By now it should be obvious that I’m a Smallville freak (not to be confused with a meteor freak). My story is simple: I bought Season 1 on DVD one day because it was selling for $20 and I had only ever heard good things about the show. I plowed through Season 1 in a few days and immediately ran out to get Season 2 (even though I was extremely sick and wasn’t moving out of bed at the time)! I managed to get through the first 4 seasons while Season 5 was still on the television. So I didn’t watch and waited for Season 5 to come out on DVD, watched it in 2 days, and then began watching Season 6 last September.

Of course, my schedule screwed me and I started missing shows so I stopped watching completely…which means that I had to wait an entire year for the f’ing DVDs to come out! I bought the DVDs earlier this week, watched them all, and still managed to miss the first episode of Season 7. Thank God I have DVR these days!

Season 6 was great. The show has grown-up so much over the last 5 years that it’s really become a great show with many adult themes. Sex, desire, marriage, lust - all of these play a major part in many of the episodes. This is the season that sees Lana Lang marry Lex Luthor and ultimately “explode” in the final episode. We follow Clark track escaped convicts from the Phantom Zone (which is where Zod exiled Clark at the end of Season 5). In fact, Season 6 ends with Clark fighting against the last - and strongest - escapee from the Phantom Zone.

One thing that really pissed me off about this season was the fact that Lana seemed to wind up in the hospital in the majority of the episodes. At one point, I think she was in there for a few episodes in a row! How long can you play out that storyline before it gets old? We get it, she’s physically weak, emotionally tempered, and sexually strong. We know! Move to the next friggin’ level of her character development!

The introduction of Jimmy Olsen was good for the show - or at least I think so. His interaction with Chloe really brings a different side of her character out for the fans to enjoy. It also clearly puts Clark in his own little world where he’s essentially alone. I mean even his Mother has Lionel Luther to lean on! Oh, and speaking of Annette O’Toole and John Glover, they (once again) steal the season with their acting. As do Chloe and Lois Lane (Erica Durance). Tom Welling is also great as Clark Kent as is Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor.

But honestly, at this point in the show’s history it is unnecessary to go over the excellence of the cast. They’re good - and if you don’t believe me then watch on Thursday nights at 8pm on The CW.

Season 6 was a great season and I’m looking forward to another excellent season!

Today’s Atlanticville had an article about “improving relations” between Monmouth University and its surrounding municipalities - namely Long Branch. I love Long Branch and I think some exciting and creative things are going on over there. I’m also a university alumnus who fought vociferously for students’ rights while an undergraduate. I consider myself privileged to continue that fight as I get older and move up and on through the game of life.

But what always gets me is how the students at Monmouth, by and large, don’t care about this fight. Taken from today’s Atlanticville:

Hayes told the council that the city and the university will be taking their partnership one step further this year and will be sharing information on the addresses of students living off campus.

“We have been able to make some significant headway,” Hayes said at the meeting. “It looks like the university will be willing to share some information with us about where students are housed, for the purpose of safety.”

Anyone who knows the story about the people involved here know that this has nothing to do with student safety. Kevin Hayes is the head of the inspection department in Long Branch. He’s been sued time and time again by local landlords for not granting Certificates of Occupancy for completely well-groomed and maintained houses. And not that it should matter in this particular case, but Hayes’ son was a Long Branch police officer who was one of the major causes of problems between the off-campus students and Long Branch. Hayes, Jr. and another young police officer in Long Branch were shaking down minority students in their off-campus homes and raiding their drug caches…so THEY could sell it on their own!

Of course they got no prison time because they’re politically-connected and this is New Jersey, but it makes me sick to read that the students “get a little better every year” when there are deep, troubling problems on both sides of the argument.

But when you have a student body that doesn’t give a hoot, what are you to do to stop these injustices? Re-read that selection from the article above - that’s illegal, folks. Going to school at a college does not permit that college to share your information with the local police force - especially when that police force has been sued in the past for being overzealous in their enforcement against college students and when they’ve even had to remove officers for shaking students down!

The university surely won’t tell the students anything about this - they relish the fact that 99% of the university community are lemmings who do what they’re told and (even worse) believe what they’re told. This is a tragic reality not just at Monmouth, but many of today’s private colleges and universities. You want to read something even more disgusting?

“If a student is involved in an issue of misconduct off campus, the police will send a copy of the report to us and I will review it,” Nagy said. “We will charge the student under the code of conduct. The student will go through the city’s court and through the Monmouth University court.

“The student is charged twice,” Nagy said. “Just because you do not physically live on campus does not mean you can do whatever you want. A student’s actions affect our reputation.”

That’s right folks - forget about your 5th amendment rights against double jeopardy! You get charged TWICE for the same “crime” in this circus! And having been through that rodeo once or twice, I can tell you that the school’s judicial officers know that this is illegal. Students are often cited by the local police on a Thursday night and expected to go through the university judicial process within a week or two when their actual court date is a month or more away. In essence, the school attempts to find you guilty before the United States legal system!

When you bring this up to the university, they cite their student code of conduct. Most students (with a head on their shoulders) then cite their Constitutional rights. The university ALWAYS comes back with the fact that they are a private university and do not need to respect those rights…which is a lie thanks to President Clinton. President Clinton signed something called the Higher Education Amendments of 1998 which snuck in the provision that if a private university receives ANY federal funding, they MUST respect the Constitutional rights of the students.

That’s generally when you get the university to sit down and start tapping their foot.

But what does it matter? Civil rights have gotten so bad in the Long Branch/Ocean Township area that an article like this can actually be published, describing how the entities intend on destroying students’ rights, and no one will do anything about it. Watch - we’ll get another edition of the Atlanticville next week and there will be no student response…

There’s just no passion any more in undergraduates.

USA Today has a fun little flash game up at their website where you answer 11 questions and they pair you with a candidate in the Presidential race. I was paired with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee! Take a look!

Click Here for the USA Today Game

The one thing that is becoming apparent from these Presidential debates is that the candidates have no choice but to speak in sound bites. As I watched the Democratic debate last night, I really felt bad for the folks on that stage. They had their answers cut short not so much by Tim Russert, but more so because they didn’t have enough time for all of the candidates to give answers of substance.

That being said, I was impressed by guys like Bill Richardson. Governor Richardson was able to cut through the time constraints and just hammer home some basic points. I saw great similarities between Governor Richardson and Senator McCain’s performance a few weeks ago. Straight, no bullshit answers to questions, answering with direct “yes” and “no” statements followed up by a discussion of his record on the issues. Smart campaigning when you’ve got 30 seconds to answer!

I was a little bland on Senator Obama. For some reason he came off as boring and not the hope that he’s been touted. This is almost certainly a result of the structure of the debate and the time constraints put on each candidate. Senator Obama is at his best when he’s in a crowd of people speaking in terms of theoretical concepts and the concept of hope for the future. That’s all great stuff. But when you get down to campaigning in the Media Age and the era of 30 second attention spans, you need to be a little bit more lively when you’re on one of these debates.

Senator Clinton, on the other hand, had a good night I thought. Her sparring with Tim Russert should galvanize her base, but it should also push her further from the independents who are unsure if they’ll vote Democratic this time around.

That brings me to Tim Russert. I thought Mr. Russert did a fine job at not letting the candidates get away with answers that are simply political speak. As I talk to more people about the coming election and politics in general, this is the biggest recurring problem that comes up. How do you get around the political jargon that is ubiquitous in contemporary political culture? Seems simple - sit the people down in front of Tim Russert or Brit Hume and those guys won’t allow any of that stuff to fly!

All in all an interesting debate where I think Governor Richardson may gain a few points in the polls; which isn’t enough to beat Hillary, but enough to be in the people’s minds.

On Sunday, September 23rd, over 110 undergraduates and more than a dozen alumni volunteers from Sigma Pi Fraternity gathered on the campus of Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. These undergraduates represented some 37% of the total undergraduates in the New Jersey Province of Sigma Pi Fraternity.

The purpose of the annual fall workshop is to focus on the various keys to success for each of the chapters in the province. While we generally have a broad array of presenters speaking on a variety of issues, this fall we took a different approach. We invited Josh Orendi from Phired Up Productions, LLC to come in and run the entire workshop.

I’m pleased to say that Josh and Phired Up hit a home run in New Jersey!

Some of the feedback regarding Josh and his outstanding Phired Up presentation:

He really had an effect on the chapter here at FDU and we’re already putting into effect his recruiting methods. Also his methods turned the little wheels in our heads and we are tweaking some of our previous ways of doing things into a combination of his system and our own to make it work best for the chapter.

This is just one of the bits of feedback that we’ve gotten from our undergraduates. From an alumni advisor’s perspective, the Phired Up team is easy to work with and presented no problems in setting up this workshop. And while I’m going over the workshop, the team from Rowan University’s conference services was great to work with, too. I highly recommend working with both Rowan University and Phired Up!

You’ve got to love the complexity of the world today. New York City is the seat of the United Nations and thus has to host the annual meetings of the organization. At these annual meetings, various world leaders are permitted to come and speak before the assembly, including those who lead nations that aren’t the best of friends with the United States.

Enter Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last year where he claimed the podium still smelled like sulfur because the devil stood in the same spot only one day earlier. Who was that devil? You guessed it! President George Bush.

This year the United Nations hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad within hours of his speech at the ultra-liberal Columbia University. Many people are talking about whether or not Ahmadinejad should have been allowed to speak at Columbia and on this particular issue, I agree with committed liberal-thinker…Howard Stern.

On Stern’s radio show he was just beside himself that Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak at such a distinguished university. He made the point that if President Bush ever visited Iran and was invited to the University of Tehran, he’d be shot while getting out of the plane. We don’t do that in America and yes, this is a testimony to what makes America great. But as soon as Ahmadinejad entered New York, I would have had him arrested for supplying the insurgents in Iraq with weapons to kill Americans. Would this have plunged us into a war with Iran? Who knows? There is a great distrust of Ahmadinejad at the local level in Iran - the people may have been glad to get rid of him.

Would it have set a negative standard? Probably so. If the United Nations is to be located in New York, then world leaders - no matter how onerous - need to be allowed to enter the assembly and speak freely while they are there. However, when a world leader as disgusting as Ahmadinejad comes into this country - there may need to be some exceptions to the rule.

The only saving grace with this idiot visiting Columbia was that he made a complete fool of himself. He claimed that Iran does not have homosexuals like America does - ha ha ha ha ha!!! Oh, what a dummy. Like the world doesn’t know that his government persecutes homosexuals and pretty much “gets rid of” that “problem.” What a bozo!

Yesterday afternoon I was driving back from a workshop in Southern New Jersey and I had the Giants game on in the truck. I was absolutely shocked that the Giants won! I thought for sure that they were going to have one of those seasons where they play great games but lose every one of them.

Thank God I was wrong! I haven’t gotten a chance to see any of the updates from the game yet, but I’ll be looking for them tonight. Whew! What a relief!

The Daily Record printed an article yesterday that talked about the possibility that up to 25% of the protected land up in the Highlands area of the state may be up for development. For those of you that don’t know, the Highlands are comprised of North and Northwest New Jersey. It’s a beautiful area of the state that blends nicely into Pennsylvania and does NOT resemble the rest of the images that this nation has of New Jersey. In other words, we have no high-density industrial sites in this part of the state; we’re blessed to have such great forests and green-space instead.

Here is what the Daily Record wrote:

About 100,000 of those acres eligible for development are in the preservation area, that half of the region where nearly all large-scale construction was banned by the 2004 Highlands Act, according to a report released by the council. The rest are in the planning area, where lawmakers envisioned development continuing, where appropriate.

The developable acreage is contained in about 22,500 parcels that fall into one of the four major exemptions written into the law. There are 17 exemptions in all, but the four studied are the ones that would permit the most development. They allow for the construction of a house on a lot in existence at the time of the act or for the reconstruction or addition to an existing home.

What is of most importance is the last sentence. Once again, we have legislation in New Jersey that publicly is touted to end a practice that we would otherwise find to be repulsive (knocking down wildlife areas to build more McMansions), yet in reality it does nothing to solve the problem at hand.

This state needs a strong Chief Executive who will look at this problem and look at the potential of ruining the communities in North and Northwest New Jersey. Yes folks, the type of development that could be allowed in the Highlands will ruin that part of the state - no doubt. This is a part of the state with many rural areas. Rural areas, not suburban areas, though there are some great suburban areas, too. Opening up 100,000 acres of this beautiful protected land for development is just asking for those rural areas to suburbanize.

After watching the Mount Arlington, Landing, and Roxbury areas of Morris County go from rural to suburban areas over the last 20 years, I don’t want to see this happen to other areas in neighboring Sussex and Warren counties. The over-development of these parts of Morris County have pushed families out of home and communities that they literally built with their own two hands. It’s been disgusting to watch.

If there is anyone with any sense in Trenton (HA!), they’ll open up the coffers and buy these parcels - making them protected land.

If there is a bigger moron out there besides OJ Simpson, someone please let me know. Here is a man who killed his former wife and her boyfriend in cold blood and combined his skin color and his money to get out of a conviction. Ever since then, he’s not laid low like a murderer who got away with it should be doing! Instead he’s out there making a mockery out of the system by getting arrested on some drug charges last year and now on kidnapping charges (among others).

What makes me sick is that we live in a country where a disgusting human being can get away with this type of crap. This is a man who wrote a book called “If I Did It,” speaking about how he “would” have killed his ex-wife. Come on! What the hell is wrong with Los Angeles that this asshole couldn’t be convicted during his murder trial!?! First OJ, then Robert Blake, now Phil Spector…what’s in the water over in Los Angeles!?

Anyway, if there was ever a person who was worthy of spending the rest of his life behind bars, it’s OJ Simpson. Here’s hoping that the Las Vegas investigators are able to take care of business where the Los Angeles team screwed up.

Many of the Democratic candidates have commented that they would shut down the Guantanamo Bay holding facility for enemy combatants captured in the Middle East. I have a quick, simple question for these candidates that I am stealing from Rudy Giuliani…

What do you do with the folks down at Guantanamo? Do you send them home? Their home countries don’t want them any more (which is why many of them are still there). Do you send them to 3rd party countries? This has worked out poorly for many of the prisoners since they are seen as outcasts in those countries.

Do you bring them to America? Technically, they’re in America since we own Guantanamo.

What do you do with these people? I don’t think America wants a political answer on this issue or an answer that uses the blame game looking backwards. We want an answer using the solution game looking forward.

So what do you do?