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.

There's apparently this barbershop in Chicago named Fannie's. Started in 1961, the son of the original owner is now changing the place, adding big-screen TVs and putting the barbers in hot pants. Women barbers, I assume. The Chicago Tribune has a story on this move, but the story's behind the site's paid-archive wall.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of this concept. I don't think it's my style. But I do support barbershops in general, so maybe even this place falls under that umbrella. To each his own, as long as it's a barbershop. As far as Chicagoland goes, I stand by the Noyes Boyz.

Laveranues Coles discusses why he left the Redskins.

"He said: 'If you come back here, you'll never play again,' " Coles recalled, adding that Snyder promised to send him a flat-screen TV on which to watch games. " 'We'll bench you for two years then we'll cut you.' He said: 'If you come back, we'll torture you.'"

Read on.

A quote and a cartoon highlight the Feb. 7 New Yorker for me. It's a thin issue. The quote is from conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, "I don't believe in imposing my emotion of the music — I believe in drawing the emotions out of the music." The cartoon is here.

I'm not an Elvis nut. I promise.

In October, pollster Harris Interactive ran an online survey. "If you could make a 15-minute cell phone call to any of the following, who would you call?" Or whom even?

Elvis lost.

Also in October, ElvisNews.com ran an online survey of its own: Should the King's famed jumpsuits be put behind glass at Graceland?

Elvis won, and in a way, we all did. We got a long response from Elvis Presley Enterprises on the topic of jumpsuit conservation.

Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Bart and Lisa: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool — not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried
everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to
be told you're cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?

Be Cool is the worst movie I've seen in years. And I say this as someone who saw Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. For as idiotically broad and by the numbers as Bridget was, Be Cool is worse.

How? Be Cool stives. It wants to be as cool and as smooth as Get Shorty, and it fails miserably. It is the kind of movie where the female lead begins dialing her phone before announcing, "I'll call her." It is the kind of movie where we hear "Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door" sung three times before the male lead says, "I think that's Bob Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door." It is the kind of movie where the most overexposed artists in rock and hip-hop — Aerosmith and the Black-Eyed Peas — will be name-dropped and then greeted by the main characters.

True, the reviews are already mostly negative for Be Cool. But in allowing more than one sentence of positive reaction, as these reviewers do, they are entirely misleading. Music, movie, race, sexuality, and violence jokes have never fallen so flat so often in a contained space.

I know I'm being vague here, but please trust me. You, reader, whoever on Earth you are, are cooler than this sequel. Living with regret, I am telling you that now.