and AIG troubled asset purchases. Congratulations! You, American Taxpayer, are the proud owner of a shopping mall in Oklahoma City. [BusinessWeek]

"Sly" the giant hell hound that is the baffling New Jersey Nets mascot has a mischievous streak. Watch as he repeatedly frightens holiday shoppers by briefly coming alive before going back to his place as guard of the Champs Sports.

The Way We Live Now: Broke. Britain's broke. Malls are broke. Even comic strips are broke. Broke, broke, broke.

The noble American mall has been killed by the recession. Already dead! So is there a trend piece to be written, still? Yes. Can we sum it up in one sentence? Yes we can:

Did you, who lived through the 80s, ever think you'd live to see the day when you couldn't make money with a mall in America, or with a pub in England? That day has come!

Magazines for teen girls are dying and magazines in general are dying and it's all very scary but Teen Vogue is NOT going to allow that to happen to them, do you hear me? They are NOT. Too many young women depend on them for fashion tips. And if Teen Vogue has to open up a shop in a mall in New motherfucking Jersey and brainwash young impressionable Jersey girls into becoming vapid monsters of conspicuous consumption in order to stay relevant, well, that's just what Teen Vogue is going to do. Bitch.

In its story today on the rise of mall-based tattoo parlors like Tattoo Nation, the WSJ said that Tattoo Nation "has bought Inked magazine to be a larger part of the tattoo culture." Inked's Jason Buhrmester emails us to clarify: "We are actually published by Don Hellinger, the owner of Nylon and Nylon Guys. We want nothing to do with Tattoo Nation and begrudge it for wasting valuable space that could be filled with a tasty Orange Julius." The more you know.

Hm, how to grab shoppers' attention in the cavernous Mall of America, without having to pay some kid $7 an hour to stand there passing out fliers? A hologram man, sent from the future! It's only a matter of time now until Terminator-like robots patrol our nation's food courts, gesturing menacingly with their whirring appendages, their fixed gaze wordlessly urging you to check out the new Sears bathmat sale at the price of your life. For now, though: Best Buy employee holograms. Watch the ghostly salesman give his ever-repeating spiel, below: Click to view
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[via Adrants]

A man was stabbed last night at the Paramus Park Mall. "The bleeding 18-year-old staggered into the mall with a knife in his neck and collapsed," according to reports. This really does clinch it (because last week's mass mall shooting in Nebraska didn't, apparently)—shopping malls are entirely hazardous to public health in every way imaginable. Then again, if you're brave enough to go shopping this month, you're probably helping to defend Christmas from the terrorists. Decisions! [WNBC]

Oh, downtown, we love your little kielbasa storefronts and fly-by-night mailbox huts and your crazy houses of coffee. We've worried about the new giant Walgreen's moving into Astor Place where the wine store was—as if the K-Mart wasn't enough, right by the two Starbucks! The chain stores will destroy all our independent businesses. And guess what? Maybe the small businesses deserve it!