When you try to get off a plane what happens is this: the agent at the gate, a man with carefully coiffed hair and tired eyes, asks for your boarding pass back. That’s the only way he will allow you to return to the airport.

I hand over my boarding pass, and as I trot towards The Place Where I Had Recently Consumed The Whopper, what I am thinking is this: I am not surprised in the least that I have left my bag behind. I had been walking around in a hazy, leaving-things-behind state for nearly a week at this point, thanks to the corrective–or, more accurately, “corrective” (more on this later)–eye surgery that I’d had in the middle of December.

I was looking forward to eye surgery. Yes, I’d have to leave videogames, TV, movies, the Internet, pornography, etc. behind for a couple of days. But after consuming almost every lousy, crummy, two-bit, piece of crap entertainment made in 2011, wasn’t a stint in the dark, away from it all, exactly what I needed? So I downloaded a bunch of audio books and purchased a week’s supply of ice cream, then reported to the Coal Harbour Eye Center on December 15th. My friend Victor Lucas and I nervously huddled together in the waiting room. We joked that this would be the first of our many plastic surgeries together–ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!–and tried to prevent one another from chickening out, which, I admit, we both nearly did.

I was the first to go. I was ushered into a cold, dimly lit room that was occupied by two middle-aged ladies wearing green surgical scrubs and mushroom-shaped caps over their hair-dos. One lady asked me to lay down on a table. “Just relax,” she said.

Suspended about one foot above my face, I realized, was The Laser. I tried not to look at The Laser, tried not to think about the Clockwork Orange-like hold-your-eyes-open thing that was, I knew, about to be inserted in my eyes. I tried not to think about the scalpel, which the doctor, who at that moment was entering the room and was now looming above me, would use to shave away my cornea, so that he could shoot The Laser directly into my head.

Yes, I said, “shave away my cornea so that he could shoot The Laser directly into my head.”

I started laughing, which is what I always do before an operation of any sort (I’ve had my fair share through the years), praying that the pair of small, blue Ativan pills I’d been given would kick in soon. “Are you ready?” the doctor asked from behind his surgical mask.

“Let’s go,” I said.

And so we have arrived at level 0-4.  This is the end of the game’s Prologue, the end of the so-called Zero levels, and the end of the levels that are based on the arcade version of Donkey Kong. After this, things wil presumably become more bat-shit crazy. Mario begins the level at the base of series of girders which are being patrolled either by flaming pies or humanized versions of Fonzi’s hair, I can’t tell which. Donkey Kong is doing his side-to-side bar mitzvah dance at the top of the screen and next to him, as always, is Pauline.

Each girder level features two square-shaped rivets, one on the far left and one on the far right. Leaping over a rivet will cause it to disappear. The object of the level is to remove all rivets enroute to the top, while avoiding the rogue Fonzi hairs. On the second tier is a hammer-power hammer, which I deployed, and which helped me banish several Fonzi hairs for umpteen bonus points.

One nice detail I noticed for the first time is the screeching sound effect the game whenever Mario changes direction. This has the effect of making the plodding Mario seem as if he’s moving faster than he actually is. Also: Thank you, Tex Avery.

On the top righthand side of the screen is a heart-shaped 1-up, which I grab. Kong is doing his dance only inches away from Mario in this moment, so I decide to throw caution to the wind and bump into Kong, just to see what happens. He grabs Mario the way that the Abominable “Pet Him/Squeeze Him” Snowman grabs Daffy Duck, bashes him into the ground several times, then tosses him into the air like a piece of trash. Mario lands on the girder below, and is killed by the fall. Back to the bottom I go.

My next run up the girders, I’m all business. I gather the rivets quickly, avoid the hammer-power hammer (which takes forever to expire), and when I reach Pauline, the entire structure collapses in spectacular fashion, sending Donkey Kong tumbling to the ground below. Mario and Pauline are sharing a quick kiss–note the heart shape that blooms between them–before Kong comes back to life, reclaims Pauline, and takes off again.

End of level 0-4.