The most clutchness evah

You'd think that when you hear the word "clutch", you think of Joe Carter's World Series-winning home run or Eli's drive to win the Super Bowl. You'd be wrong. Those two wannabees wish they climbed the Mount Everest I scaled last night.

I had my fantastic friend Donald Funk, otherwise known as Dr. Funkenstein, for a night of Wii since the rest of my loser friends prefer to spend time with their families. I had rounds four through seven of the NFL Draft on TiVo and they turned me down like I was a pariah.

That's not important. What's important is my feat. As usual Don and I played head-to-head games and as usual I got too competitive and smacked him around a bit. I do not mean that literally. Don did once hit me with the controller when we played tennis but that's my fault because I'm right-handed and he's left-handed. Now I make him play in the next room.

We were playing the new Mario game, and we were trying to finish up a board. In this fantastic Mario world you have to finish a set of boards before you save. There's not much risk here because we play in tandem and if one guy dies, there's the option to continue. The downside is when both guys run out of lives at the same time, you reset to the previous save point. I'm not sure why when this happens that it feels like a true setback, like in middle school when my fighting fish my mom named after Len Bias died.

We were on the last board, the castle. You struggle through lava and fences with spikes and weird bony critters that you can't ever fully kill. Then you face the big purple boss. The first two times I went through I was like John Elway in the Super Bowl against the 49ers. I wet myself and died quickly.

Don and I made our way through the vertical board. He fell on the spikes, terrible way to go, and it was just me. The only problem was I was on my last guy. And I was little Mario. You can get a mushroom, my least favorite food, to grow into big Mario but I always lost my mojo before the end and was small Mario. I made it through the red doors with no expectation of victory.

If I jumped on the head of the big purple boss three times, we got to save and I was victorious and we could call it an evening because let's be honest, it was eleven on a Saturday night. If the big purple boss jumped and I was on the ground, I'd get stuck and he'd shoot me with the emasculating pink lightening. Otherwise he spun around like a turtle on cocaine and was invincible.

I jumped in with no fear or self-consciousness like Donald Trump. I got the first one. I retreated and jumped at the right time. I avoided the rolling turtle. I made the second jump. At this point my mind told me that it would be super unclutch, like Eli Manning any other time but that Super Bowl, for me to die just then. These are the brain cells I'm trying to kill when I drink. I kept my composure, avoided the guy for a few more seconds and made my final jump. I was victorious.

And that was how I beat the big purple guy. BTW, Don and I beat that board at his house months ago but we were at my house so we had to start from the beginning. Does this make the feat less impressive? Hard to believe I could pull that off.