Madge-less Entertainment

SOUND BITES Never mind that the Russians have said ''nyet'' so far on his plans to blast into space this fall. Lance Bass still went to Moscow on Friday for tests related to his orbital dreams. It was the 'N Sync member's first visit to Russia, a country he told Reuters was, ''very cool. It's everything I imagined it to be.'' He headed to a medical institute outside the city for what he called ''the normal physical, you know. Checking the heart out, the eyes, the ears. I'm all wired up.'' Of course, there's still the little matter of booking a seat on the shuttle. ''We have received no information from him,'' Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos spokesman Sergei Gorbunov told Reuters. ''Of course, there is a possibility. There is always a possibility. But he has taken no official steps to arrange the trip.'' Explained Bass, ''That's what I'm here for, just to test to see if my body can handle space. If I get the ok, I guess I'll go up in November.''...

The ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' juggernaut continues -- without aid from country radio. Sensing an audience for genre-defying music that formatted radio can't reach, ''O Brother'' producer T-Bone Burnett, along with ''O Brother'' filmmakers and Ethan Coen, are starting their own record label. Columbia Records will distribute the new label, DMZ, whose first release on June 11 will feature ''O Brother'' performer Ralph Stanley, a 75-year-old man singing songs he says are between 50 and 400 years old. (''I've always done old-time music, but I'm going back a little farther,'' Stanley tells USA Today.) Also on the DMZ board will be filmmakers Callie Khouri, Sam Shepard, and Wim Wenders, as well as musicians Bono, Elvis Costello, and Tom Waits. Naturally, ''O Brother''-style soundtracks will be on the roster, with the first likely to be the one for Khouri's ''Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,'' which features the likes of Bob Dylan, Lauryn Hill, Alison Krauss, and Tony Bennett in new recordings of old songs.

LEGAL BRIEFS Next time Al Pacino invites you to stay at his house, bring a fire extinguisher. A fire at Pacino's estate in Rockland County, New York, north of New York City, sent several houseguests out into the winter cold in the wee hours on Friday morning. No one was hurt in the blaze, which apparently started by accident in a second-floor bedroom of the guest house of Pacino's Hudson riverbank property. (Pacino was in the main house when the fire started.) Pacino publicist Pat Kingsley declined to name the guests and called the fire ''no big deal'' in a statement, but a police spokesperson in nearby Orangetown said there was heavy smoke and water damage to the guest house....

Barely had Liza Minnelli and David Gest set foot in London during their honeymoon than robbers tried to relieve the bride of a diamond necklace. The couple was in a car, returning from a TV interview Thursday night, when three young men approached them while the car was stopped at a traffic light. One youth reached into the open window, apparently to grab the necklace, but the quick-thinking driver shut the window and sped off before the robbers could get the doors open. Minnelli and Gest were unharmed and did not report the incident to police. ''Both David and Liza love London and weren't aware that these sort of things happen here,'' said a spokesman. ''They have put it behind them now.''