According to a report from the AP, Apple and the four major music conglomerates are hashing out a plan to enhance sales of full album downloads. With the rise of iTunes and other legal download services, music fans have chosen to download single tracks over full-lengths, meaning less money for the cash-strapped music industry.  

Those of us who have frequented West Chester in the past to purchase geometrically shaped light fixtures know how welcoming the township can be. That's why we were surprised today to hear that leaders there are considering converting the township into a city, which would give them the ability to impose a 1 percent income tax. Critics say that will upset members of the Cincinnati Tea Party because they've never had to protest in their own neighborhood before.  

When the Aerosmith/ZZ Top concert at Riverbend was postponed last week due to an "unspecified" injury to one of the band members, our first thought was "beard injury." Alas, it appears ZZ's Billy Gibbons did not get his famous facial hair stuck in a toaster.  

It's been a tough week here at Minimum Gauge. The world lost one of its giants of culture and we've barely been able to get out of bed, let alone troll for news headlines to make fun of (largely because all the news was focused on our beloved lost icon). But Billy Mays' untimely passing wasn't the only important thing that happened this week.  

Those of us who received frantic text messages reading the likes of "MJ died today … FUCK!" were surprised and relieved to find out later that basketball legend Michael Jordan was, in fact, alive and well. The news wasn't so great for Pop icon Michael Jackson, who died suddenly at his Los Angeles home at age 50 and received hours of TV news tributes, tweets and descriptions of his "troubled" life in his honor.  

It's almost beyond belief that we're on the cusp of the last year of the first decade of the new millennium. What does 2009 hold for us? Axl Rose will release a 10-CD box set of material that was considered for 'Chinese Democracy,' while the late Tupac Shakur will mount his first posthumous tour.