An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton Supporters: You Must Chill!! Stop Panicking and Vote!

You must chill!

I have been thinking about writing this blog post for a long time.  After all of the "the sky is falling! Bernie Sanders is going to win!" moments from Hillary supporters I endured during primary season, I had to have my eye surgically moved back to their correct location after all of my eye rolling! It didn't take much to set most Hillary supporters off into panic (except for me).

Well today is the perfect day to write this because  as I write a poll has been released that shows Clinton  up by 2 points  over that joke of a candidate that the Republicans have chosen. I have seen this many many many times before. This will be the poll that gets a ton of media attention. Then all my Hillary Clinton supporting friends will post it on Facebook or other social media while dabbling with the idea of moving to a foreign country and/or building a bomb shelter.

Here is what I have to say! STOP PANICKING!!! We most likely got this! I am worried for your blood pressure! I am also worried that your panic will lead us to Drumpfian doom! I know panic is natural for some and a hard habit to break,  so here are three options for you to focus on instead of being a Chicken Little.

1. READ- I cannot emphasize this much. Read. A lot. Read multiple sources. Read point of views that you don't like or agree with. Be educated. I have always been critical about the many conservative Republicans who only watch Fox News and listen to conservative radio that only feeds into what they already think or  want to believe. Well guess what? One thing I learned from primary season is that extreme liberals are just as bad. If you are only getting all of you news from Bernie Sanders media like Huffington Post and God forbid usuncut.com, you simply aren't well informed. Your information is as one sided as Fox News.  I do my best to stay away from the extreme media on both sides and even if many of my media resources lean liberal like some of my favorites writers who write for  MSNBC do , I counteract that with information from more conservative points of view.

That leads me to the poll problem. The media picks and chooses which polls are going to panic people the most. Yes, a 2 point lead over the Donald is nerve wracking. Your nervousness will get you  to pay attention to their site or TV station. What they don't mention is that every other poll released in the last week has had Hillary up by anywhere from 5 to 12 points.  But that's boring! The media needs you to believe this is a close race even if right now it is not. A blow out isn't interesting. This is why many media sites in 2012 led people to believe that Mitt Romney might actually defeat President Obama. You see how that turned out? If you were really paying attention then you knew it wasn't going to happen.

But Clinton's lead  could change for the worse. Even if it doesn't change, I have some suggested sites for you. Fivethirtyeight.com is my go to polling statistics site. Yes, most of the people on it are Democrats, BUT they use the most thorough analysis of statistics that I have ever seen in Politics. Their politics may be biased, but their math is not. You can't go wrong when people are using real math to support their findings. You still don't buy into it? In the last several elections, fivethirtyeight.com has been extremely accurate in their predictions of presidential and congressional elections. During the Primary season, they were wrong about Trump getting the nomination and Bernie Sander's winning Michigan  like most media was. But unlike most media they ate their crow and admitted they were wrong and did a full scale analysis of where they went wrong.

I am also a fan of the Upshot at the New York Times site. Yes, it is also liberal biased, so I balance it out by reading articles and polling information  on Realclearpolitics.com. This site averages many of the polls that come out to give an average of where the races stand. It isn't as thorough as fivethirtyeight.com, but it also has news and editorial articles written by both conservative and liberal writers. It overall leans slightly conservative though. But the more you know!

2. STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT BERNIE SANDERS DOES OR SAYS- Bernie Sanders may not be endorsing Clinton and he may not be dropping out, but he really isn't running for president. He isn't. The Democratic race is over. So stop worrying when the media gives him time to let us all know that he isn't dropping out. Even the media is finally starting to stop falling for his game and he is getting less attention.

Senator Sanders should be commended for what he was able to do during this primary season. He engaged voters who were not engaged before (even though I kind of want to say "shame on you" if you were old enough to be engaged before), but the primary season is OVER. Bernie Sanders has gone from leader of a new movement to the guest at a party who WILL. NOT. GO. HOME. Everyday he prolongs this he becomes more of a joke and so do the few squeaky wheels left who are still Bernie holdouts.

Yes, there will be some Bernie followers who will not vote for Hillary. Most likely they won't vote at all or waste their vote on a third party candidate. Guess what? This happens in every election. Bernie just has some extremely loud supporters that NEED TO BE HEARD!!! But just because they are noisy does not mean that there are actually that many of them.   And if they opt to vote for the Republican candidate over Secretary of State Clinton,  then my guess is that they did not really know much about Sander's actual position on political issues at all.

Stop worrying! Every month more and more voters move over from Sanders to Clinton. She may not be their first choice, but most of them are intelligent people who know that choosing the other real option will have dire consequences. The ones who won't change their mind want you to know that they won't they won't change their mind. They are the spoiled brat craving their parents' attention and there truly  aren't enough of them to make a real difference.

Move on everyone! The Sanders ship has sailed. We have bigger fish ahead to fry.

3. VOTE VOTE VOTE- You may think that I am living in a blissful state of mind that believes the host of the Apprentice can't become president. You are wrong. I know he could win. I know he can.

But here is the reality. There are more liberals, Democrats, moderates and sensible independents in this country than there are crazy conservatives who wish to bring on the rapture. That is just the truth. Here is the problem. Potential Democrat candidate voters are much less inclined to actually show up to vote than their conservative counterparts. The Republicans know this. It is a big part of their strategy. They work hard to make voting difficult. They want to make sure you don't participate in Democracy.

But it isn't totally the Republicans fault. In fact, it is more our own problem. Apathy seems to win out with us. There is an attitude among too many of us that our vote won't matter. Many argue that unless their state is one of the swing states our vote doesn't matter. But the swing states change over time. Your candidate might not win every time. But doing nothing is a worse option.  You should still vote. Vote every time you have the chance! . Vote for who you believe in even if they won't win. Vote in smaller elections  Especially vote in smaller elections. A lot of the problems we have today is because Democrat voters didn't come out for the 2012 unsexy midterm elections. Voting is not sexy. Do it anyway. Do it every time!

Yesterday I went to a gay bar.....(one year later).

One year ago I wrote this blog post after the terrible tragedy at Pulse, a gay dance club, in Orlando. Through my fear, anger and sorrow of seeing this happen at a place that I would most definitely frequent, a fire was lit under me. I hoped that fire wouldn't go away. I hoped that I would never forget, and I hoped that I would take action. 

The fire in me didn't die, but unfortunately it calmed. 

Fortunately, so many of us are reflecting one year later. I hope the fire is back! Because one year later there have been some minor state victories for sensible gun control, but unfortunately at the federal level things are the same or even worse due to the nefarious nature of the current presidential administration and Republican congress. 

We are experiencing a national crisis, and the gun epidemic in the USA is a notable part of that crisis. We have to stand up and continue to fight even when it doesn't feel like it is enough. 

There is no choice. I cannot let the lives of my friends In Orlando who I will never know be in vain. 

I have to remember what it felt like that day. One year later. 



Yesterday I went to a gay bar by Dan Rosson 6/12/2016
Edited 6/12/2017


Yesterday I went to a gay bar.  I don't always go to gay bars. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't.  I tend to go to places that I am going to feel comfortable in whether that be gay or friendly to everyone.  But on the evening of  June 11th I went to a gay bar.  It was gay pride weekend in Boston. So being proudly out, I went to a gay bar.  It was fun. I hung out with my friends.  I drank a few beers.  We eyed a few sad fashion errors.  Kind of what I do at ANY bar.  Gay. Gay friendly.  Or straight.

I was not at THAT bar. THAT gay club.

It was a few hours before it happened.  My fun was not ruined by automatic rifle fire.  I was able to walk to a restaurant and get some pizza.  I was able to make a poor choice and attempt a very bad dance on a wall while ripping my pants and risking further beer induced minor injuries.   I was able to have a couple more beers.  My fun was not ended by automatic rifle fire.  My life was not stopped by automatic rifle fire.

But it could have been. I was lucky that night.

You see there are people who don't know me who wish I was a dead.  There are those who wish to do me harm because of who I love. Because of who I am attracted to.   Because I am unapologetic about being who I am.

There are those that wish harm to many of you too:  Because you are black, because you are Asian, because you are a Muslim, because you don't speak much English, because you are a woman.  Because you are many things you should always be very proud of. Unfortunately, you are not the things that a small handful of sick hateful people want you to be.

Fortunately, those evil people are few and far between.  As Anne Frank once said, "I still believe in spite of everything that people are good at heart." I, like Anne Frank, believe most people are good at heart.  Even the misguided.  Unfortunately, there are a small few that just aren't good.   There are a  few that choose evil over good. Those few will always find a way to do evil.

But we must not make it easy for them. We don't have to.

We must not make it easy for them to get guns that will make it possible for them to kill 50 people in a couple short minutes. We do not have to.

"But the second amendment!!" you gasp.

That amendment was created when slow loading muskets and cannons were the norm over two hundred years ago. Of course, the second amendment is still relevant.  But I think any amendment that continues to compromise the safety of so many people day after day needs to be seriously thought about. I'm not anti-gun, but the 2nd amendment is broken. We must fix it.

"But but!" You gasp, "that  man would have found a way to kill people regardless. So there is NOTHING  we can do."

That is wrong.  If that man had just walked in with a regular shot gun or with a knife he would not have been able to kill 49 people!  Any life lost is terrible but 49 lives did not have to be lost at Pulse.  That isn't difficult to understand! Studies have shown that the places in the USA that have fewer guns have fewer gun related deaths.  Massachusetts, where I live,  is one of the states with the most gun regulations. It is also one of the states with the fewest gun deaths. But we have to do this as a nation and not at a state by state basis or tragedies like this will continue to happen all too frequently.

We must not continue to let people who wish to commit evil to others have easy access to automatic rifles. We must not continue to let people with violent criminal backgrounds have easy access to any
kind of gun.  We must not continue to let it be easier in some states to get a gun than it is to get a driver's license.  We must not let this continue!!


We cannot let my friends in Orlando deaths be in vain.  We cannot let our Jewish brothers and sisters killed in Seattle in 2006 be in vain.   We cannot let the death of the precious children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown CT be in vain.

We can't! We have to act

We cannot let this one be forgotten and then let this all start over again the next time it happens!

Please.  Join me to find ways to end unnecessary gun violence.
Here are some  groups I know that are working hard to make this happen.

The Coalition to End Gun Violence
http://csgv.org

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense
http://momsdemandaction.org

Sign this petition to Ban Assault Weapons
        http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/ban-assault-weapons

An Easy Guide to Contacting Your Elected representatives about Gun Control
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicole-silverberg/guide-elected-representatives-gun-control_b_8708154.html

Everytown for Gun Safety
http://everytown.org/

Gays Against Guns
http://gaysagainstguns.net

Follow Gun Control Now on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/guncontrolnow.campaign/

Know how your congressional representatives vote on gun control issues
http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/06/12/hypocrites-republicans-offering-prayers-accepting-money-nra/

Ways we can help The Orlando community
http://www.hrc.org/blog/ways-to-help-in-the-wake-of-the-orlando-nightclub-shooting

If you know others groups.   If you know other ways,  please comment! Please join them. Let's stop this. We can. We must.

Short Movie Reviews 4: The Not so Final Chapter

It goes like this.  I give a movie a score from one to ten.  The review is as many words long.  

Quick and to the point.  

A Bigger Splash.- 6

Ralph Fiennes is plenty naked.  Eh.  

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2- 6

Two movies wasn't better than one

Newsies- 5

Christian Bale sings snoozy songs.  

The Green Butchers- 7

Laughing loud about murderous butchers and cannibalism 

Concussion- 5

Should be provocative but isn't.  

Krampus-6

I guess Christmas is not scary.  

Before Stonewall-7

Everyone should know more American gay history.  

A Movie that Changed my Life: Six Weeks

What movie changed my life? Yes, I know any film snob worth their salt takes making a statement about which film changed their life very very seriously.   And Yes in the thousands of films I have seen,  I could have given you a palatable film snob answer that would've also been mostly true, but today I have chosen chose not to do that.

Ladies and gentleman, a film that changed my life and was an essential part of making me The film lover I am today is called.......Six Weeks

What? You have never heard of Six Weeks (of if you have heard of it you are asking "What kind of delicious thing is he smokin?").  Six Weeks was released in 1982 and went on to be nominated for exactly zero Oscars and it can claim to be a Razzie (worst in movies) nominee.

It stars the late 80s romantic comedy icon Dudley Moore as a married politician who strikes up an affair with an uptight character played by Razzie Nominee and television icon Mary Tyler Moore.  What? That sounds boring to you? It gets better!  Mary's character has a daughter who is a really good ballet dancer and GET READY FOR THIS,  she has leukemia! Her daughter has six weeks to live (get it?!) and her one dying wish is to dance in the nutcracker in NYC.   It's melodrama at its...uh....finest?

So actually I can wholeheartedly admit that it isn't a very good movie, but in the summer of 1983 that movie was my jam.  You see these days kids are raised by tablets. Well my generation was mostly raised by a big fat half ton console television, and around that time something called HBO reached the culturally starved town of Casoer Wyoming where I grew up.

We had a few movie theaters back then, but this was before the multiplex.   We had a movie theater with TWO theaters and that was really living large! So while I saw movies before Six Weeks, obviously, HBO was great because it was a then 24 hours a day movie channel.  I spent much of that summer holed up in our freezing basement watching HBO and especially the movie Six Weeks. I think I also watched Willy Wonka a lot that summer AND I cannot forget all the times I also watched Grease 2. But I must have watched Six Weeks over a dozen times in a month.   One time I actually set my alarm clock to go downstairs and watch it at around 5:00 in the morning.  I was a Six Weeks maniac!

It was very dramatic!  And  now I know too dramatic!   The writing is kind of terrible there is a very dramatic speech given at the end by MTM (Spoiler Alert!!!!! THE DAUGHTER DIES!!!!) that has a line that starts out "There's a place in France" and even through my pre teenage crying eyes  I could not resist responding to the screen with "where the naked ladies dance!" I was indeed a very mature 11 year old!

But why was it so important to me?    Six Weeks was my film gateway drug that made me want more much more.  Eventually I was on to bigger and better things (while still loving some pretty admittedly terrible movies), but Six Weeks deserves some credit for making me the film lover I am today.   Even if today I won't touch the Nicholas Sparks type films that is spawned with a twenty foot pole.

Granted I am now very nostalgic about the film, and I would love to find a watchable non VHS copy of it, but have yet to find one. It doesn't matter though because in the summer of 1983 in my basement, at 5:00 in the morning, Six Weeks was everything to me!

Next in this series: a TV show that changed my life.

#ignorance Part 1

A few weeks ago President Barack Obama said the following at a commencement address at Rutger's University.

 "Class of 2016, let me be clear as I can be: In politics as in life, ignorance is not a virtue......facts, evidence, reason, logic, and understanding of science: these are good things. "

In my life I've been called many names.   I kind of have a thick skin for that kind of thing. But for me one of the worst things you could call me is ignorant.  I take great pride in exploring, researching and really thinking about my point of view.  I never just took in what my parents spoon fedme, what my church told me to believe or what one media source has to tell me.   Ignorant is something I work very hard not to be.

But for some, maybe many, ignorance really is bliss.  Many choose not to learn outside of what they were raised to believe or really do much thinking outside of their comfort zone. For some reality is whatever they wish it to be even if it isn't the case at all.

If you are someone who does a lot of thinking and reading, you are probably not going to be too offended by what I'm about to say.  For everyone else, this might sting a little.

I'm not going to start where you think I'm going to start just yet.  Right wing conservatives you have a few moments to take a few yoga breaths now but believe me, you will get your turn.

Im going to start with some of my progressive friends. I'm going to start with a small unyielding group of people who identify as Bernie Bros.  This does not exclude you Susan Sarandon (one of my favorite actresses but not one of my favorite outspoken liberals), for I have no gender bias.

First of all, I have nothing against anyone who voted for Bernie Sanders. I'm from the Socialist Republic of Seattle. If I had a big beef with anyone who voted for Bernie, I'd have very few Seattle friends left.   I also, get ready, DO NOT THINK Bernie should drop out.  I support the idea that every person in every state who wants to be part of the process should be able to vote.   In 2000 I still cast my vote for Bill Bradley even though it was very clear that Al Gore was going to be the nominee.  Imagine that? A democracy.

But let me clear. Senator. Bernie. Sanders. Is not winning.  the nomination and no amount of reading usuncut.com or Huffington Post (which used to be a credible news source before Bernie started running for president) is going to change that.

He just isn't. Sorry to be the ruiner of unicorn and rainbow dreams, but most of the people have voted and it really hasn't been close.

So here is the thing. If you are a young new voter and voted for Bernie as your first vote, Welcome.  I profoundly hope that you'll be a good sport and continue to participate in the process.  Because if you don't like the process the only way to change it is by being part of it and voting.  That's just the truth.  Going to Nevada and acting like a petulant brat at the convention by throwing chairs isn't going to change the process.  It's not revolution, Jean Valjean.  It is  a two year old throwing a tantrum.  And no one is going to take that seriously.

If you have been of voting age for some time, but have chosen to make a statement by not voting until this year, I welcome you also.  However, I will also say that your "statement"  you made by not voting is perhaps not the statement you were going for.  The process that was created that you do not like exists because you weren't part of it.  You let it happen.

To all of you, if you want to make change you must vote. Not just once at a caucus that you were lucky enough to not be disenfranchised for and that you were able to have enough time off work to actually attend.  You must continue to vote.  Even when it's boring.  Especially when it's boring.  The boring elections are probably the most important ones, but they are the ones that get terrible turnout.  It's the boring elections that gave the congress to Tea Party Right Wingers who continue to obstruct justice and not to do their job.  That didn't have to happen. There are more liberal minded people in this country than Tea Party right wingers.  The liberals didn't show up to vote, and the right wing conservatives did.

So again Bernie, a man who deserves respect,  is not going to be the president.  Stop pouting and become part of the process.  Democratic change doesn't happen quickly.  It's messy. It isn't perfect.  It especially isn't perfect if the people don't come out for it.


Don't worry Conservatives, you aren't getting off. Your turn is coming.  To be continued.

A Book That Changed My Life: Then Again Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume

Tales of the Fourth grade nothing was my gateway drug to "naughty" Judy Blume.

My parents knew that my teacher had read Tales to us at school so surely any other book that Judy Blume would be in that same vein.  Fortunately, there was no internet for my parents to look up what other books Judy Blume had written.  I thank God that they never checked up on what I was reading.

Judy Blume books were my education on many topics that I wasn't learning about at school or at home.  They were full of life lessons that were in many cases more important than what I was actually learning.  In the 1980s , where was I going to learn about topics like racism, sex, and bullying in an intelligent way that never talked down to a kid?  Judy Blume books were one of the only options.

"Are You There God? It's me Margaret" was a book that changed many young women's lives because of its honest depiction of a girl going through puberty (and frankly it was also eye opening for me to know what was going on with all of the girls around me).  Then Again Maybe I Won't was the boy version of that book.  It doesn't get as much  credit as Margaret gets, but for me it was a life changer.

Tony, the main character, is a boy in the middle of a lot of changes.  His family has just moved from there working class neighborhood to a more white collar neighborhood in New York, and in the middle of all this life change he dives into the pangs of adolescent change as well.

I related to Tony.  Not so much because I had just experienced a big move in class because I hadn't.   Not so much because I was girl crazy like he was because let's face it, I wasn't.  But I related to him because all the people around him thought everything was going just great because he was one of those kids like me who people just made those assumptions about but didn't actually ask.

One of the most "shocking" moments of the book is when Tony has a sexual dream and wakes up to the mess on the bed that every teenage boy wakes up to at some poin. Thank you Judy Blume for teaching me what a wet dream was! It made the first time I ever had one on a family vacation at my eighty five year old aunt's house slightly less mortifying.

Another way I related to Tony was that he was a big worrier like me.  At a certain point his worrying over something his "friend" has done gets to him so much that he develops an ulcer. We didn't have the words for those things then like we do now, but Tony struggled with anxiety.  As someone who has been diagnosed with and  continues to live with an anxiety disorder, seeing a character in a book go through sometung similar was very important.  It made me feel like I was less alone and that I wasn't totally crazy.

Last summer I was able to listen to Judy Blume speak and was able to ask her a question from the audience.  Afterward she stayed to sign her new book, and I was able to thank her for Then Again Maybe I Won't and thank her for the impact her words made on my life.

Below is a picture of the moment that I got to tell Judy Blume what a difference she had made in my life.  It isn't a particularly flattering picture of me, but it is a moment I will not forget.




Next time: A film that changed my life

Coming Soon: Art That Changed My Life- In five parts

In addition to my regular blog posts, I have been thinking about what pieces of  art have had a profound impact on my life. So coming soon, I will profile 5 different works of art over 5 posts that made a difference in my life.

They will include:
A book
A television program or series
A film
A song or album
A musical or play.

The first part will be coming soon, and it will be ....a book


Stay tuned!