An aside to start. The New Yorker's music critic wrote about Nellie McKay a while back. He likes her more than I do. I think references to MLA style have no place in art.

Anyway. The songs I'll be hoping to hear this weekend are three: Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone, in original rock or dance remix versions, because every sellout deserves a opportunities for brief redemption; Amerie's 1 Thing (full audio), because go-go deserves a goodtime jangle and a woman's voice, Georgetown-graduated to boot; and Signs from Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake and Charlie Wilson, because it's Snoop … but sparkly.

I'll also be listening for the first single from Stevie Wonder's long, long-delayed new album. The album is A Time 2 Love, the single is So What the Fuss. The Tom Joyner Show is going nuts for the funkiness this week, but right now I don't think the funk quotient redeems the shame hammer hanging over the whole thing. "Shame" in the verses, "shame" in the chorus. Listen for yourself on this Stevie fan site. I need to hear it some more and figure out if I'm missing something.

For Washington Nationals fans, the St. Petersburg Times has been running a cautionary tale in its pages this week, "What went wrong? Devil Rays 1995-2005." From the ownership to the stadium to the players, the paper examines how a new franchise could stumble from the gate and never recover. The team's first game sold out, Marc Topkin writes, "and it would be six years before they got another."

As a different story goes, a man was going through old boxes in his grandfather's shed. On the back of an old chainsaw box, he found a series of unannotated black-and-white drawings. He then invited readers to turn the drawings into a story, a micro graphic novel of sorts. By the hundreds, they did.

Woodward and Bernstein have given their Watergate papers to the University of Texas, and the school has put many of the major documents online. My favorite is Woodward's notes from the first court hearing, "5 men arrested…." Beyond the importance of the notes, it's more than a little comforting to see the note-taking style. It's a scrawl.

Hammacher Schlemmer is looking for a catalog writer. As much as I'd love the employee discount — daddy needs a new pair of shoes with a built-in Bose radio — I don't think I could do the job. First, there's style. It's not my type of gifting. And then there's originality. With our formative years the same as Seinfeld's, how can anyone from my generation write anything other than a Peterman? "Five button placket, relaxed fit, innocence and mayhem at once."

The Hey Fake Peterman blog has more blurbs.

It ends.

Tom Hanks To Play Red Square Elvis.

As the Chesapeake stretches through southern Maryland, St. George Island is losing its accent. The Washingon Post tells me so. The island's accent appears to be going the way of the rest of the region.

Almost 50 percent of the region's residents were born in a state other than the one where they live, which is more than other big cities and close to twice the national average. Linguistically, that means "nobody really has any idea what Washington, D.C., is," said David Bowie, a linguistics professor at the University of Central Florida.

Which should explain a good deal to people not from here about people from here. The southern distinctions are scattered but available, and non-northernness may just as well apply.

Staples reinvents the stapler. I've got my Swingline sitting here on my desk, but I'm impressed.

"Odd Job favors unorthodox reworkings of classic rock, soul, and jazz tunes, including an unforgettable cover of "Foxy Lady" featuring Hirsch's wailing vocal interpretation of Hendrix's effects-drenched guitar."

Can you hear it? I can't. But the words sound cool.

The highlights later in the Jan. 24 and 31 issue of the New Yorker are snippets of American characters. In the front, Talk of the Town takes a flight and sits next to a Randy Quaid-like tsunami aid worker. In the back, movie critic David Denby looks at Ben Stiller. Closely.

His face seems constructed by someone playing with the separate eyes, noses, and mouths of a children's mix-and-match book. There's nothing wrong with the features, but they don't quite go together. His forehead is high; his eyes sink into caves; his long jaw somehow breaks into a wide, sharklike grin. Stiller knows how to use his big head for broad comic effect: if he pulls down his chin and stares, he looks like a mildly paranoid gibbon, and by furrowing his brow and twisting his mouth he can do a dozen variations on dopey suspiciousness, manic glee, or pawing-the-dirt sexual rage.

Postscript: This prompts Owen Wilson to write a letter.

If you're sick of Elvis, consider this an old bread bookmark, day 1 of 1.

If there's anything I've learned by reading ElvisNews.com, it's that Elvis fans are a defensive bunch. Mess with Elvis, you mess with them.

So when a British breadmaker decided to make loaves of bread in the shape of the King's head, fans got angry. There was even a petition. The breadmaker dropped the idea.

What else angers Elvis fans? Among other things:
• The auctioning of the gold-plated handgun Elvis used to blast the TVs at Graceland.
• The selling of a bootleg called Elvis' Greatest Shit, a collection of his worst music, with the album cover featuring a fake photo of Elvis in a coffin.
• The casting of an Elvis miniseries.