Evocatively

Bob Dylan's neighbors are irate over the stink emanating from a portable toilet on the crotchety singer's massive Malibu estate. One claims the smell is so bad that it overpowers even the "five industrial-size fans" he's installed in his yard, and others say the fumes have left them physically ill and forced them to "abandon their bedrooms on warm nights."

Dylan and the city have reportedly not responded to repeated complaints, though it's just as well, since if they had, we wouldn't have sterling quotes like this one, from the guy with all the fans: "Its a scandal — 'Mr. Civil Rights' is killing our civil rights."

It's currently unknown whether Dylan is personally responsible for any of the odor (the toilet is reportedly for use by his security guards), though we still think our nation's headline writers should be able to do better than the obvious "Bob Dylan's toilet stench is blowing in the wind," given his large, pun-friendly song repertoire .

Natasha Richardson, the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and 1998 Tony Award winner for her performance as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, is apparently fighting for her life after undergoing a tragic skiing accident in Canada. Reports first surfaced last night that the actress and wife of Liam Neeson had been hospitalized with a "traumatic brain injury"; despite the recent flurry of unsubstantiated reports to the contrary, it appears that Richardson is still alive and is currently being flown to New York City to undergo additional treatment. Our thoughts go out to her family during this incredibly difficult time.

Can you believe we've made it nearly two whole months into another season of television's most obviously fixed show without insider charges of behind-the-scenes fraud? Thankfully, no longer! According to "Gatecrasher," an American Idol staffer has been loudly blabbing to people that judges and producers have already settled on this year's top four contestants: Danny Gokey, Lil Rounds, Adam Lambert, and Alexis Grace.

When asked if this was just her opinion or an actual fact, the female employee purportedly said, "Those ARE the people," and that this was more than simply speculation. What's more, she claims top brass are hoping the finale is between Grace and Gokey, since Rounds and Lambert are too much like previous winners successful contestants (Fantasia and Chris Daughtry, respectively, though we'd never really thought of Lambert as Daughtry-esque).

We're typically wary of allegations made by nameless people whose actual job functions aren't disclosed, but even if this woman is lying about her insider knowledge, all of the charges sound totally plausible to us. From the show's endless pimping of Danny Gokey's deceased wife to the judges' constant overpraise of Lil Rounds to Paula last week telling Adam Lambert she'd see him on the finale, it's been perfectly obvious to most that these singers are this year's chosen four. And the brand-new "Judges' Save" was surely only invented in case America accidentally votes off Alexis Grace in favor of the more likable Anoop. The only suspense left this season is how the judges plan to break all of this to Scott MacIntyre.

We've all been there. Tickets for a hot show — say, a triple bill featuring the Gin Blossoms, Counting Crows, and Hoobastank — go on sale, and, because you either forgot to buy them or didn't time your login to Ticketmaster just right, you find yourself on the outside of the show looking in. So what do you do? If you're anything like us, first you cry for a few minutes, then you get on with the business of tracking down tickets in secondary markets like TicketsNow, eBay, or StubHub (which is owned by eBay). However, now that some artists (*cough* Michael Jackson *cough*) have begun to realize that there is some major money to be made by selling their comp tickets through these vendors (sometimes in excess of $2 million per show), both angry consumers and "legit" artists like Trent Reznor are starting to call bullshit on the whole practice of what the industry is labeling as "dynamic pricing."

What's the phrase — "breaking the cycle"? On the same day that the Game emerged as the latest Chris Brown apologist on rap's margins (don't you guys have some "hustling" to do?) and Brown himself was charged, Ghostface has released three minutes of soothing, R&B-inflected hip-hop dedicated to Rihanna and all "my women out there getting beat up." He also addresses her as a "sexy li'l thing," but we'll give his motivations the benefit of the doubt.

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