Saturday morning coffee

It's the last day of 2011 so let's wrap up with one final installation of "Saturday morning coffee," shall we?

- If you're looking for an entertaining alternative to a New Year's Eve party or New Year's Rockin' Eve with Dick Clark, check out Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in the theaters. There's a reason it's the box office hit of the holiday season.

- Imitating Santa Claus does not pay. A Stockton, CA teen, George Herrera, tried to sneak back into his home, after breaking his parents' curfew, by climbing down the chimney. Herrera got stuck and firefighters had to be called to pull him to safety.

- Viggo Mortensen, star of such movies as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, offers us this week's quote of the week. Mortensen has no patience for actors who go through the motions once they've made it big and said this in a recent interview: "You're tired!? Come on! The crew isn't tired? The crew who got here two hours before you and who'll be here two hours after you leave, and who are being paid, in many cases, one thousandth of what you're being paid!? Life is too short to work with idiots."

- Of the 11 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced this month, only one is a woman--singer/songwriter Laura Nyro. Since its founding in 1983, only 40 of the 296 inductees have been women or included female members.

- On any given day, 58% of us go online for no other reason than to have fun or pass the time. (Source: Pew Research)

- Looking ahead, what should we expect from 2012? According to The Hollywood Reporter, here are five trends for 2012: 1. Facebook finally goes public. 2. Stars take more control, i.e., taking more control of user-generated content. 3. NBC's Olympics battle Twitter. (Can the network control the flow of information so that tweets don't pre-empt programming?) 4. Hollywood's box office slump faces a crucial test--was the box office lag of 2011 an aberration, or the sign of a trend? 5. James Murdoch feels the heat as the News Corp. scandal deepens.

Let me sign off by saying that, once again, it's been a kick writing for those of you who follow this space for my idle ramblings. Here's wishing you the absolute best in the New Year!