I wasn’t ready to leave New York — I’m never ready to leave New York! — but our Sunday there was a pleasant one; we had brunch with our Brooklyn-based friends, and then caught a matinee of Richard Bean’s “One Man, Two Guvnors,” a raucous British farce that has been a huge hit on the West End (it’s still playing here). If you’ve seen “Noises Off,” another wildly popular British farce, you know what to expect — slamming doors, mistaken identities, and mildly naughty sex jokes. James Corden, who originated the lead role of Francis on the West End and recently scored a Tony nomination for his Broadway turn in the same part, reminded me a bit of a cross between Andy Richter, Chris Farley and Ricky Gervais. There are a few audience participation bits, one of which seemed to throw Corden for a loop. A running gag in the first act is his perpetual hunger, as he can’t afford any food; he breaks the fourth wall by asking the audience if anyone has a sandwich, and somebody actually offered him one. (A hummus sandwich, no less — “you do know that this play is set in 1963?” asked Corden incredulously.) It was all very funny, but it also illustrated the dangers of flirting with the fourth wall — you never know what might happen!

The long (90 minutes) first act ends with a set piece that had most people in the audience laughing so hard they were gasping for breath; the trouble with the second act is that they have to wrap up all of the various storylines and pair up the characters romantically, and it’s a bit anticlimactic after all of the inspired lunacy that came beforehand. Still, anyone who loves a good British farce will have a great time at the theater. Plus, there’s a skiffle band playing during the set changes that’ll really get you in that early 60s mood.

We took an early (8 AM) flight to London, which I thought sounded brilliant because usually you arrive in Europe early in the morning and have to stumble around like a zombie until your hotel room is ready, then attempt to stay awake ’til you collapse out of sheer exhaustion at 8 or 9 PM. At least that’s been my usual routine. Now we arrived at Heathrow around 8 PM, breezed through customs, and took the tube to our hotel. For those of us who can’t sleep on planes, I think daytime flights are a very good idea.

It’s funny because it’s true — there are maybe three days a year in the Bay Area where you don’t have to carry a light sweater! And while I do believe I live in the most beautiful place in the U.S., there’s no denying that New York is special. Usually, I’m not a fan of crowds, noise, or traffic, all things New York has in spades, but what I do love so dearly is the sense of endless possibility here — the feeling that there’s so much to see and do here that you could never exhaust it. I always hate to leave New York, because there are always a hundred things I wish I’d had time to do.

It’s always hard to decide which plays to see, even after eliminating the obvious dreck like the “Spiderman” or “Ghost” musicals. We were lucky enough to get tickets to the new revival of “Porgy & Bess,” starring the legendary, multi-Tony-winning Audra McDonald. The remount became controversial when Stephen Sondheim slammed it (before it opened) in the New York Times, decrying the changes that had allegedly been made; as it happens, I’d never seen “Porgy” before, so I wasn’t distracted by any deletions or substitutions. (Apparently it is a pretty faithful version; a new ending was tried and discarded.) I feel like I’m kind of stating the obvious by saying that “Porgy & Bess” is a stunning play — it’s sort of like someone seeing “King Lear” for the first time and raving how that Shakespeare fellow was quite a writer — but really, I was blown away by the beautiful music, the dramatic situations (if you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s pretty suspenseful!) and the brilliant performances. David Alan Grier, perhaps best known as a comedian (we’ve seen him do stand-up at Cobb’s), does a charismatic turn as Sporting Life; Norm Lewis is an enormously likable Porgy, a man you can’t help but root for; and McDonald gives one of those searing performances that people will remember for years. I’ve been lucky enough to see quite a few Broadway shows over the past couple decades, and this one ranks right up there with the best.

Much as I’d like to imagine that she faked her own death and is still alive and kickin’ down in her wintertime home of St. Pete, I know she’d never do something like that. Family was too important to her.

I have been sorting through stacks of papers in my ongoing efforts to tidy up the place, and I found a card she sent me, dated April 20, 1994. I was actually rather scrupulous in filing away all of her correspondence to me in a box several years ago, so I’m not sure how this one, which predates my move to California, got loose. However, it’s a very significant letter and if she were here, I don’t think she’d mind my sharing it with you.

Dear Sue:

Would you believe I found the article that changed Farfar’s life so much? He had given up a trip in 1937 — because of a “deal” (we would have seen Berlin — attended a friend’s wedding in London, etc.). He always regretted not going. From the time he read the enclosed (I think it was 1946) we began enjoying all those wonderful trips around Europe. I’m mighty happy our lives changed so much — as we both treasured all those great memories — and I still do — to this day!

Have 1,000 things to do between now & May 7 (tea here put on by your Mom & friends) — so I’m keeping very busy.

Much love,
Farmor

I have no doubt that she was concerned about making sure the house was clean for her tea party on the 7th. Some things just run in families.

I also can’t help but wonder what a visit to Berlin would have been like in 1937. I think I would have been happy to miss out on that particular place and time, considering what was going on then.

Along with the aforementioned article and the card was a clipping showing the late Sen. Edward Kennedy standing next to a woman identified in the caption as Ingalill Thunborg, “wife of the Swedish ambassador to the U.S.” Farmor had written, in her elegant handwriting: “This lady better not get too friendly with this poor excuse of a man!!” Ah, that was my grandmother, all right!

Anyway, I thought I was going to have to type in the article — what were the odds that an essay from the November 1946 issue of Readers Digest would be available online? — but I guess everything is findable in the world wide web, since here it is. I hope you will read it, but the gist of the article, written by an OB/GYN in Piedmont, California (a town located very near to where I live), is about a workaholic physician who is inspired by a stranger’s letter to take a three-month-long vacation. He invites his best friend along, but he demurs, because he’s been “waiting to close a deal.” Finally, the doctor is able to convince his friend to go. At the end of the article, the writer tells us that his friend has since passed away, but “over and over again he said, ‘Fred, I am so happy that we went to South America together. I thank God we did not wait too long.”

The timing is kind of funny (I would say coincidental, but is there really such a thing as coincidence?) since a week from now I’ll be on a plane. Of course, the difference between now and 1946 is that we don’t have to choose between work and vacation. Both Joe and I will be doing our share of telecommuting — I have many clients who depend on me, and as for him, is there any full time worker in 2012 America who can afford to go on vacation for a month? (The French and Germans, on the other hand…)

Still, even doing some work along the way, the most important things we’ll be doing are visiting with friends and family, and enjoying other cultures. My grandmother loved to travel, and I sort of feel like this was her way of wishing me a bon voyage.

Believe me, I am pretty embarrassed to have unearthed such a relic (obviously I haven’t cooked anything involving sesame oil in a very long time). I tend not to pay too much attention to what’s in my fridge unless I’m running out of room in there, or need to replace an oft-used staple. Now, however, I am tidying mercilessly. The reason is that in a week and a half, Joe and I will be leaving the country for a month, and while we are away, our home will be occupied by a couple of very, very kind and generous house- and dog-sitters. I would be absolutely mortified if someone else were to pull out a bottle of sesame oil, only to find that it should have been tossed out three years ago.

As a regular “Hoarders” viewer, I know that my home, while not exactly pristine, is not a danger zone of six-foot-tall stacks of newspapers and moldy food. But I do have a tendency to get wrapped up in my work and hobbies, and neglect the dust bunnies in the corner. I once saw a web site that described the clutterbug’s lot as C.H.A.O.S. (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome). In my case, it’s more like C.H.A.O.W.A.C.H.N. (Can’t Have Anyone Over Without A Couple Hours’ Notice). The last time we “entertained” in our home was back in November; we tend to meet our friends at restaurants, since cooking for a crowd isn’t in my particular skill set, but quite frankly, it would be very helpful if we did have guests come by more often than once every six months. It’s usually the only thing that really motivates me to do some intense cleaning.

Because I know my housesitters all too well, I realize that no matter how much I bust my butt to clean this place before they arrive, I will come home and it will be in a far more pristine state than I left it. I’m sure there is dust lurking in places I never thought to look… and despite my best efforts, I’ll probably overlook some two-year-old half-empty box of crackers stuck in the back of a cabinet.

Incidentally, I’m going to try really hard to blog way more often than usual while I’m on the road, so starting in a couple of weeks, plan to check in frequently to find out where I am and what I’m up to!

There are plenty of other reasons to read Christie, of course, such as her marvelously eccentric characters and the sheer cleverness of her plot machinations. That’s why I was happy to see her play “The Mousetrap” again, despite the fact that I’d already seen it in England a decade ago — and, of course, I recalled precisely who the culprit was. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it here. After all, Christie herself asked the first audience to see it back in 1952 not to reveal the ending.

Perhaps because I’m a lifelong mystery reader, I will admit that when I saw this tale of murder at a snowbound country inn for the first time in London’s West End, I had a pretty good idea whodunit, and my hunch turned out to be correct. However, I still enjoyed it, along with the peculiarly British tradition of serving ice cream at intermission.

The Altarena Theater doesn’t serve ice cream, but they do offer wine and chocolate chip cookies, and who can complain about that? Their 60th anniversary production of “The Mousetrap” has been packing ‘em in, proving that this old warhorse has plenty of good years left in it. Director Kim Saunders and her eight-person cast keep the audience laughing by emphasizing the piece’s comic touches — Damien Sepiri, as the mysterious Italian Mr. Paravicini, hams it up outrageously, while Ross Neuenfeldt is a perfectly flightly Mr. Wren. The actress playing Mrs. Boyle seemed at least a couple of decades too young for the part — I was reminded of an old “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which comic Rachel Dratch donned a gray wig to portray a character twice her age — but for a community theater production, everyone did a fine job of inhabiting their roles. It’s a fun night out, even if you’ve already fingered the perp.

Meanwhile, across the bay, a much more serious piece of theater, Annie Baker’s “The Aliens,” is having its West Coast premiere at the SF Playhouse. Baker is one of the most exciting young playwrights working today — another one of her shows, “Body Awareness,” recently finished a run at the Aurora, and is the best thing I’ve seen so far this year. “The Aliens” isn’t as effortlessly crowd-pleasing and funny as “Body”; in fact, at times, Baker seems to be testing the audience’s limits in this tale of two aimless and troubled 30-something men who hang out behind a small-town Vermont coffee shop, and the naive young employee of the shop who befriends them. There are lengthy periods of silence, when nothing much seems to happen, and then there’s the scene in which one of the characters says the word “ladder” approximately eleventy billion times in a row. It makes sense in context, but I haven’t felt such a palpable sense of audience discomfort since Will Eno’s “Thom Pain,” which also uses silence to provoke a reaction in its viewers.

I will admit that for the first 15 minutes or so, “The Aliens” annoyed me. But then I found myself drawn into the characters’ world, and Baker’s essential humanity and affection for this trio had me hooked. By the end, I felt profoundly moved, and eager to see more of her work (her third major play, “Circle Mirror Transformation,” will reportedly be getting a Bay Area run this fall). However, “The Aliens” is not for everyone. The couple sitting to my right had a long debate at intermission about whether or not to stay for the second act, and while they wound up sticking around  (after some ostentatious sighing on the part of the male half), they both took out their smartphones and checked them during the play. Not wanting to disrupt the production, I tried shielding my eyes from the phones’ glow with my hand, but it was still incredibly annoying. Note to the couple sitting next to me: I hate you and hope you either (a) had a flat tire or (b) missed every bus/train after the show and had to walk home. Note to everybody in the world: if you can’t get through a two-hour play without looking at your phone, stay home (unless, of course, it’s tweet night at the Playhouse… which it wasn’t). As they say at the Alamo Drafthouse: no talking, no texting!

Joe and I did walk past the always-fabulously-attired Brown Twins on the way to the theater, which was awesome. The twins, who, like me, grew up in West Michigan and moved to California as adults, are a true San Francisco treat. Long may they reign over Nob Hill.

So that’s probably how Oakland’s grand Paramount Theatre wound up hosting the epic restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 “Napoleon.” The film preservationist Kevin Brownlow has dedicated much of his life (he’s now 73 years old) to this movie; he first saw scenes from it at the age of 15. Surely the four screenings of “Napoleon” held here represent the culmination of his decades of work.

However, I have to admit I hesitated before buying a ticket. For one thing, the movie is five and a half hours long. Also, I didn’t want to wind up in the nosebleed seats, and the rear orchestra tickets I selected cost $90 each. (The top ticket price was $120.) That sounds like a lot of dough to shell out for a movie, but bear in mind that this silent film had live accompaniment by the Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestra, directed by the great composer Carl Davis. As challenging as it seemed to sit and watch a movie for five and a half hours, I could only imagine how difficult it must be to play music for that amount of time.

As a fan and supporter of the Silent Film Festival through the years, I figured there was no way I could turn down the chance to see “Napoleon.” And you know what? At the end of the five and a half hours (plus two 20-minute intermissions and a 105-minute dinner break), I was actually sorry it was over. The film ends with the 27-year-old Napoleon’s first Italian campaign; Gance’s ambitious plan was to make a six-part biography of Bonaparte, but it was not to be, obviously. So we will have to content ourselves with Part One, which begins with Napoleon as a schoolboy, participating in a snowball fight; it carries through the French Revolution, the siege of Toulon, his imprisonment, courtship and marriage of Josephine, and finally, his triumph in Italy.

The last 20 minutes or so of the film are partly what make it so expensive and difficult to exhibit. Gance filmed it in widescreen, which he accomplished by using three interlocking cameras and then showing the resulting film on three screens. He was way ahead of his time — widescreen was a rarity until the invention of Cinescope in 1953. The Paramount had to construct three separate projection booths to properly display it. When the curtain finally opened, revealing the full triptych of screens, it was a moment I don’t think anyone in the theater will ever forget. There are a couple of shots here (along with some beautiful photos of the Paramount), though of course photos can’t capture the majesty of the moving image, combined with Davis’ rousing score. When the images on the three screens were tinted with the colors of the French flag — one red, one white, one blue — the audience cheered wildly.

It would be nice if the success of “The Artist” introduced more people to the magic of silent film. Personally, I love the realness of it — in that pre-CGI era, if you see a thousand soldiers on horseback, you know that someone actually had to wrangle a thousand men and a thousand horses, and couldn’t simply replicate them through the magic of computers. Sometimes a close-up or a scene will seem to go on way too long, because those of us in the MTV generation are used to quick cuts and rapid-fire editing, or you’ll wonder why the actors are all wearing so much eyeliner (Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean” has nothing on silent film stars). But it’s just because silent films have a style and an endearing cinematic language all their own, and it’s something that I, and many other people dwelling in the 21st century, have come to love.

I don’t know if “Napoleon” will ever get a DVD release — there seem to be a lot of disputes going on in regards to the rights — but even if it does, nothing will ever replicate the experience of seeing it in a beautiful theater packed with movie fans. Here is a little video containing some scenes from the film, accompanied by Davis’ beautiful central theme.

So yeah, I feel extremely betrayed today after his “truthiness” scandal. I listened to the “Retraction” episode of “This American Life” all the way through, even though it was incredibly awkward and painful. It really laid bare how he lied to Ira Glass and the “TAL” team in order to get his story on the air. But while Daisey apologized for letting “TAL” present “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” as journalism, he is not sorry that he embellished the facts in the piece: “I stand by it as a theatrical work. I stand by how it makes people see and care about the situation that’s happening there. I stand by it in the theater.”

I was going to say that Daisey’s excuses reminded me of that old Mark Twain quote, “Never let facts get in the way of a good story,” but then I was unable to find corroboration that Twain actually said that. Since this blog is not a journalistic enterprise, I guess I could probably take the same type of  license that Daisey does. Who cares if what I say is 100% factual, as long as the posts are entertaining? It’s been mentioned that David Sedaris, a frequent “TAL” contributor, reportedly fudges the truth in his tales, but to me, the difference is that the stakes are lower. Nobody really cares if Sedaris’ story of taking guitar lessons from a dwarf teacher is the God’s honest truth or not. But Daisey’s monologue had a higher purpose than merely entertaining the audience — he wanted to create change, even passing out a sheet after the show urging people to take follow-up actions, such as emailing Apple to complain about abuses at the Foxconn plant.

Despite successful runs at Berkeley Rep and New York’s Public Theatre, Daisey was pretty much under the radar — theater is hardly, except at the loftiest Broadway levels of Andrew Lloyd Webber and ABBA, a mass art form — until “TAL” picked up his story and ran an edited version in January. I’ve been following Daisey’s blog for years, and all of a sudden, he was everywhere, becoming the go-to spokesman for the cause. When activists delivered a quarter million petitions to Apple stores urging the company to make “an ethical iPhone,” Daisey was quoted in news stories about the event. He became a frequent guest on high profile TV shows, and wrote op-eds for the New York Times web site and the New York Daily News. And while he told Glass that he worried “all the time” that the untruths in his monologue would eventually come to light, stating that “I was kind of sick about it,” he continued to use his blog to confrontationally call out tech journalists whom he felt were not sufficiently skeptical about Apple.

“One of his weaknesses is his sanctimoniousness,” says an anonymous friend of Daisey’s, quoted in the Daily Beast. “Mike has made himself an easy target because he can’t keep his mouth shut. He got really excited about the press. He didn’t think what the consequences would be of writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times. He didn’t think about what it would mean to be quoted constantly about Apple. He just kept going.”

Ira Glass told Daisey that he ”thought that the story was literally true seeing it in the theater… I saw your nuclear show, I thought that was completely true. I thought it was true because you were on stage saying ‘this happened to me.’ I took you at your word.” Daisey responded, “I think you can trust my word in the context of the theater.” Of course, the trouble only happened when Daisey took his story out of the context of the relative obscurity of the theater, broadcasting it onto radio, TV and in newspapers. My armchair psychologist’s point of view is that he loved commanding a higher profile, reveling in the ability to suddenly communicate with a million people at once instead of a couple hundred at a time in the theater. The average stage actor or playwright doesn’t get asked to appear on Bill Maher’s show. This was the big time.

On “TAL,” Glass mentioned in passing a Daisey monologue I’d never heard of — “Truth,” dealing with the James Frey and J.T. LeRoy literary scandals. It only had a short off-Broadway run, but it did yield this interview that appeared on a blog back in 2006. Reading it now is revealing, to say the least. Daisey insists that “my shows aren’t designed to have messages,” something he’d obviously changed his mind on prior to working on “Agony.” “I can see parts of myself reflected in [Frey's and LeRoy creator Laura Albert's] hungers and failures… I found that the Frey and LeRoy cases make an interesting lens for looking at what our values are in regard to truth, from the personas that some feel they need to inhabit to tell stories, to the famewhoring and literary starmongering that follow, and to the cults of personality that worship experience and testimonial above transformation and synthesis in writing.”

It will be interesting to see what happens to Daisey’s career after this scandal. His blog and Twitter feed have been uncharacteristically silent lately, and he is wrapping up a run of “Agony” at New York’s Public Theatre this weekend. According to the Wall Street Journal, he has “cut questionable sections from the monologue and added a prologue explaining the controversy.” The Public is standing by him, although a one-night-only Chicago performance (where Daisey was to have been introduced by Ira Glass — my guess is that they’re not exactly going to be BFFs from here on out) has been canceled. Considering Daisey’s penchant for mining his own life history for his shows, it wouldn’t surprise me if this incident someday turns up in a monologue. As to whether I’ll go see it… I don’t know. I still respect his talent, but I have no respect for his integrity.

Worst of all, it’s quite likely that he’s done damage to the cause he claims to care about, the abuses of Chinese workers. (A friend of mine posted, tongue-in-cheek, that “the working conditions at all Apple factories in China must be exemplary, so guilt-free iPads for everyone!”) Glass closed the “Retraction” episode by interviewing the New York Times‘ Charles Duhigg, who has reported extensively from Shenzhen. When Glass asked him if he should “feel bad” about the working conditions in Foxconn’s factories, Duhigg replied: “Do you feel comfortable knowing that iPhones and iPads and, and other products could be manufactured in less harsh conditions, but that these harsh conditions are perpetuated because of an economy that you are supporting with your dollars?… If you made different choices, if you demanded different conditions, if you demanded that other people enjoy the same work protections that you yourself enjoy, then, then those conditions would be different overseas.” I hope that message doesn’t get lost because of Daisey’s hubris and poor judgment.

King Peggy

Bartels’ life changed when she received a phone call early one morning stating that she had been chosen King of her African village. The previous King, Peggy’s uncle, had recently died at age 92, and the village elders had to call upon the Ancestors to choose a new ruler. Out of a long list of possible regents, Peggy (the only female on the list) was the winner. Yes, in Ghana, a woman can be King; there are a few other females with that royal title, though it’s still comparatively rare.

Like Harry, who learned that being a wizard was not without its challenges, Peggy soon realized that being King of Otuan, Ghana, was no picnic. For one thing, the village elders had been cheating the town for years, using tax money to pay for alcohol and prostitutes. Meanwhile, the town had no running water, and children had to spend several hours a day walking back and forth to carry often-filthy water to their homes. The royal palace was in a horrible state of disrepair, and there was no money to fix it up — something that had to be done before the late King could be buried in a dignified manner. Somehow, on a secretary’s salary, Peggy was expected to pay for the renovations and a lavish funeral.

Early in her reign, Peggy met journalist Eleanor Herman at a Ghanaian embassy function; Herman was instantly captivated by her story and decided to write about the new King. She traveled to Ghana several times with Peggy, and the result is this book, which is written in the third person, so it’s more biography than memoir. Herman mentions in the afterword that she became interested in Africa after reading Alexander McCall Smith’s “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series; Ghana may be a long distance from Mma Ramotswe’s Botswana, but the traditionally built Peggy may be as close as you can come to a real-life version of Smith’s beloved heroine. She has an unstoppable desire for justice and a solid sense of right and wrong, something which immediately causes conflict with the corrupt elders in her town.

King Peggy is living proof of the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction. There are things that happen in this book, especially the events surrounding the grand funeral Peggy eventually holds for her predecessor, that are so jaw-dropping you might dismiss them as too farfetched if they turned up in a novel.

The book is over 300 pages long, but I couldn’t put it down — I was up ’til 1 AM finishing it, and I hope that Herman and Bartels are working on a sequel. At the moment, Bartels is still a part-time king, continuing to work as a secretary and spending a few weeks in Ghana every year. (She has some new elders watching over the town, including some powerful women, to ensure that the town’s money will never again be misspent.) The palace has been renovated, and the town finally has some fresh, clean water available for its residents, but there’s still a lot to be done. Luckily, King Peggy seems like the right woman to do it. The ancestors chose wisely.

However, once in a while, there comes a show that seemingly becomes part of the national conversation, and starts racking up critical plaudits, awards and magazine covers. “Mad Men,” “Lost,” “Breaking Bad,” “American Idol” and a handful of others may not have Super Bowl or “Cosby”-size ratings, but everybody knows about them; even if you don’t know where AMC lives in your cable line-up, you probably have at least a passing familiarity with the names Don Draper and Simon Cowell.

Most of the time, I tend to ignore the TV chatter, but last year, I kept hearing about a PBS series called “Downton Abbey.” Some kind of costume drama about aristocrats and servants… it sounded a bit like “Upstairs Downstairs,” which was a bit before my time but has a reputation as the ur-Brit period drama. I may not have given “Downton” another thought were it not for the fact that (a) my favorite comedian, Patton Oswalt, started Tweeting relentlessly about it and (b) KQED announced it was running the entire first season on New Year’s Day. In any case, I TiVo’d all the episodes and started recording the new ones, which are currently airing Sunday nights on “Masterpiece.” It took a little while, but we finally sat down to sample the first episode, and within the first 15 minutes, we were both hopelessly hooked.

“Downton” is basically a high class soap opera starring some of the world’s best actors. Some of the plot twists had me groaning — the series’ creator, Julian Fellowes, seems to want to put his protagonists through as much misery as possible, ranging from busted-up romances to World War I — but it turns out the wildest and wackiest turn is actually based on a real incident (don’t click on that link unless you’ve watched Season One!), so I guess I can’t complain too much. The characters tend to be either noble or evil, though the oldest daughter, Lady Mary, is drawn with enough shades of gray that you may find yourself changing your mind about her several times within the space of a few episodes.

My favorite character is Mr. Bates, the Earl of Grantham’s valet, who has a mysterious past that thwarts his budding romance with Anna, a fellow servant. Out of all the noble characters, Mr. Bates is undoubtedly the noblest, despite his lowly social status. But the dark deeds he alludes to make him more than just a generic good guy. Bates’ arch-enemies are Thomas, the scheming gay footman, and his best pal O’Brien, the countess’ lady’s maid, who want him gone (Thomas felt he should have been promoted to valet).

And no discussion of “Downton” would be complete without some applause for Maggie Smith, who plays the Dowager Countess (the Earl’s mother) and gets most of the show’s best lines, such as “What is a weekend?” and “No Englishman would dream of dying in someone else’s house.”

One criticism of “Downton” is that it presents an idealized portrayal of the English aristocracy, perhaps due to the fact that Fellowes is a conservative member of the House of Lords. A review of a handful of “Downton”-related books in yesterday’s New York Times quoted a memoir by Margaret Powell, a former kitchen maid: “In one home, Powell was excoriated for passing the day’s mail to the lady of the house by hand: ‘Tears started to trickle down my cheeks; that someone could think that you were so low that you couldn’t even hand them anything out of your hands without it first being placed on a silver salver.’”

But all drama requires some suspension of disbelief, and “Downton” wouldn’t work as well as it does if the Earl and his wife were unlikable baddies. After spending several hours in their company, all the characters feel like real people; if I ever get the chance to visit sumptuous Highclere Castle, where the series is filmed, I’d half expect head butler Mr. Carson to open the door.

Perhaps the best indication that this Edwardian costume drama has wormed its way into the American public’s hearts is the fact that it was parodied on “Saturday Night Live” a couple nights ago and quickly became the night’s most talked about sketch. (For some reason, maybe a rights issue, NBC hasn’t made the bit available on its own site, but I found a low-quality version here; watch quickly before someone from the network makes them take it down.) The joke is that “Downton” reruns are going to start appearing on the dude-centric cable network Spike TV, and it’s being promo’d in a way that will make guys want to tune in: the three daughters are “hot, hotter, and… the other one” (poor Edith!), the Dowager Countess is “an old lady who looks like a chicken,” and then there are the “tuxedo people” who live in the basement: “Their lives suck!”

There are few guarantees in life, but if you haven’t watched “Downton Abbey” yet, I’ll bet it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to hook you, too. I worry that I’m going to go through serious withdrawal when the season wraps up on Feb. 19; luckily, a third season is already in production.

I know a lot of moviegoers blame the behavior of their fellow audience members — in this commentary, Roger Ebert mentions, “The annoyance of talkers has been joined by the plague of cell-phone users, whose bright screens are a distraction.” Luckily, I have found Bay Area moviegoers to be, on the whole, fairly polite. Smart phones are much more of a distraction at concerts, where half the audience seems to either be texting/checking email or filming the performance with their iPhones.

We generally get three types of films here: (1) The mega-blockbusters, heavily advertised pictures which are often based on a superhero comic — generally, these do huge business on their opening weekends and are immediately replaced by the next comic book or action movie the following Friday. (2) The increasingly rare hit movies for grown-ups that wind up playing for months due to solid word of mouth. “Midnight in Paris” is still showing here, even though it came out six months ago and is now available on DVD. Other examples: “The Help,” “The Descendants,” “The Blind Side.” These are the sorts of films that older people (by which I mean age 30 and up) who only go to a movie theater once or twice a year see. (3) Blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em foreign and independent films that may do a one-nighter at the Pacific Film Archive or have a weeklong showing at the local Landmark theater.

I used to see a lot more of type #3, but because I see so much live theater, I don’t really have time to keep up with the smaller films nowadays. Once in a while, I’ll read about something that sounds interesting and wonder if it’ll ever open here, only to find (when I check Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB) a Chronicle review, indicating that it did play here. For instance, “Bellflower,” which was on critic Christy Lemire’s top 10 list, didn’t ring any bells with me, but it apparently did get a Bay Area showing (undoubtedly a brief one) back in August.

Generally, once something is gone, so are my chances of catching up with it. I hardly ever watch movies on DVD or streaming. Occasionally I’ll catch something on a plane. I thoroughly enjoyed “Crazy Stupid Love,” the Steve Carell romantic comedy, which I saw on the little seatback screen on my Air France flight from Paris. It was the kind of small-scale movie that worked fine on a miniature screen. I can’t imagine watching “Tree of Life,” which I’m sorry I never got around to seeing, on a tiny screen, or even on our 40″ TV.

So I don’t feel qualified to do a top 5 list when I saw so few films. The ones I ranked the highest were “Super 8,” “Bridesmaids,” “Hugo” and “The Artist.” I enjoyed “The Muppets,” even though it sort of wore out its welcome by the time the end credits rolled. A few of my favorite directors — Thomas McCarthy (“Win Win”), Alexander Payne (“The Descendants”) and Jason Reitman (“Young Adult”) — released films that I didn’t think were as good as their past efforts. Usually, Pixar’s annual feature is a sure thing, but there was no way in hell I was going to see “Cars 2.”

It’s possible that I will see more movies in 2012, but I sort of doubt it. The fact is, Hollywood would rather spend $150 million-plus to make and market a film like “Thor” or “Green Hornet” than $15 million on a smaller film geared at adults, because the execs know that the Comic-Con crowd will always go see the blockbuster du jour, whereas adults will only go if it’s good. “Young Adult”‘s grosses have been disappointing so far, which I chalk up to the fact that it’s a depressing, not terribly insightful movie about an unlikable character. “Midnight in Paris,” on the other hand, was a sparkling, entertaining, escapist delight, and I’m not surprised that people recommended it to their friends. “Bridesmaids” was genuinely funny, and Twitter and Facebook were aglow with positive write-ups the weekend it opened. The scariest thing about “Bridesmaids” is that there was talk that studio heads were watching its performance closely, and if it flopped, that would mean no comedy starring a woman would ever be greenlit in the near future. Its success immediately led to calls of “Get me the next ‘Bridesmaids’!” That tells you a lot about Hollywood and how dysfunctional it is.

There’s no way of guaranteeing that a movie will get good reviews and win acclaim from discerning audience members. No actor or actress is bulletproof (cf. Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in “Larry Crowne”). A hot script can turn into a dud, sometimes for reasons out of the studio’s control (cf. “The Beaver,” which topped the annual “Black List” of “best unproduced screenplays” before Jodie Foster made the mistake of actually making it into a movie starring Mel Gibson). When you think about it, a risk-taking movie like “The Artist” is a little miracle. Of course, it was a French/Belgian production with a relatively tiny $12 million budget; an American distributor only bought the rights after it became a hot ticket at Cannes. I’m sure no homegrown studio would ever have agreed to finance a silent, black and white movie starring two actors most Americans have never heard of.

Many TV critics argue that the real innovation these days is happening on the small screen, where visionaries are given the freedom to tell complex stories (“Mad Men,”  ”Breaking Bad,” “Sons of Anarchy,” etc.). But people still like going to the movies, and most adult filmgoers, will, like me, keep an eye out for those increasingly rare little miracles.