The Cremation of Charlie McOhio

When I used to play Mario 3 way back when, I always used to hate World 6, the Ice Level. True, this level gave us hammer Mario, which was awesome, because, for once, Mario got to be one of the Hammer Brothers. This, however, was outweighed by the fact that the rest of the level sucked. Mario couldn't get any traction because there was ice everywhere, so he kept sliding into those inexplicable bottomless pits. There were frozen goombas standing around like they were on display in some sketchy grocery store's freezer. And Mario always looked so pissed off because you were always frickin' dying. And it was freezing out.

In a stunning display of poor judgment, I seem to have put these memories behind me and look to be determined to join Mario in his frozen grave. This weekend, I will be trekking up to something called Sugarloaf (this sounds like something the Pillsbury Doughboy does in the bathroom), for a law school ski trip up in sunny, scenic, frozen hellscape Maine.

And this ain't the southern part of Maine, the part that's conveniently located a couple of hours from Boston. No, we're going to get to Maine and keep driving North, until we're way the eff up near the Canadian goddamned border. We're going to be close enough that we can look over and see some asshat policeman on a horse, waving and grinning, "cold out, eh?"

And boy did we pick the right weekend to do this. Look at the weather Friday:


Minus forty? Negative fucking forty? Can you even breathe in that? Don't your lungs turn into icepacks at that temperature? Don't you start turning blue and then black and fall off in little pieces? Isn't this what happens to you?

I've never been so scared in my life.

Some people lunatics will attempt to go skiing. I will never understand the Americans' need to hurl themselves down frozen water at literally hundreds of miles an hour. I can think of nothing more absurd than standing at the top of a mountain in weather cold enough to turn penises into vaginas in order to jump down it.

So why am I going, if, as a Mexican, I'm terrified of skiing and snow and will refuse to leave the cabin all weekend?

Well, apparently the drinking is really good. So I'll be drinking, crying, and hiding from the cold. Probably not in that order, but more likely, all at once.

Actually, my one fear is that it will be so cold that nobody will want to leave their cabin. And we'll all be stuck there for hours, like in the brilliant Simpsons episode "Mountain of Madness," trying to stave off the overwhelming urge to cannibalize each other and set fire to the cabin for a precious last few seconds of warmth before we succumb to the frigid smile of old man winter.

And then, perhaps when Al Gore is vindicated and Maine is a tropical paradise, lost tourists will stumble upon a cluster of cabins out in the woods, where they will find all that is left of us: a frozen block of ice where law students, like the poor people of Pompeii, will be trapped forever in their final, dying pose, one hand throwing a frozen pong ball, the other clutching the remnants of that last, tragically unfinished beer.

Avenge me.