Disasterpiece Theatre

So last night, Lord and Lady Grantham (living no longer at Downton Abbey but in an awful 2013 McMansion with about 11 unkempt squealing blond kids and runt dogs and backed-up plumbing and pizza boxes and panty hose on the floor) locked me in a spare room and interrogated me, through the keyhole, about my participation in an act of sabotage against the New York Times.

I was guilty. With the aid of union employees, I had magically converted the whole text of the paper into a few dozen long, thin crystals, which I slipped in my pockets, smuggled out of the Times building, and dissolved in the lattes and Americanos being served at the corner Starbucks. In my own defense I claimed it was an alternative form of distribution.

I then steered the conversation to their television show’s execrable writing. Look around you, Lord and Lady Grantham. Look at this house. Is this worthy of you? Lord Gratham’s sense of honesty and fair play, of course, obliged him to concede the point. Then we all had to console him, while the dogs fought under the dining table and his brats took crayons to the walls.