MY QUESTION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT:  So I'd really like to see the apparently super-awesome new action movie directed by Brad Bird, but I have no interest in seeing Tom Cruise in a fourquel.  So the Clooney films and Hugo top the list of what I'd like to see this weekend, but what's on yours?

GET A LIFE AND A $100 TICKET: Hugh Jackman's singing, dancing Broadway extravaganza has become quite a hot ticket, so who's the next star to give us a solo performance? Why, William Shatner, whose Shatner's World: We're Just Living In It will have a limited run in February.

CAUSE OF DEATH WAS NOT A LETHAL MIXTURE OF POP ROCKS AND COKE: Edie Stevenson, the copywriter responsible for the famed Life cereal Mikey commercial, has died at the age of 81.

NO ONE, AND I MEAN, NO ONE, COMES INTO OUR HOUSE AND PUSHES US AROUND:  Unless by "our house" you mean Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger's "Rudy Nutrition" energy drink pump-and-dump scheme and by "no one," you're excluding the Securities and Exchange Commission, to which Ruettiger today agreed to pay a $382K fine, as well as a permanent bar on serving as an officer or director of a public company and other restrictions, for his admitted violations of securities law. It is unclear whether Ruettiger remains five foot nothin', a hundred and nothin', and hardly a spec of athletic ability.

DID NOT GO GENTLE: I am consciously grazing against the edge of our No Politics rule, but I would be remiss if I did not note the unfortunate passing last night of Christopher Hitchens, esophageal cancer having claimed him at age 62.  The profoundly prolific polemicist gleefully knocked down orthodoxies, assuredly pissing off each of us on multiple occasions, but, wow, what wit! what writing! His was a brain worth following wherever it chose to go. “I personally want to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive,” he once wrote, “and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.”

Christopher Buckley has some thoughts, while Vanity Fair has compiled much of his writing for the site and his Daily Show appearances, along with a video compilation of his best ripostes.

Bonus: Mental Floss on ten lesser-known folks who passed away in 2011.

COULDN'T MISS THIS ONE THIS YEAR:  By Maret's request, a (slightly edited) repeat of a question Isaac asked last year at around this time:

With just days until Christmas (and Hanukkah) and a handful of people likely left on your (my) list (if you are my brother, STOP READING RIGHT NOW), let me ask this question: what is the best commercially available gift you have ever (or recently) received or would like to receive, with a value no greater than, say, $100 or $150?

WHY DON'T YOU JUST JUMP OFF THE ROOF, RIGHT HERE AND NOW? THAT'S WHAT YOU REALLY WANT, ISN'T IT? YES, YOU DO. YOU SMOKE CRACK, DON'T YOU?  The actor who played Sams in Lean on Me, Jermaine Hopkins, was arrested for trying to buy 200 pounds of marijuana from an undercover cop.