Widescreen

I guess I look fairly Gokey-ish
in this pic.

I've had to say that a lot in the past few months. It began in Minneapolis in April, when a middle-aged woman came up behind me while I was sitting at the bar in Brit's Pub. She put her arm around me and said, "Sing for me, Danny." Who's Danny? "Danny from 'American Idol'!" That's when I realized why a teenaged girl was staring and pointing at me in O'Hare earlier that day.

When I had long hair and often wore a backwards baseball cap and an oversized coat, people called me Silent Bob. When I chopped that hair off and got a swanky 'do at Mario Tricoci, they called me Ben Affleck. You have your peaks and valleys, I guess.

So how did Nintendo top Microsoft's Monday cavalcade of stars? They announced two new Super Mario games and a new Metroid game Tuesday. More on those in a minute.

First, a question: Do you own a PSP? Do you know anybody who does? I don't, and I can't remember ever seeing someone use one in public. Maybe they're omnipresent in the hallways of America's schools. I don't know.

I do know that I can't stand Jack Tretton, the CEO of SCEA who hosted Sony's presentation today at E3 in Los Angeles. I haven't been able to stand him since a particularly arrogant interview he gave to Electronic Gaming Monthly (the dearly departed magazine which is being resurrected) back in the early days of the next-gen console wars -- when it was already apparent that his team was going to lose. Why does Sony keep trotting this guy out there?

But enough of all that. What about the games? Here are the highlights from the presentations by Nintendo and Sony:

The annual E3 expo, where video game developers and publishers show off their goods for the next year, kicked off today at the Los Angeles Convention Center with another typically exciting presentation from Microsoft, who blew away the competition at last year's show. They have set the bar pretty high again -- how can Sony and Nintendo possibly top appearances by the surviving Beatles, Yoko Ono and Steven Spielberg?

Hopefully with some huge surprises on the gaming front. While Microsoft's guests were surprising, the games certainly weren't -- "The Beatles: Rock Band," two new "Halo" titles and yet another glimpse of "Final Fantasy XIII" were all on Monday's docket, as was Project Natal, the goofy name for the Xbox 360's new motion-control system.

Here are some highlights from Monday's event:

The last eleven days haven't been nearly as relaxing as I would have liked -- it's hard to keep the blood pressure down when your team is facing off against the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference Finals. My staycation ended Sunday in the United Center, where the Blackhawks just plain stunk up the joint in Game 4. (Brian Campbell? You and me, we are freakin' done professionally, man.)

It's also hard to breathe when you stand 5'9'' and weigh 216 pounds, and decide to try out your first new pair of Rollerblades in five years. I thought my maiden voyage on the Poplar Creek bike trail last Tuesday was going to end with me on a stretcher; I made it about a mile-and-a-half before the nausea set in.

But those epic failures don't come close to what happened at my favorite watering hole Friday night. I was holding court with two very nice, very funny, very pretty young women for a couple hours, and, as they hugged me good-night, I forgot the most crucial part of such a situation -- asking for a phone number. This omission was still the topic of discussion among the bartenders two nights later. (An interjection from Napoleon Dynamite would be appropriate here: "IDIOT!")

Michael Giacchino is the composer who gives "Lost" that extra emotional oomph -- or, the guy who wrestled those tears from your eyes as Sawyer stared into the well at the Swan site. Giacchino got his start scoring video games like "The Lost World" and "Medal of Honor." Then he met J.J. Abrams, who gave him a job on "Alias," and what has followed is an eclectic body of work that adds depth and dimension to every project he's worked on. (And a whole lot of jobs on Abrams' projects. Like ... all of them.)

You can currently hear him leaving everything you know about "Star Trek" music behind in Abrams' ginormous hit movie that you may have heard of. Giacchino's most ambitious project was almost certainly the bold, brassy score for Pixar's "The Incredibles," which managed to sound like a superhero movie and a James Bond movie all at once.

Here are some clips of his work:

Season 1 ended just as we were about to see what's in the hatch.

Season 2 ended with its destruction.

Season 3's finale teased us with the knowledge that some of the characters would, in fact, get off the island -- and it would ruin their lives.

And Season 4 finally gave us emotional payoff, and hope for the future.

But everything feels pretty darned hopeless now.

The season finale is here. "The Incident" begins at 8 p.m., preceded by yet another one of ABC's recap/clip shows, "Lost: A Journey in Time," at 7 p.m. I'll be watching the finale and posting a first reaction at its conclusion; a more detailed version will come after my second viewing, which I expect will be over around 12:30 a.m.

Some final things to think about before the fun starts:

The official numbers are in, and the J.J. Abrams reboot of "Star Trek" is a hit, having earned $75.2 million over the weekend in addition to $4 million in ticket sales on Thursday night. Paramount's ad campaign and the great reviews -- its Tomatometer score is at 95 percent -- must have convinced the uninitiated to come out in force.

So there's little doubt that we'll be taking another voyage on the USS Enterprise in two years; IMDB says the team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman will be joined by "Lost" showrunner Damon Lindelof in writing the script. Here's what I think J.J. and the gang need to do for the second (or make that twelfth) go-round:

Click here for Daily Herald Film Critic Dann Gire's review.

• • •

OK, here's the short version for the uninitiated: J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" is thus far the most entertaining movie I've seen this year, and the best "Trek" film since "The Voyage Home" in 1986. (That's the one with the whales.) Zachary Quinto is perfect as Spock, the first hour is great, and the first ten minutes are tremendous. You don't have to be a Trekkie to enjoy it.

And now, the long version for the hardcores:

Daniel Faraday, the quantum physicist, apparently didn't think of it.

Kate Austen, who was a cunning criminal in a former life, might have thought of it, but she's not saying it.

Richard Alpert, the ageless Egyptian god (or whatever the heck he really is), didn't say it either.

And Jack Shephard, the brilliant but closed-minded doctor, is suddenly blinded by destiny, John Locke-style.

So I sure hope show-runners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse see the gigantic plot hole that will be created if Jack succeeds in his plan.