As the name suggests, this radio play is going to be entirely original. Set in a fictitious, awesome, futuristic world, where people not only have jetpacks but also jobs like “Head Beer Taster for the City of Boston,” (which come with old-fashioned “defined benefit” pension plans at a time when people are retiring at age 69 and ½ but then live to be, like, 250 years old), the story revolves around The Cook, who has built an enormously successful food empire in an awesome, futuristic Boston (either an underwater city, or a floating city, as I’m currently conceiving it).

One day, The Cook hears on the local sports radio station that a full-contact football league for bored middle-aged guys is forming, and, deciding that he’s bored with his empire, joins the league as a wide receiver and sustains a head injury from a violent helmet-to-helmet collision (much cheaper to do on the radio that in a movie!). He emerges from this experience as a fully-functioning human entity, except that he acts strangely, particularly with respect to his food empire, which he converts into a fry-only empire. Chicken Parm? Fry it! Filet mignon? Deep fry it! Baked Alaska? Try Fried Alaska!

At first, this causes a drop in patronage, as people are too worried that they’ll die before they reach 150 if they frequent his eateries. His restaurants fail and close; soon, The Cook’s lone, signature restaurant, “Duck, Duck, Goose Fat” is all that remains. However, the most respected food critic in Boston gives DDGF 5 out of 5 stars, raving like a lunatic at what a great idea frying everything is, and suddenly, you can’t get a reservation without pulling strings with descendants of the Meninos.

What we (the listener) don’t realize is that the food critic is also The Wife of a food-mobster, The Thief, whose role is to threaten distributors if they don’t get The Cook fresh food at the cheapest prices in town. The review of “Duck, Duck, Goose Fat,” it turns out, is an inside job!

As if this world isn’t cutthroat enough, The Wife discovers that Her Mother, head of the Massachusetts Alcohol Beverage Council, has overcharged the Cook, by about half a million dollars, for the Liquor License she procured for him, pocketing the difference. This means that, even as the restaurant is packed every night, selling wine at this huge 400% markup and requiring patrons to rent their tables out in half-hour-long increments, Duck, Duck, Goose Fat keeps racking up a financial losses in the books.

“…His Wife, Her Mother,” as this will come to be known in cult circles of the future, climaxes in a series of threats, veiled threats, non-threats, etc., to life, limb, and so forth. I really haven’t gotten that far. But the end will be either loud and bloody with lots of bang-bang sounds, or else an emotional roller-coaster, filled with characters shouting epithets at one another and culminating in tears and recrimination. (Or, ideally, all of that.)

Biking through the winter months in Boston has never been for the faint of heart. Beantown motorists are a frazzled enough bunch in pleasant weather; in the full of grip winter, having some dude on two wheels taking away part of their shrinking lane can make these people snap and draw their weapons. But the last two warm winters and the increase in well-marked bike lanes have emboldened formerly fair-weather riders, such that now I don’t look like a lonely outlier with nerves of steel or bona fide psychosis when I embark on my morning commute in the middle of January.

Last Wednesday, Boston experienced an increasingly rare winter event – actual snowfall – which gave me the opportunity to use the new wheel I had spent untold hours and lots of money building up. This wheel was already fitted with a cyclocross tire, which would be perfect for the wet, packable stuff that was falling from the sky.  By the time I reached Jamaica Pond at 7:45 in the morning, the bike path had already seen plenty of action, despite the snowsquall. After all, biking in the snow is much more agreeable than sitting in a car, stopped.

Evidence That I'm Not Alone

Maybe this winter will morph into something more like what we got 3 years ago, when the snowfall was measured against Shaquille O’Neal’s height and led to hazardous, crusted-up lanes. If we get 7-plus feet again (we won’t), I expect the number of bike commuters to drop substantially.   I intend to press on through whatever mother nature throws at me this year because I’ve become addicted to this pollution-free and speedy means of travel. To wit, I made a recent visit to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough for the AFC Championship game (sniff, sniff), and might have been the only person who did so on two wheels. I rolled by hoards of tipsy former tailgaters who were hoofing it for more than a mile from their cars to the stadium, and eventually locked my bike within a stone's throw of the field (I have quite an arm!).  Of course, after the game is when having a bike is most useful, as you wind your way through 55,000 people idling in their cars, waiting to get onto route 95. It’s almost (but not quite) enough to reinvigorate a person who has just witnessed his team get beat.

This play I'm going to write is a farce in the traditional sense of the word: a comedic fugue, it is populated by pretenders, dunces, and asses; lots of doors are involved; there are several cases of mistaken identity.

The setting is a medical office building in a Brookline brownstone. Characters from every segment of society intermingle as they come in and out of the building to see doctors, dentists, shrinks, etc. and exchange pleasantries – or not – with the security guard in the lobby.

One thing we quickly discover: everyone is packing heat. Guns keep going off inadvertently, shooting out a lamp right next to a dozing homeless guy who's allowed in momentarily to warm up, blasting the hat off the bald, blowhard Doctor Mump, who keeps giving the wrong advice to teenage girls about acne. Needless to say, the mingling of these nutty, gun-wielding characters is hilarious.

The security guard is named Marcel. He’s French Canadian and a little down on his luck. Most recently, he worked security for the Canadian strategic maple syrup reserve, but for obvious reasons lost that position. Marcel takes the loss of that plum job in stride, believing that he can turn the experience into fodder for a play about the funny people you meet working security in a U.S. office building. Like everyone else, he’s packing a piece and is ready to draw at a moment’s notice, but his aim is bad, and he ends up hitting lots of light fixtures and the occasional ear or pinky finger. (Marcel is also tasked with replacing the light bulbs that keep getting shot out and calling for an ambulance when someone loses a toe to an errant bullet.)

At the climax of this farce, a teenager with a scarf around her face, which conceals the hideous results of an improperly prescribed acne drug, finally corners Doctor Mump and draws her gun, just as he draws his, Marcel draws his, and the people in the elevator that just opened up draw theirs. In quick succession, guns go off and everyone is hit, except Marcel, who walks away unscathed with a great script!

My beer is rapidly approaching the bottling hour, and soon thereafter Zero Drink 30. I’m looking for a name for it. Current Ideas:

Speedy Pat’s Winter Ale

Mustard Pat’s Speedy Ale

Winter Pat’s Mustard Ale

I’m leaning toward Mustard Pat’s Speedy Ale. It evokes swiftness, mustard being a metaphor for throwing a ball with increased velocity, as in “put a little mustard on it!” The slogan for the beer could be something like “The beer to chug when you’re in a hurry.”

Winter Pat’s Mustard Ale is another good option. I might be able to sell a few bottles to curious people wanting to know what a mustard ale tastes like. “It’s awesome!” I’ll tell them, having no idea. The beer won’t contain a single grain of ground mustard, and people will drink it and like it. Obviously, calling it mustard ale but not including any mustard in the making of it is deceitful, but imagine if I actually put ground mustard seed into the mix. People would say, “It tastes like mustard,” and I’d have to say something like, “Yes. It’s Mustard Ale.”

Speedy Pat’s Winter Ale has the disadvantage of making it seem like I'm prone to rush the beer making process. What the hell’s the hurry? Make enough to get you through until the next batch has properly aged. That’s the way the big boys do it, and I’m a big boy.

Which brings me to a final option, which is just occurring to me now: Shifty Pat’s Swift Ale. Shifty because back when I played Pop Warner football, I had a coach who told me I should be a halfback instead of a fullback because I was “shifty.” (I have no memory of anyone else telling me they thought I was shifty, but perhaps someone has said it behind my back, like some ex-girlfriend’s grandmother: “Oooh, he’s a shifty one, that Mustard Pat!”)

Name for the new mustard I’m going to develop: Shifty Pat’s Ale Mustard.