Once the dead waterbug was tucked away in his pocket, I looked the Mikael Blomkvist doppelganger in the eye, letting him know that I had seen what he had just done. He had tried to hide something from me, and I’d caught him in the act red-handed. Now, I’m no wheeler-dealer when it comes to real estate or business transactions, not by a longshot. But I was savvy enough to recognize leverage when I saw it.

He showed me the rest of the apartment. It was without a doubt the most expansive New York City apartment I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe that, after years of living in cramped conditions, I’d finally have all this room to myself. In real estate vernacular, the layout was known as a “junior four,” because the fourth room in the apartment–a bonus room just off the kitchen in the front of the apartment–was small, or “junior,” when compared to the rest of the rooms. People typically used the room as a dining room or an office.

The apartment needed work. The bathroom walls were covered with a depressing wallpaper that was–no kidding–black and featured a design that looked like horse skeletons. The kitchen stove stove dated back to the ’70s. One of the bedroom closets smelled like stale cigarette smoke. And there was the waterbug question. Was the building infested? I’d dealt with bugs before, in my old apartment in Brooklyn. I’d be sitting in my living room enjoying a TV show or playing a game when I’d notice something on the wall and realize, to my horror, that it was a silverfish. I’d grab a nearby shoe and the chase was on. These hunts would last up to five minutes. Once the silverfish had been introduced to the heel of my sneaker, I’d go to bed and pull the covers up to my neck, wondering if there were more of them out there, crawling around my apartment in the dark.

That creature in Mikael Blomkvist’s pocket was the size of a scarab, I thought. I worried that I’d simply be trading my silverfish problem for a waterbug problem.

Then I reminded myself that this was a top floor apartment. (I’d stopped living underneath people 10 years ago. All the clomping around drove me crazy.) It was in a neighborhood that I wanted to live in. It was close to not one subway line, as my apartment in Brooklyn was (the cursed F train), but six or seven different subway lines. There was that sunken living room to consider. And, when I looked out the windows, I realized that I would have a view of the New York City skyline, including the Empire State Building.

That’s what sealed it for me. I could deal with a waterbug or two if I got all this in return.

I asked Mikael Blomkvist what the apartment was selling for. “Well, it’s not on the market yet,” he said coyly, “but it’ll probably go for around X amount of money.”

I was taken aback by how low his asking price was. I’d seen around 20 other apartments in the neighborhood prior to this one, so I had a good idea of what things were worth. I promptly offered him $10K less than what he was asking, and when I did, I made sure to glance at the pocket where the dead waterbug was currently residing. “And can you also have the windows in the kitchen fixed?” I asked.

“We’ve got a deal,” he said. “I’ll send over the paperwork first thing in the morning.”

So, in the end, the dead waterbug saved me $10,000 and got my kitchen windows fixed for free. I’d assumed that Mikael Blomkvist was blissfully unaware of the bargain I’d gotten, until several months later, long after the closing, when I phoned him up to badger him about the kitchen window repairs. In a moment of frustration, he said, “You know I could have gotten a lot more money for that apartment!” I didn’t say anything. I grinned a victory grin into the phone.

Did I see waterbugs after I moved in? Of course I did. About once every six months or so, a waterbug the size of a gravy boat would make a beeline through the apartment. This is all just part of New York life, I’d always tell myself. Then I’d grab a shoe and track that bit of hell-spawn down, simply doing what New Yorkers have to do sometimes.

And now, I give you stage 5-9. Buckle up, people. This is the most challenging stage I have encountered in the game so far. Solving it, i.e. getting the key to the exit door and getting out alive, should not be attempted by anyone who is 1. pregnant or 2. suffers from a nervous condition. Before you go any further, know this: Marios will be sacrificed, despair will set in, and approximately 20 to 25 minutes of your life will be lost to this unholy abomination of a stage.

In the film about videogames that I will one day produce and possibly star in, one character (Jimmy) will say to another character (Frank): “Hey, you don’t need an FAQ for this game. You need an exorcist!” That line, which will become a classic line, and will be quoted for years to come, could easily describe today’s stage.

Let’s begin.

At it’s core, stage 5-9 breaks down to three switches that need to be tended to. Now, whenever I encounter a switch in Donkey Kong, or in any videogame for that matter, I push it, then perform a cursory investigation of the area to see what’s new and different. The stage starts with Mario/me standing next to switch number one. I push it. What’s new and different? The elevator immediately to the left of the switch changes direction. By default, it goes up. But after pushing the switch, it goes down. Make sure that this elevator is going down before you walk away from it. Trust me, later on in the stage, you’ll be very glad that you did this.

Now head for switch two, which is at the top of a somewhat lengthy ladder. Look at Mario’s fat little legs climb! Ha, ha! Pushing switch two retracts a long, accordion-like shutter at the top of the screen. This shutter/bridge seals off the top third of the level. Once it’s gone, after you push the switch, LOOK OUT! There are two monolithic falling-rising stones up there. When the shutter/bridge is retracted, these stones can be triggered like booby traps whenever Mario is nearby. Keep an eye on these stones or else you’ll be pancaked early and often. Pro Tip Confession: I was pancaked at least twice while sussing out the solution to this stage. It’s a terrible feeling.

Now, head for switch three and give it a push. What switch three does is it removes the vertical shutter below you that is preventing you from reaching the key. Pushing it, however, also has an unfortunate side effect: it causes a barrier/shutter to appear just above the exit door. The result: now you can reach the key, which is great, but you can’t get it to the door (which is terrible).

If you are wondering what emotions you are feeling right now, let me put some words out there for you: frustration, despair, anger. My advice: don’t panic. Remain calm, and keep following my lead here. I found my way out of this godforsaken labyrinth, and so can you.

With key in hand, head for the upward-traveling elevator on the far righthand side of the screen and climb aboard. Once you’re close to the top of your elevator ride, note the group of platforms to your immediate left. Use the platforms to break your “skillful falls” off the elevator. Remember, if you fall too far, you’ll become separated from the key.

Your goal here is to return to the same general area in the middle of the stage where switch two and three are located. Again, keep an eye out for the rising-falling rocks. Go to switch three and push it again. The shutter will close in front of the area where the key once was, but the barrier above the exit door is now open. Remember: protect the key at all times! You’ll have to put it down whenever you deal with the switches. Don’t let it sit for too long before you pick it up again, or else it will teleport back to its original spot and you’ll have to begin this mess all over again. Now, return to the elevator on the righthand side of the screen and ride it. Yes, again.

At the top of the elevator, do some skillful falling back down to the central area. This time, return to switch two. Press it. This causes the long accordion-like bridge to re-appear. Those small platforms just above your head? Toss the key up to the one on the far right. Quickly scramble up the nearby ladder, leap across the gap between the two platforms, then reclaim the key. Now, board the righthand side elevator for a third time. This time, get off on the accordion bridge. Cross it from right to left, being mindful of the always dangerous rising-falling stones.

Once you reach the lefthand side, you will be thankful that you pressed switch one all the way back at the start of the stage. That downward-bound elevator? It will carry you back to the start of the level, where the un-shuttered exit door has been patiently waiting for you and the key to arrive.

Congratulations. Stage 5-9 is nothing but a somewhat troubling memory now.

The stage opens with me standing next to a pair of steel barrels. A wooden barrel promptly plummets from the top of the screen, and when it strikes the steel barrels, a fireball with eyes pops out and gives chase. There are no problems to solve here, no switches to suss out or shuttered barriers to un-shutter. This stage is all action from start to finish. It’s about making the right choices and quality jumps. In fact, I actually hear the words “quality jump” whenever I jump over a barrel. Three barrels coming at me? Quality jump, quality jump, quality jump. Barrels do come at you from all sorts of crazy angles here. Sometimes they fall in a linear pattern, rolling downward like pachinko balls. Other times, they fly in from some oblique angle and careen straight for Mario. Pro tip: Stay on your toes at all times during this stage, folks.

You have two fundamental choices here: one, you can grab the hammers–there are two in the stage–and destroy as many barrels as possible, which gives your score a nice bump; two, you can avoid the barrels altogether by jumping, moving, and climbing out of the way and staying light on your feet. Me, I chose the hammer path and bashed as many barrels as possible. But that’s just me.

I successfully completed this stage on my first try. Impressive, I know. I kept climbing, kept making the right choices, all the way to the top. Once again, after 52 days, I’m certain that I’ve developed some pretty formidable Donkey Kong instincts. No kidding, sometimes I can almost feel where the barrels are going to go before they go there. That’s because playing a videogame, in a strange way, is a way to get to know the people who made the game. And, at this point, I’ve gotten to know the people who made Donkey Kong, at least a little. No, I don’t know what kind of sandwich meats these people enjoy or what their pets look like. But I do have a good idea of what their do’s and don’t's are when it comes to constructing a stage and when they’re in the mood to be cruel or kind. In the same way that Boo Radley leaves handmade toys for Scout and Jem inside the hollow of a tree in To Kill A Mockingbird, videogames, at their best, can feel like personal messages from another time and place.

I confess, things did get a little hairy for me at the very top. I was standing too close to D.K. when he rolled a barrel in my direction. I pulled off a quality jump–yet another one–and cleared the barrel, but only just barely. The game would have been well within its rights to dock me a Mario here. It didn’t. Sometimes in videogames things go your way, even when they shouldn’t.

The final totals for this section:

Stage 5-5: 52 seconds.

Stage 5-6: 85 seconds.

Stage 5-7: 65 seconds.

Stage 5-8: 120 seconds.

Total: 322 seconds. Number of Marios in my Mario reserve: 34.

They clearly hadn’t been here in awhile.

I remember the first time I saw the apartment. It was a muggy day in August. A series of thunderstorms had blown through New York that afternoon, one of which was so severe that it sounded like entire train cars were falling from the sky. The man who owned the apartment wore a gray pinstriped suit, like something a budget-minded gangster would wear. Though I can longer remember what the man looked like, my mind has since replaced his face with the face of the actor who played Mikael Blomkvist in the 2009 Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This happens more often as I get older, that my brain involuntarily fills in any gaps in memory with bits from movies and TV.

The man was a “sponsor,” which in New York City co-op terminology means that he and a group of investors had purchased a bunch of apartments in the building for a tiny amount of money many years ago. They had since been renting out the apartments–including this apartment–while waiting for the day when they could eventually sell the apartments and reap a return on their investment.

The previous tenants had moved out a few days earlier, leaving the place vacant. The living room, especially by New York City standards, felt cavernous to me, namely because it was a sunken living room. I’d heard about sunken living rooms before. They were living rooms that required a step or two into or out of them. I loved the words “sunken living room.” There was something beautifully nautical about them. The idea of sitting in a “sunken living room” made me think of a starfish luxuriating under the sea on a particularly peaceful bit of sun speckled coral.

As I took not one but two (two!) steps down into the sunken living room–which, as it turns out, would one day be my sunken living room–I noticed a small black object off in the corner. It was, I realized, a dead, legs-up waterbug. A waterbug, in case you’ve never seen one, looks like an oversized cockroach. And this waterbug was one of the largest ones I’d ever seen. It was, no kidding, about the size of a baby’s shoe.

I observed Mikael Blomkvist as he nonchalantly sidled over to the corner where the waterbug was located. He pretended to drop his pen–”Oops!” he said–then as he leaned down to presumably fetch his dropped pen, he skillfully produced a napkin from his pocket and seized the dead waterbug with it. Then, like a Las Vegas magician, he slipped the napkin into his pocket. Clearly this man had picked up dead waterbugs during apartment showings before.

Stage 5-7. Reminder: we are still in the DESERT stages, people, which presumably means that these stages are taking place inside pyramids or something. In today’s “pyramid,” I found two haunted cannons that fire at regular intervals, their deadly cannonballs cutting horizontal paths across the screen; and a pair of completely new creatures which appear to be the result of a consummated union between a mouse and a turtle.

This pyramid stage is divided in half by a slanting wall of large bricks, which may or may not be representative of the exterior of the pyramid. On the left side of the wall is a series of small widely spaced platforms, as well as the two mouse-turtle (turtlouse?) which are traveling in counterclockwise patterns around a couple of the platforms. On the right side of the slanted wall, you’ll find a very long ladder–quite possibly the longest ladder in the game so far–the two haunted cannons, and at the very bottom, a super hammer-time hammer and the exit door.

Feel free to ignore the widely spaced platform section on the left side of the stage altogether if you like. Me, I fooled around over there, but I certainly didn’t need to. Yes, there are riches to be squeezed from this section–Pauline’s umbrella, hat, and handbag are all there, as is a 1-up heart. But as with all of the DESERT stages so far, time is short, and it’s easy to get confused and distracted over here. Pro tip: It’s OK to leave a handbag behind once in awhile, if it’s done in the name of completing a stage.

The stage’s shortest-distance-between-two-points solution is this: climb up the slanted brick wall, which, because of its slant, can also be used as a gigantic stairway. At the very top of the stairway wall is the key. Ignore it for now. Instead, take the World’s Longest Ladder down, taking care along the way to avoid the cannon fire from the two haunted cannons. At the bottom of the ladder, grab the hammer, and do some demolition on all nearby breakable brick walls. This removes the barrier between you and the exit door.

Now, retrace your steps back to the top of the slanted brick stairway. Grab the key. Then go back down the slanted brick stairway. Put the key into the lock. Final step: go treat yourself yourself to a butterscotch. You’ve earned it.

Around 7 p.m. the train pulls into Albany where even more people attempt to cram onboard. We ran out of seats over an hour ago, at the Amsterdam stop, so now people stand in the aisles or squat on the floor. People sleep everywhere on pillows made of rolled-up jackets. The air smells like urine and burned coffee. This is always the way of the Christmas train.

Once we depart from Albany, the Maple Leaf makes a sharp turn south and runs along the Hudson River. When the sun is out during the day, I’ve seen people practically get into fist fights over the seats on the river side of the train. Even if you could care less about nature and its wonders, like me, the seats are really worth fighting over, especially in winter, when the old mansions on the river banks are covered with snow and chunks of ice the size of small islands sail the the gray waters.

But after dark–and in December, no matter what time of day it is in Upstate New York it always feels dark–no one fights over the river-side seats. There’s nothing to see at night. I know, from having enjoyed river-side seats during the day, that the tracks we are traveling on at that very second are located only a couple of feet away the river. Why someone laid the tracks so close to the river, why that seemed like a good idea, always baffles me. If the Maple Leaf ever jumped the tracks, we’d careen straight into the dark water, and our next stop would be the cold river bottom.

Suddenly the train feels more claustrophobic than usual to me. I lean my face against the cold black glass and doze, and try not to think about things like possible escape routes.

Now, most passengers stay in their seats until the train comes to a complete stop in the belly of Penn Station. That’s a common mistake. After Yonkers, I always look at my watch and wait until five minutes have elapsed. Then, as everyone idly sits back in their seats enjoying the final leg of the trip, I stand up, gather my luggage, and position myself against one of the train’s exit doors.

If you wait and try to get off with five hundred other people at the same time, all of whom are trying to collect their extra Christmas packages and fruit cakes, etc., you will, 1. waste time, and 2. be annoyed by how comfortable most people are when it comes to wasting time. The idea here is to exit the train and get out of the station with the same amount of purpose and urgency that one uses when participating in a fire drill.

Once I am off the train, I practically run through the Penn Station crowds, the wheels of my luggage squealing, as I head for the A/C/E subway station. When I reach the station, I’m short of breath. I realize that I don’t have a Metrocard. So I wade into the crowds, jockeying for position around the Metrocard machines. I complete my transaction, snapping the card from the machine, only to realize that the small group of foreigners standing at the machine next to me is confused by the machine. They are, I believe, Russian.

At that very moment the E train–my train–comes roaring into the station. I’ve got a dilemma: do I continue on with my fire drill and barrel onto the train? If I do that, I could be home listening to the clanging radiators in my apartment in Jackson Heights in about 20 minutes. Or, do I take the next E train and help these people.

I decide to help these people. Only one of them–the man with the bushy beard–speaks English. He wants to know if they can buy single rides or if they have to buy multiple rides. “Let me show you,” I say, only realizing after I’ve snatched the money from his hand that I have snatched the money from his hand. You just took money from a complete stranger’s hand, I think. After three years in Canada, I’ve forgotten my New York City etiquette rules, one of which is definitely this: Do not snatch money from the hand of a strange Russian man.

He doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, I like how trusting the group seems towards me. As I’m completing the transaction for them, and as the bearded man and his family shower me with gratitude–the small woman touches my arm several times and says something to me in Russian–another man comes up behind me and gives me a firm shove. He’s trying to get to another Metrocard machine, and apparently I was blocking his way.

For a half second, I contemplate shoving back. I want to confront him. Then, as quickly as it arrives, the feeling passes. The shove, I realize, is really just New York’s way of saying, Welcome home, jag-off.

It’s time to conquer stage 5-6. We’ve got two, maybe three mutant mice to deal with today, people, along with a pair of anthropomorphic fireballs (we haven’t seen these guys in ages) and–look out!–Donkey Kong Jr. himself. The key? It’s behind a wall of breakable bricks on the lower righthand side of the screen. The exit door is behind a shuttered barrier on the lower lefthand side of the screen. There are two switches: one inside of Donkey Kong Jr.’s Hitler bunker at the top of the screen and a second, open-air switch, just outside of his bunker, to the left.

When D.K.J. pulls his bunker switch, it changes the direction that the conveyer belt in the center of the screen travels in. But before you take a ride on the conveyer belt–I know it’s tempting–you first need to clean out the mice infestation the right side of the stage. Climb all the way to the top of the level. If you’re feeling strong, grab Pauline’s umbrella along the way. Pro tip: Use a handstand super jump to reach the umbrella. Also, try to be light on your feet during your ascent. You won’t disturb the mice the mice that way.

Once you’re at the top of the screen, grab the super hammer-time hammer, then retrace your steps back down to the screen’s bottom. Using platforms to cushion your fall during your descent is a technique that I like to call “skillful falling.” During your skillful falling back to the bottom, go ahead and hammer the large-eared mice (those ears are the size of dinner plates) into oblivion along the way. Your ultimate goal here is to reach the breakable brick wall at the bottom of the screen before the hammer-time hammer runs out. Pro tip: If you don’t make it before the hammer-time hammer runs out, go back to the top of the screen and repeat your skillful falling.

Once you do reach the wall, bust it open with your hammer. The game will make a satisfying “krrssshhh” sound effect. The key is right there in front of you, its ass in the wind, but don’t grab it yet. You have other business to attend to first.

Now, return to the very top of the screen, and re-grab the super hammer-time hammer. Yes, again. Now during your skillful falling, aim to land on the conveyer belt this time. If the gaming gods are looking out for you, it’ll be moving from right to left, and it will whisk you and the hammer at high speeds straight into the path of the two fireballs with eyes. Take out both of them with the hammer. Then, proceed up the ladder on the far left of the screen, right beneath that prancing, preening D.K.J.

Pull the open-air lever/switch to the right. This will un-shutter the shuttered barrier, opening the pathway to the exit door at the bottom left. Now, head back the way you came, retracing your steps all the back to the busted-open brick wall and the ass-in-the-wind key.

Grab the key, haul it across the bottom of the level, and–as D.K.J. jumps up and down in fury (at least that’s the emotion I imagine he is experiencing)–put the key into the lock. Cue the “We Are The Champions” song. Today’s level is over, folks.

The late December wind is shrill. The three of us shift from foot to foot to keep warm. ”What time do you get into the city?” my dad asks, blowing into his hands.

“Around 9 o’clock,” I say.

“That’s not too bad,” he says.

I always tell my parents that they don’t have to wait with me, that I’m OK, that I can take it from here. But every year they insist on parking on one of the seedy side streets in Utica near the train station and locking up their car, then coming to the tracks to wait with me and my luggage. ”Do you remember where your ham sandwich is packed, in case you get hungry?” my mom asks.

I think, I’m a grown man, mom. I have a mortgage and a job. I have traveled all over the world and grown semi-impressive beards on at least two occasions in my life. I have survived September 11th as well as a medical condition that required me to have my butt-hole peered at by doctors on a regular basis for several years. So do I know where my sandwich is packed? I think you can answer that question for yourself, mom. Jesus.

And then what I think is this: I don’t know how much longer these sandwich-checking people are going to be in my life. The day will come, sooner or later, when I’ll have to wait for the train by myself, when no one asks me if I know where my sandwich is packed. What will I do then? I despair a little in the dark.

“Yes, I know where my sandwich is packed, mom,” I say.

The three of us keep staring West. A small bright light appears in the treeline.

“You think that’s it?” my father asks.

“It could be,” I say.

He looks at his watch. “For once it’s on time.”

The train lets out a low whistle off in the distance. The bright light comes closer. I can feel the weight of the train, the mass of it, as it approaches the station. The moment the train arrives is always startling to me. It always rushes in with with this whooshing, deus ex machina-type flourish. Suddenly, before I have a chance to do anything about it, I realize that I’m crying. As the trains wheels scream to a halt, I quickly wipe my eyes so they can’t see this. Jesus, pull it together, I tell myself.

Then I turn and look at these two small people in the dark. The truth is this: I don’t know exactly what we’re supposed to do together anymore. Most of our adventures together are over. They ended a long time ago, when I was 18, and I moved away for school. I don’t know what I want or need from them anymore. And they don’t know what they want or need from me anymore. This visit, like all visits home, was an unsatisfying, surreal combination of too much of some things and not enough of other things.

Like always, for a brief moment, I think, Stay with them. There’s always another train. Just go back home with them, and sit with them, and eat one more meal together. Why not? You’re in no great hurry to get to New York…

But the conductor is waiting. “Tickets, please,” he says. I board the train, leaving my mom and dad behind. I can feel them, standing there, looking at me as I haul my luggage up the steep steps of the train.

It’s as warm as an oven on the train. It’s December 26th and, as always, the train is overbooked. The only empty seat I can find is next to an incredibly obese man with shoulder-length hair. The man begrudgingly makes room for me. As I squeeze in next to the window, I can see my dad, still out there on the platform. He has seen my oversized seat mate, watched as I sat down next to him. He’s doing a pantomime of laughter, holding his stomach. Next, he frowns and shrugs his shoulders in a sympathetic what-are-you-going-to-do? way.

Then the train begins to move and I leave all of it behind.

Stage 5-5. Today’s stage is the gaming equivalent of an educational TV show because it is shaped like the letter “I.” The exit door, where I begin the level, is on the lower righthand side of the “I.” I’ll pause for a moment and let you picture that. OK, got it? Great. The key, which I need to open the door, is on the lower lefthand side of the “I.” On top of the “I” are three slow-moving bipedal enemies. We’ve seen these enemies before. They are plump, and they appear to be wearing shower caps and oversized costume bird beaks. They will kill you–as I learned this morning–but you practically have to hurl yourself into one of them and say, “PLEASE KILL ME!” before they will actually kill you.

Note at the start that we only have 100 seconds to get through this stage. Now, 100 seconds might sound like a lot of time. Trust me, it’s not. The Hurry Up Song–a piece of music that makes my jaw involuntarily lock up–plays early and often in this level.

Bisecting the “I” is a short conveyer belt. The only way to get the key from the left side of the “I” to the right side is by letting the conveyer belt carry it there for you. The key will slide through the small opening–too small for Mario to pass through–and land near the exit door. Of course, like a chronically lonely and insecure person, whenever the key is on its own for more than two seconds, it threatens to disappear. The idea here is to retrace your path around the “I” and reach the key before it disappears.

This is no small feat.

A couple of pro tips for you:

1. Get rid of the trio of dopey enemies patrolling the top of the “I.” They’ll only slow you down and get in your way as you’re making your kamikaze run back to the key. Pick one enemy up and hurl it at a second enemy. That will take care of two of them. Then, pick up the third enemy and throw him off the side of the “I,” the same way that Darth Vader picks up the Emperor and throws him into a lightning-filled pit at the end of Return of the Jedi. The fall won’t kill the enemy–once he lands, he’ll upright himself and continue on his soft-brained journey–but it will get him out of your way.

2. When descending the ladder on the right side of the “I,” let go about halfway down. If you’re hustling, you should have one or two blinks remaining before the key vanishes. If the key should vanish, it will return to its starting point on the left side of the “I.” When this happens, resist the urge to turn over furniture. Yes, the urge will be strong. KEEP RESISTING.

Pauline’s hat, umbrella and hand bag are scattered about the level. I managed to save only the hand bag. (Again, sorry, P.) And there’s a hammer-time power-up in the top lefthand corner of the “I.” But it’s useless. Why? Well, it’s on a small island platform, and once you have it, you can’t cross the divide back to where the three enemies are patrolling, so basically you’re stuck with the Donkey Kong version of priapism. (Pro tip: Look it up.)

Once you have the key in hand, after your breathless counterclockwise run, the door opens, and Mario zips into the void.

She’s sad that I’m leaving, sure. But I think she’s also sad that this visit home wasn’t quite what she expected or was hoping for. There were nice moments, yes, but there were also tense moments, and dull moments, and strange moments. I know how much she looks forward to these things. I know that she feels lonely with my dad sometimes. I know that she looks forward to seeing me, and my brother and his family.

I know that she starts listening to Christmas music in her car stereo on her way to and from work long before anyone else in North America probably does. After those weeks and months of anticipation, after the excitement she feels, the visit itself, Christmas itself, can only feel small and slight to her. It can never live up to the Christmas in her head that she’d spent weeks and months concocting and fine-tuning.

I think the Christmas in her head looks a lot like the old “Peter Comes Home For Christmas” Folger’s coffee commercial. It’s the one that opens with the college-age son being dropped off outside his family’s home by some hippies in a Volkswagon Bug. “Merry Christmas!” he says to the hippies as they drive off. Then he goes inside the house and quietly makes a pot of coffee for the family. The smell of Folger’s permeates the house, waking up his family members one by one. When they come downstairs, they find Peter–surprise, everyone!–in their living room, next to the tree. “Peter?” the mom always says incredulously. Then Peter’s handsome head pops up through the bottom of the TV screen. Then everyone drinks coffee together and opens presents. If you haven’t seen it recently, here it is.

There was a time many years ago when I actually shopped for a cable-knit sweater like the one Peter wears. No kidding, I have wished at times that I was more like Peter. I wish that our Christmas and my family’s time together could be as simple and pure as it is in the commercial. It never is. Instead, it’s messy and ugly. People crab at one another. The whole house smells of farts in the morning. Zombie-like deer come out of the woods. Dog turds are scattered like bits of punctuation–there’s an exclamation point; there’s a semi-colon–on the puppy’s training pad near the front door. No one has, in the history of our Christmas visits, ever really gotten a good night’s sleep. My brother and his wife let us into their home, which is nice, but you can tell after a night or two that they’re ready for us to leave. And, instead of Peter and his purity and his cable-knit sweater and his handsome head, my mother gets a sulking, unshaven middle-aged man sitting in the corner of the living room next to the Christmas tree, reading the newspaper and complaining about everything.

Stage 5-4. D.K. and Pauline have holed up in a small, well-protected penthouse bunker in the top lefthand corner of the screen. Note those spikes that they’ve tricked out their love nest with. Pretty intimidating and also cool, right? As usual, I’m down at the very bottom of the screen, which is practically the sewer of the world. Between us are a series of conveyer belts and ladders that extend and retract every couple of seconds.

Let’s begin.

Moving along the conveyer belts, as always, feels like I’m in waist-deep water and running upstream, against the current. Climbing the ladders is easy enough, as long as I time it right and begin my climb as the ladder is extending to its full length. Pro tip: If it’s already fully extended, don’t bother trying to climb it. (Insert that’s what she said-style retort HERE.) Why? Because you’ll never reach the top before it begins to retract.

Also complicating things: D.K. stomps his feet every five seconds or so, triggering an avalanche of…things. What sorts of things exactly? It’s hard to say. One thing resembled a tuba that had been run over by several large bulldozers. Another thing looked like a coffin for an elf. Suffice to say, when these things fall from the top of the screen, you’ll need to get out of the way, and fast.

I didn’t get out of the way fast enough on my first attempt to summit and I was crushed to death by what appeared to be several key parts of a hotdog cart. Also: D.K.’s stomps dizzy Mario, rendering him temporarily paralyzed. This causes him to passively get carried along on the conveyer belts, all the way down back to the goddamned bottom. Pro tip: cursing is OK when this happens.

Now, you can avoid being dizzied by jumping into the air as D.K. is about stomp his feet. As long as you’re in the air during his stomp, you’ll be fine.

Continue your ascent, climbing ladders and swimming upstream along the conveyer belts. The last belt at the very top is, as you might expect, especially tough. Why? Because there’s not a lot of real estate between you and where the avalanche of crazy sh*t originates from. You’ll have to be quick and somewhat lucky here. Press on until you’re within kissing distance of Pauline. That’s when D.K. will abandon his post, grab her, and do his climb-through-the-top-of-the-screen thing.

Totals for this series of stages:

Stage 5-1: 9 seconds

Stage 5-2: 62 seconds

Stage 5-3: 130 seconds

Stage 5-4: 110 seconds

Total time: 311 seconds. Number of Marios at my disposal: 36.

A brief animation plays showing Mario pulling off a two (or maybe three) bounce “super jump” across an incredibly wide gap. He bumps his head against some bricks at the top of the screen–ha, ha!–and the “I’m dizzy” music plays. Presumably, I’ll be making a jump of that caliber soon. We’ll all find out tomorrow on day 49, people.

My mom uses a Verizon broadband card to connect to the ‘Net. But since we were in my brother’s house, I saw no reason why she shouldn’t use the house Wi-fi instead, and not deplete her monthly quota of data. So that was one thing that I could do for her. Also: I’d recently switched browsers to Google’s Chrome, which I’d been enjoying. So that was another thing I could do for her. I bookmarked some key pages for her, then added a few application icons to her desktop dock, for easier access.

“Boom, there you go,” I said to her, sliding her MacBook Air back in her direction. “Good as new.”

“What if I can’t get my Verizon card working again?” she asked.

I assured her that it would not be a problem to get her Verizon card working again.

Later that day, my mom, dad and I went for a drive. My mom sat in the backseat with her computer. “Guess what, Scott?” she said. “The Verizon card isn’t working.” She sighed in a dramatic, disappointed way. “I can’t get on Facebook, because the card is no longer working.”

“What do you mean it isn’t working?” I asked.

“It’s not working. I can’t get it to connect now.” She handed me the computer in the front seat.

I fooled around with the card, unplugging it and plugging it in again, switching it on and off. She was right: it wasn’t working. “You’re right, mom,” I said. “It’s not working.”

“Great,” she said in a sarcastic fashion. “I knew this would happen!” she said.

My blood began to boil. GODDAMN IT ALL, PEOPLE, I AM NOT A COMPUTER EXPERT, I wanted to scream. I NEVER ONCE CLAIMED TO BE.

I tried to come up with reasons why the card might not be working. We were driving through a particularly barren stretch of Central New York–nothing but frost-bitten cornfields around us in every direction. “Maybe we’re too far away from the signal towers,” I said, peering at the horizon.

She kept pressing me for answers, kept pressing me to figure it out for her somehow, to make it work again. Let me tell you, there is nothing I hate worse than letting her down, of all people. I can’t take it when she’s disappointed in me, even in small ways. It’s like having birds peck at me in the face and neck region. I just wanted it to stop.

She sat in the backseat, arms folded and looking out the window, pouting a little.

I tried to keep my anger in check, tried to be reasonable, tried to figure out why this was happening, why technology had to screw me like this, especially in front of my mom. I kept plugging and unplugging the card like an idiot. Work, goddamn it all, I said to myself. Work, work, work, work.

“I can’t get it to work,” I said, handing the computer back to her.

“So now what am I supposed to do?”

“You’ll have to take it to the Verizon store, and let them look at it,” I said. Then I added, “I don’t have all the answers.”

“Great,” she said. She kept looking out the back window. “Now I have to go out of my way to make a special trip to the Verizon store.” I could feel her smoldering back there. “That is just great,” she said.

I sat in the front seat, my jaw clenched, my fingernails digging into the armrest, trying to contain the series of nuclear explosions of anger and frustration I was feeling inside.

“See? That’s why I don’t fool with those things,” my dad said to the both of us, shaking his head.

Stage 5-3. OK, so there’s a lot going on in this level–ladders going off in all kinds of crazy directions, dual elevators going up and down, super hammer-time hammers, switches, portable bridges and ladders, etc. This is easily the busiest level I’ve encountered in the game so far. Hell, it’s even got a femur-hurling skull head that you have to keep an eye on. It’s a madhouse.

I did manage to pull this off on my first try–and with 130 seconds to spare, too. No, I didn’t collect all of Pauline’s accessories, or explore every cranny of the level. But I did get it done. Here’s how I did it.

I travelled the level in a clockwise pattern, following the ladders and platforms upwards and to the right, until I reached the going-down elevator all the way on the righthand side of the screen. The elevator carried me back to the bottom tier again, specifically on the right side of the bottom tier, which is the place to be. Here I found two key elements: a portable ladder and portable bridge power-up. Pro Tip: Whenever you find these types of power-ups, you should be on the lookout for any broken ladders or gaps in the level that could benefit from having a bridge. Sure enough, there is a small, half-finished area just above me in dire need of both.

Trigger both power-ups in tandem–they’re located a jump or two away from one another–and place them in the areas where they logically belong. Once they are in place, quickly climb the now-complete ladder, pull the switch (located at the top of the ladder) from left to right, then hustle across the temporary bridge and climb the ladder at its midpoint before the bridge vanishes.

You’ll have to be quick. If you run out of time, don’t fret. Simply start the process all over again. Have faith in the knowledge that on one of these attempts, you’ll be quick enough.

The switch reverses the elevator, making it travel down (the direction you need it to go in) instead of up. Continue to climb upwards until you find a claustrophobic cave-like area where the key is located. Grab the key, then take the elevator–which, as I said, is now conveniently going down–back down to the bottom. Oh, what’s that right there? Is that the exit door? Why, it is the exit door. Guess what? Today’s level is finished. No, I didn’t collect all the junk that’s scattered about the level, which bugs me a little. (I prefer to feel like I’ve completely mastered each level, and squeezed all I can from it before pressing on.) But sometimes, in life, you just need to get the job done.

And the job for today is done.

Postscript: Looking back, the only thing I didn’t collect is Pauline’s hat. Otherwise, I got the handbag and the umbrella. And there was an “easy pickings” 1-up heart. But it was located far too close to the skull head, so I decided not to risk it. In retrospect, I feel like I got enough out of this level. And I didn’t lose a single Mario, something which hasn’t happened since the earliest stages of this venture. Next up: day 48.

“How would you like to reach your true potential? How would you like to take 10 years off your life? How would you like to wake up in the morning in just 14 days, look in the mirror, and say hello to the new you?”

This was music to my father’s ears.

He has owned several pieces of exercise equipment over the years. There was the odd-looking stationary bike that also doubled as a home gym. There were the tangles of pulleys that somehow gave one “abs of steel” in “just minutes a day.” They all had names like “The Gut Wrecker” and “Flab Fighter II” and “Slide & Slim 2000.” (“Simply slide, slide, slide your way to a new you!”) Before the end of every informercial, before the announcer had even gotten to the “three easy payments” part, my father was already writing down the call-now number on a piece of paper.

“Maybe that’s what your mother and I need,” he’d say, pointing at the screen. “Maybe that’s what will help me get back into fighting shape.” Then he’d throw a few phantom punches from his sitting position on the couch: left, right, left right, uppercut. “See? I still got it,” he’d say, his breathing a little more labored now.

He told me a story about how he’d recently bought one of those inflatable exercise balls. After a few days of use, he explained to me, he decided he didn’t like it, that it’s not for him. So his plan is to deflate it, box it up, and take the slightly used exercise ball back to the store for the $12 refund. The idea of my dad taking time out of his day to return an exercise ball–I can see him handing the receipt to the cashier and trying to explain why he’s returning it–makes me wince for some reason.

A couple Christmases ago I gave him a copy of EA Sports Active for the Wii–the interactive exercise program that features a couple of rubber bands and a game disc that explains how to use those rubber bands. I don’t know if he ever actually tried to use it. I hope, in retrospect, that he didn’t. The thought of him trying to get the Wii working–no small task for him–then figuring out how those rubber band things function truly pains me. He never mentioned EA Sports Active to me, which means he either never tried it, or else he tried it and mortified himself.

He was once so strong and loomed so large that he used to encourage my brother and I to sit on his back while he did push-ups off the living room floor at night. Even after his beer belly came in–and boy, did it ever come in–he still maintained his arm strength. He’d hold his clenched hands above his dinner plate at night, saying, “One fist of iron, the other of steel; if the right one doesn’t get you then the left one will.”

He was always so huge in my mind. But now, as he approaches 70, as he works so hard to keep his blood sugar in check, he has become two things I never thought he would become: he’s small and slight. We have a running joke in the family about my dad now having to purchase all of his clothes in the Boys Department. “Hey dad, Sears is having a sale on Boys summer wear, you should go and check it out,” etc. Sometimes he laughs at these jokes. Other times he doesn’t.

He’s so little now that sometimes I think that I could very easily pick him up off his feet and cradle him in my arms.

It’s time for stage 5-2, the 46th stage of the game. Only 55 more stages to go, people. (I got this…I think.) The name of the game today is, once again, brick breaking. Yes, more of those chocolate bar-type bricks are clogging up this stage, preventing Mario from doing what he needs to do, i.e. getting the key and heading out the door. There is, thankfully, a chocolate bar-busting hammer power-up at the very top of the level. I spent the bulk of the level doing this: climbing up to the hammer power-up, then carrying the hammer to the parts of the level where it was needed most.

There are a pair of bipedal enemies patrolling the area where the hammer power-up is located. They could be turtles, or mummies, or mummy-turtles. Who knows. Also: they are as harmless as Carebears. Feel free to take one of their heads out for a ride. See what I mean? Harmless.

Anyway, the hammer power-up will get the turtle-mummies out of the way once and for all. Once you have the hammer, head to the left towards a spot on the floor that looks darker in color. These bricks are vulnerable to your hammer, and will get chopped out as you walk over them, allowing you passage back down to the lower parts of the level.

Pro Tip: Should the hammer power-up begin to flag at any point, don’t fret! Simply return to the spot where it’s located at the top of the and acquire a new one.

With a hammer power-up at full bore, drop down through your self-created hole, and allow yourself to “fall” along the crude set of stairs the platforms provide. Once you’re at the bottom, head right, knocking away the bricks protecting a new kind of enemy: a disembodied skull which hurls femurs at random intervals. This enemy appears to be on loan from Castlevania II and IV.

Take care to avoid those airborne femurs, then give him a taste of the hammer. Once he’s gone, keep moving to the right, taking out the next row of chocolate-like bricks. On the far side of this now-busted wall is the key. Grab it, then head for the nearby door.

Like the previous stage, your biggest enemy here is time. My first attempt this morning resulted in me having to listen to the game’s “You’re Running Out of Time!!!!!!!” theme, which has to be one of the most annoying pieces of music ever written. If they’d played this godforsaken song instead of Van Halen outside of Noriega’s compound in 1990, I’m certain he’d have surrendered much sooner.

My dad asks me things or makes observations that, for some reason, irritate me to no end. Example: I have an ancient air purifier in my apartment in New York that has needed a new filter for several years now. Once, during a visit, back when I was still living in New York, he figured out the model number for the filter. He wrote the number down in bold letters on a piece of masking tape–H2-10014–and taped it to the front of the purifier. And ever since, whenever I see him, he’ll say, out of the blue, “Hey, did you ever replace the filter on your air purifier in New York?”

I have not replaced that air filter yet. In fact, I’ve forgotten about the air filter entirely, since I haven’t lived in that apartment for several years now. For reasons I can’t easily explain, this seemingly innocent question makes my blood boil. ”NO, I HAVE NOT REPLACED THAT AIR FILTER YET, GODDAMN IT,” I want to scream. But I don’t. Instead, I set my jaw, and try to breathe.

“No, dad,” I say, “I haven’t gotten around to it yet. But I will.”

A year or so ago he saw a cat bed advertised on TV called a Sunny Seat that attaches to a window and provides cats with a place to enjoy naps in the sun. He told me about it over the phone once. It was a nice gesture, especially coming from him, since he has never really had any use for cats in his life and no doubt remains baffled by the fact that his adult son owns two of them.

Now, whenever I see him, he’ll inevitably ask at some point, “Hey, did you ever get one of those cat beds that I told you about?”

The top of my head feels like the jittery lid on a pot of boiling water. Again, I set my jaw and breathe. Again, I try to respond in the most measured way possible: “No, dad, I did not buy one of those cat beds that you recommended I buy. But I will.”

He folds his arms when I tell him this. He seems disappointed, even though I’m pretty sure he knows the answers to these questions before he asks them.

Stage 5-1. Today’s stage, the very first in the DESERT stages, introduces us to an entirely new physical element: brick walls. These walls, which clog up the stage and resemble the rows on a Cadbury bar, must be destroyed in order for Mario to proceed. Question: Exactly how can they be destroyed? Answer: With a new, more powerful hammer-time hammer–that’s how.

The level is a one-screen experience, with the key located in the center at the very top of the level and the exit door located at the very bottom. In between are four tiers that are utterly clogged with brick. Tier one: I trigger the new super hammer power-up, which suddenly makes an oversized hammer appear in Mario’s hands. He swings with abandon as I move him directly into the brick clog. Brick detritus begins flying everywhere as Mario leaves a Mario-high tall path through the brick. On the far side of the brick clog is a ladder.

Obviously you can’t climb or jump with the hammer in hand. So in order to reach the next tier, you must toss the hammer into the air (B button), sending it skyward towards the next tier, then climb the ladder as fast as possible. If you reach the top of the ladder quickly enough, Mario will automatically re-grab the hammer and continue to swing away. Yes, this move is by far the coolest move in the game, so I’m officially renaming it Coolest Move in the Game going forward. Whenever I use that phrase going forward, you’ll now know what I’m referring to.

You should have enough time left on the hammer to buzz through half of the brick in the next tier. At the halfway point, sandwiched between two layers of brick, you’ll find a second hammer power-up. Grab this and buzz through the second half of the brick. Then, when you reach the ladder on the left, do a Coolest Move in the Game to reach the next tier.

Should your hammer-time power-up expire at any point, simply backtrack and trigger a new one. On the third tier, like a snowplow that moves brick out of the way instead of snow, knock your way through another brick clog, and head for the ladder all the way on the right. Pull off another C.M.I.T.G., and now you’re on the top level. In the middle of yet another brick sandwich is the key. You know what to do here.

Once you’ve got the key, use the vanishing bricks–which vanish beneath your feet when stepped on; they’re located on the right and left sides of each tier–to make a rapid descent back to the bottom. Time will be short at this point–it’s really you’re only enemy in this level–so don’t linger. Me, I reached the exit door with a mere nine seconds to spare.

I’m off to the airport this morning to catch a flight to the frozen tundra of Edmonton, where I’ll be visiting with the nice people at BioWare to discuss Mass Effect 3, among other things. I’m wearing a nice sweater today, just in case Dr. Ray or Dr. Greg are around. Man, I love those guys.

Fact: You don’t actually see Donkey Kong himself very often in this game. Which is strange, since the game is called Donkey Kong. Sure, he puts in an appearance every now and then, the same way that Barbara Walters puts in appearances on TV’s The View, to remind everyone who the real boss is. But for the most part, D.K. remains hidden away behind the scenes, confident (perhaps overconfident?) that his 101 level-long gauntlet of death will finally get the best of Mario/me.

Yet once every four stages, D.K. does come out of hiding, and takes things into his own hands/paws. It’s during these stages that he promises to finish off Mario once and for all with one of his D.K.-designed Rube Goldberg-type devices. How I managed to make it through 44 stages and not use the term “Rube Goldberg-type device” is a mystery for the ages. Stage 4-12 is one of those “special” stages. I put the quotes around special, because these stages are becoming quite dry. I always get excited for these stages. I hope that something really challenging will happen here. Now the real fun begins, I think. But D.K. hasn’t seemed as inspired lately as he was in the earlier stages of the game. Maybe he’s not so hellbent on killing me anymore. Or maybe, after watching me survive 44 levels in a row, he’s starting to get discouraged. Either way, let’s begin.

The stage is divvied up into three sections: an upper, a middle, and a lower section. The upper section is basically off limits, so go ahead and forget about that section. It’s where Pauline hangs out and screams. The middle section is where D.K. stands and hurls his barrels and pounds his chest. And the lower section is where I start my journey.

The middle tier is bookended by danglers, which I can climb to reach D.K. in the middle section. As usual, Kong’s barrels, once hurled, sail through the air, until they land on the small platforms at the left or right of the middle tier. They mysterious upright themselves, violating at least seven laws of physics. Then they sit there, waiting for me to claim them, and hurl them at D.K. Now, care must be taken when climbing the danglers enroute to the stationary barrels, because D.K. is still hurling barrels as I’m climbing.

Also: keep an eye out for the occasional ghost mushroom. They travel about the level, and they will cause you to shrink down to Tiny Mario size, should you come into contact with one. The barrels, when tossed, travel in far more unpredictable patterns here than they have in previous levels of this type. Pro Tip: Observe D.K. carefully, and be prepared to leap from dangler to dangler to get out of the way of any rogue barrels.

Once you reach one of the stationary barrels, stand on top of it, and press the B button. This causes Mario to hoist the barrel above his head. Next, jump, with barrel in hand, towards D.K. and hurl the barrel at him. Hey, you’ve just given D.K. a taste of his own barrel-flavored medicine. Note how he becomes dizzy when struck with his own barrel. Ha, ha! Pro Tip: Repeat this process two more times.

After D.K. has been struck three times, he collapses in a heap for several seconds. Then he rises to his feet, dusts off his fur, and hauls Pauline up through the top of the screen. The totals for this section of the game:

Stage 4-9: 92 seconds

Stage 4-10: 113 seconds

Stage 4-11: 80 seconds

Stage 4-12: 165 seconds

Total: 450 seconds. Number of Marios in my Mario Tank: 39.

Next on my to-do list: level 45. It seems we’re heading into an entirely new section of the game called DESERT.