WAS IT POPULAR IN ANY MEANINGFUL SENSE OR DO WE JUST CALL IT POPULAR BECAUSE IT WAS SOLD?

[if i had a proper mp3 or video for the aislers set's "hey lover" here's where i'd put it]
They'd rather speculate before they informate.
The Aislers Set: Hey Lover

and aw, heck, music-scribing links of note lately:
Jeremy Jay review

plus a bunch of stuff over at forkcast

and Lil Wayne and Silver Jews reviews going live this week over at Heff's.

WITH A HUNDRED MASKED COWARDS AT HIS BACK

The price that I do pay to appreciate the beauty they're killing.
Air France: Collapsing At Your Doorstep (cross-posted from p4k)

In case you had your doubts about the impending demise of printed newspapers, here's your paper of record in un-self-aware, quasi-ironic mode (an experienced reporter killed trees for this):

A Night Out That Became a Night In. In the Bar

The singer R. Kelly wrote a popular R & B opera about being trapped in a closet. Nicholas White became a minor celebrity after security cameras caught him stuck in a Manhattan elevator for 41 hours. Add to these annals of urban misfortune the tale of Kyle Hausmann, a mild-mannered paralegal who recently found himself locked in a Brooklyn bar.

The night in question started innocuously enough for Mr. Hausmann, 24, a Harvard graduate who lives with a roommate in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It was May 20, a Tuesday, and Mr. Hausmann’s roommate was the D.J. at Trophy Bar in Williamsburg.

Mr. Hausmann got to the bar at 8 p.m. It was a spirited night. There was dancing. There was drinking. Mr. Hausmann downed a few more drinks than he normally would.

“Really sweet guy,” Mandy Misagal, one of the bar’s three owners, who was bartending that night, said of Mr. Hausmann. “Really wasted but super nice.”

The hours melted away. Four a.m. approached, closing time, so Ms. Misagal tallied the night’s receipts as a worker cleaned up. Mr. Hausmann was milling about with the last stragglers. Then, around 4:30, he went into a bathroom. And for reasons that are unclear even to him, he stayed in there for quite a while...

(click for mp3 via mediafire)
[H]eroes and villains both want the same things and ... it is their way of trying to get them that separates one from the other.
Anthony Newley: The Father of Girls

Next time you're wondering why the national press corps seems uninterested in asking tough questions about major issues, imagine what sort of terrible novel the reporter would probably prefer to be writing instead.