iBrianEarley {dot} com
Reviews of Movies, Games, Books, and Things I Enjoy

Do you have your costume yet? Time is running out. I have my costume, and it totally reflects my nerdiness! I’m actually going to use a costume I wore on opening night for the latest Star Trek movie. I’ve never dressed up to see a movie before, but it was actually kind of fun seeing other people dressed up too and people coming up to us to take pictures of us and with us.

I think this year, some of my coworkers and I are going to visit some supposedly haunted places and cemeteries. I’ve never done anything like that, and I think it will be a lot of fun. The whole paranormal scene fascinates me, and I love anything that has to do with the X-Files, ghosts, UFOs, and unexplained phenomena. This sounds like a great fit for me.

So, what are you going to be for Halloween? Do you have any fun plans?

Commander Earley

It has been a very long time since I have played any basketball game for any video game system. In fact, the most recent basketball game I have played on a console, excluding a recent session with NBA Jam for Super Nintendo, was NBA Live ’97 or ’98. Now those were some good basketball games. Scoring over 100 points with Anfernee Hardaway, making a team full of Reggie Millers who did nothing but rain threes all game from half court from being “on fire”, and shoving your opponents to the floor injuring them. NBA Live has come a long way since then.

EA Sports’ latest basketball creation comes to us in NBA Live 10. I have to admit, that I was pretty rusty when it comes to playing basketball games. When I was younger and played Live ’95 and ’97, I never ran plays or even cared, I would just pass it to the open man and drive to the hoop, and if I was double teamed, I would kick it out to the arc for a three. Now that I’m older, I’m actually starting to run the plays to make it feel more like a real game and play the game how it was designed.

One thing that shouldn’t be a surprise to my readers who know me, is that I had to turn the soundtrack off almost immediately. I’m not a fan of rap, and that’s all the soundtrack was. Every now and then, ESPN radio would come on and talk about the latest highlights and even show a ticker at the bottom of the screen with score updates. I thought that was a pretty cool feature. ESPN highlights were also shown on a big screen TV in the background of the shoot around that you can do while you’re loading or just sitting around at the main menu.

I became a little frustrated when I was creating my own player though. Good ol’ number eight was just about the way I liked him when all of a sudden his eyebrows were no longer dark brown; they were blonde! I checked all over the player creation screen and couldn’t find any option to change the color of the eyebrows. I thought maybe changing the color of the hair on his head or even the color of his facial hair would take care of that, but neither had any effect. I ended up deleting the player and starting over. That was a good half hour down the drain.

The gameplay is really good though. It took me a while to adjust to players actually moving around like you would see on TV, and my guy getting posted up on by somebody much bigger causing me to not have as much control since I was being thrown around like a rag doll. I only rented the game for a couple of nights, and I already want to buy it and finish the season I started. The only thing I have to learn is what the names of the plays mean.

Year One, one of the funnies movies of the year is out on DVD this week. Jack Black and Michael Cera star in writer/director Harold Ramis’s epic journey about two friends who aren’t the best at what they do in their tiny village of sixty, and end up meeting several biblical figures on their way to save their village and eventually become the heroes.

Now, I’m not a big fan of Michael Cera. I don’t hate him or dislike him, but his roles have pretty much been all the same. He always plays the soft spoken, awkwardly shy kind of character you hope will get the girl. I do like him in this movie, but mostly because of the pairing up with Jack Black, who I am a fan of. Teaming up Michael Cera’s quick, smartalic type of comedy with Jack Black’s high voltage, in-your-face style balances each other out to where you’re not sure what they are going to say or do next.

I’ve said before that I like movies that take the audience through a familiar event or time and put a different spin to it, and this is one of those movies. I have never read the Bible, but I know most of the references that were in this movie. If I missed some, I am completely unaware of it. I enjoy when parts of the Bible are satirized and questioned, and the story of the Bible does intrigue me, even though I am not a practitioner of any religion. That’s besides the point and probably shouldn’t be discussed on my blog.

I did enjoy this movie. It had plenty of laughs that weren’t tasteless and completely ridiculous as most comedies are now. If you haven’t seen it or own it yet, it is definitely one of those movies you would want to keep, much like my other Harold Ramis favorites Groundhog Day and of course Ghostbusters which has another sequel on the way!

Important Info: Fantasy Portfolio traded on Wall Street Survivor using principles learned from Jim Cramer’s Action Alert Plus.

Yesterday, I brought back my Personal Finances post and today I’m bringing back my Fantasy Portfolio posts. It has been a while since I last posted about my fantasy portfolio, and I even neglected looking at it and making trades in it in the past couple of months. It’s said because I really enjoy investing in the stock market and generating passive income through dividends. Posting on my portfolio will happen on a regular basis once again.

I have also decided that using the S&P 500 would be a better benchmark to measure my performance than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Jim Cramer suggests to use an S&P 500 ETF to put your money in until you have over $10,000 invested. Then you can manage your own money and pick the stocks you like. I don’t follow this in my real portfolio, because I like to see the actual money from the dividends coming in.

October 26 will mark the one year anniversary of my running my fantasy portfolio on Wall Street Survivor. I started with $100,000 to invest anyway I choose and as you can see below, I am well over that value. I will also reevaluate my gains compared to the S&P 500 from a year prior to that date.

Dow Jones at Year Start- $9,034.69
Dow Jones at End of Week – $8,438.39
Dow Jones Point Gain – (-$596.30)
Dow Jones Percent Gain – (-6.60%)

Portfolio at Year Start – $104,435.54
Portfolio at Week End – $114,584.54
Portfolio Total Gain – +$10,149.00
Portfolio Percent Gain – +9.72%

Transactions

10/2 Buy 50 Shares of BP at $51.28
10/2 Buy 50 Shares of CAT at $48.63
10/2 Buy 100 Shares of NAT at $28.95

Dividends Paid

10/2 $5.00 from 100 Shares of JPM at $0.05 per Share