Click on the picture of the friend below to see more pics and details.

      I first met Desiree Acosta back in 1989 when she was Karen Wang's roommate in Hendrick dorm at UCLA. She was a young and inexperienced sophomore and thought me some kind of wiser and more mature college senior; this always struck me funny since I was pretty much an oft intoxicated bore at the time. But when I emerged from the beer induced haze of college and saw that we were still friends I was ecstatic. Des is a great talker and to call her up is to no doubt spend over an hour on the phone. Des has become quite the businesswomen, which surprises me some knowing her in a different context. We have spent many a good time together, including one awesome weekend in San Francisco.

      Des recently graduated with her MBA from New York University and returned triumphantly to Los Angeles. She has the world at her feet and has only begun to make her presence felt on the scene; but she has gotten a killer job with an Internet company, is putting all her training to good use, and has delved into the next stage of her life. What can I say? I am totally impressed! I met her when she was barely out of her teens and I have no doubt that shortly I will be reading about her as a "mover and shaker" in the business world. Nevertheless, I will always honor and remember her primarily as a great lover of D.H. Lawrence and William Blake.

      I first met Francisco Ayala when he came to the United States in 1994 on behalf of the Mexican government in a program to bring Spanish-speaking teachers to help immigrant students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Consequently, we met at Berendo Middle School where we became friends and shared a "core" of the same students where he taught math and science and I English. He with time became even more disgusted with the LA school system than me - something not easy to be. I warned him not to live near downtown, but he did anyway and so suffered through the loud music, police helicopters, endemic crime, gunshots at night, overpopulation, etc. that typify the area. With time Francisco learned to hate Los Angeles even more than I do - also not easy to do. He recently bought a clue and moved to a condominium out in Glendale.

      Francisco has been a welcomed guest at my parents house and frequent tennis partner. He is one of those men who always has his act together and is utterly organized. For example, Francisco can repair or build just about anything with his own hands. He is the type that should run a school instead of teach in one. And so Francisco and his beautiful wife Jazmin are saving up money for their dream of buying and running a school in Querétaro, Mexico. Jazmin recently graduated from college and also works at Berendo, earning her bones at a beginning teacher.

      When we met through mutual friends a couple of years ago met Andrea Arias and I immediately hit it off with a shared love of Spanish poetry and literature in general. Andrea is a native of Viña del Mar, Chile who at the beginning of adulthood just picked up everything and moved to the San Fernando Valley one day to live with her aunt. Andrea has adjusted well to life in the States and speaks an almost flawless English - one of the benefits of having a Mom who was an English teacher in Chile. It would be hard to find a bigger fan of Pablo Neruda anywhere and her expert Salsa and Meringue dancing is not to be missed. :-)

      Andrea currently works for The Children's Hospital of Los Angeles and attends night school at Los Angeles Community College. She is recently engaged to her boyfriend Fabian from Argentina and they are busy themselves planning the wedding and life together. I am very happy for the two of them!

      I first met John Barich in 1978 when he moved into a house just up the street from me in Newport Beach, California. We grew up together going (mostly) to the same schools and church, getting in trouble, playing football and baseball together, etc. Eventually, John even lived with me and my family for a summer after high school graduation. We had the messiest room imaginable, and I never saw him since he was always out slinking around with his girlfriend somewhere until the wee hours of the night.

      John was a big-time football player at Mater Dei High School who did little else besides lift-weights and hit people for four years. But an eye injury ended all that and John turned to the books and graduated from UC Berkeley and earned his Master's Degree at the General Theological Union. My father still marvels on John's metamorphosis from grid-iron bruiser to egghead intellectual.

      John's is a mind which is rigorous and highly-trained and both he and I share an affinity for the life of the mind. He is always reading and trying to learn new things and is a good example of what Dr. Samuel Johnson meant when he said: "Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind." And his wife Rachel has more brains than John and I put together. John and Rachel presently reside Atlanta, Georgia, where they live in a giant house out in the suburbs. They just had their first child, Micah Jerome Barich, and are busy being broken in as first time parents.

Check out John Barich's Home Page!

      Brent Burns and I only met during our senior year in high school, although we had known of each other since junior high. But we soon were almost like brothers and that has not essentially changed in the thirteen years since. Like in the case of Phil Marshall and Rick Roshan, I have very special memories of spending time with his family as a teenager. There is something about the bonding which takes place in those burning difficult years of adolescence which renders them unforgettable and invaluable to the understanding of who you are as an adult. High school graduation, martial arts, atrocity Mexico trips (that Brent would like to forget), USD and UCLA partying (and my 21st!), the Cannery boozing and Alberto's in the middle of the night, "Diamond Club" and finger painting in Charlotte, and all the rest of the stories that I probably have forgotten. Almost all the major events of my life have had Brent present - or at least at the periphery - and I would do just about anything in the world for the big lug.

      Brent has computer skills the like of which I will never see and currently does UNIX work for First Union Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina. He just finished building a beautiful new home in Moresville (a suburb of Charlotte) and is happily ensconced in the southern way of life. Brent recently converted to Roman Catholicism and married the love of his life, Nilsa. Brent is in a great place in his life at the moment, and I cannot but think that it is well deserved!

      Yvette Ruseell and I met way back in September of 1987 while in college. We grew up together in many ways as students living away from our parents for the first time and trying to figure it all out. Yvette eventually graduated from UCLA with an undergraduate degree in Psychology. Over they years we dated, didn't date, kind of dated, didn't date, etc. At any rate, the roots are deep and I am very glad to still be friends with her after so many years.

      I don't think I have quite met anyone with as devoted a work ethic as Yvette's. She works her ass off in whatever she does and takes great satisfaction in a job well done. Yvette earned her MBA from Pepperdine and works in the food brokerage business. She lives in Huntington Beach, California with her beloved dog, Bogey. Yvette recently married her boyfriend Kurt and could not be happier.

I did two tours of duty with my ex-roommate Jim Downs. We first met back at UCLA where we quickly became good friends and we now know each other about as well as two people would after living together for years. Jim is an unusual person in many ways, not the least in his desire for anonymity and fear of loss of privacy. As he himself sums it up, "Even paranoids have real enemies!" I could tell you more about Jim, but then he would probably kill me in the desire to prevent further. Without a doubt Jim is one of the brightest people I know who always has done well despite self-described "under achievement." He is an enemy to be feared, but you will not find a more loyal friend. I myself have greatly appreciate his friendship and support over the years in some difficult times.

I will, at great personal risk, venture the following Jim details: he is a GOP and UCLA basketball devotee, gun and Internet enthusiast, and (worst of all) militant Macintosh advocate. Jim is a practicing attorney, and teaches HTML at various community colleges. But Jim's heart is to be found in UCLA basketball and he has created THE Internet source for UCLA Basketball. If you're into basketball, you owe it to yourself to check out Jim Downs' UCLA Basketball Page. Jim also covers Pac 10 basketball news in his college basketball column for College Hoops Insider, a Web-based college sports magazine. Maybe someday Jim will be a famous sports broadcaster. We shall see.

I could tell you more about Jim, but then he would most likely kill me.

      Antonieta (Tonya) Flores and I met through mutual friends in September of 1995. We dated for a few months and went on trips together to San Francisco, Tahoe, etc. Tonya is a native of Santiago, Chile and has been living in the Los Angeles area for a number of years. I very much enjoyed getting to know her family and friends; one was able to feel as if one were truly in Chile in their lively household which was never empty of company. I was also able to recently enjoy the hospitality of her family in Santiago de Chile with a great meal, interesting conversation, and excellent pisco. Not very much of a student of literature in her youth, Tonya was surprised to like so much the love sonnets of William Shakespeare that I introduced to her. Of course, I had to explain them a couple of times. :-) We have read together, line by line, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Much Ado About Nothing. We have also gone to see some of these plays live. I very much enjoy introducing Tonya to new literature; and she greedily reads up novels by Jane Austin, Victor Hugo, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Dickens as fast as I can buy them for her!

      Tonya currently lives in Sherman Oaks, California and decided to stay in the United States even after her family returned to Chile. I admire her courage to strike out on her own in adult life in California! She has a job with Bromley Foods, Inc. and has just earned her way into the California State University at Northridge where she hopes to graduage with a degree in information management. I am so proud of how much she has grown in the last couple of years. She is a loyal and devoted worker for her employer, attends class regularly, gets good grades in school, and has shown herself to be generally responsible beyond her years. She continues to impress me more every year! Tonya is one those late blooming students whose maturity and single-minded pursuit of a college degree never fail to amaze and impress me. The world is at her feet and she knows it! How exciting!

      I met Joe Giove on-line after he read my European vacation journals, as he prepared for a similar adventure. Joe wrote up his odyssey in a similar format, and it still ranks as among the most entertaining reads I have ever had on the Web. There is something about Joe which I think of when I read the newspaper and feel my heart sink below my shoes as I conclude the world is overridden with liars, predators, weasels, opportunists, thugs, and all-around scoundrels. Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, "The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome"; and as long as there are people out there like Joe, I do not despair entirely for mankind or the earth. The Joe Gioves of the world rarely make the newspapers, but they serve to highlight how even as vice and corruption so often get the headlines and spotlight for a week or two, goodness and decency have a way of enduring. (I wonder if everyone on the planet made their own webpage like Joe and took the time to really read and try to understand each other with an open heart, would we not live in a more peaceful and less hateful world?) Of course now I have probably totally embarrassed Joe!

      Anyway, it is a pleasure to share the earth with Joe "Highrock" Giove; and his down-to-earth judgement is something I highly respect whether he is talking about basketball, poetry, movies, the cure for cancer, sea foods, morality, stuffed animals, morality, Photoshop, or religion (talk about diversity!). I will of course keep reading with much interest his webpage as it grows organically over time. I recently had the pleasure of showing Joe around Southern California and meeting him in person. Yes, all you Web surfers: Joe is as genuine and decent a person as his website suggests!

Come have a cappuccino and watch Joe slam dunk at The High Rock Café!

      I met Rosey Goodman on-line after she read my Bosnia: The Disgrace page and felt the need to comment. Rosey had just returned from a stint as a guest of the Canadian Armed Forces in Bosnia working as an independent journalist and had something to say. For anyone wanting to contemplate the final word on the Bosnian disaster, check out Rosey's haunting view of the old Olympic sports complex in Sarajevo and see what they've done with it lately. It is only because of journalists like Rosey who bore witness in Bosnia and documented it that the outside world knows what happened there.

      Possessing a biting sarcasm and incisive wit, Rosey has definite iconoclastic opinions about the world. Rosey is one of those who will not go quietly into that good night. In my opinion, if more people had Rosey's spunky passion, the world would be less of a cold place of cruel indifference and casual apathy. Either that or it would be in a state of war with anarchy everywhere and local utilities company directors, Rush Limbaugh, Yuppie-women-from-hell who drive brand-new Volvo's, and pretentious corporate types hanging from the trees by their necks. The Kingdom of Rosey.... now that would be an interesting place to live for those who hate the money, the machine, the rules, and the insentient monkeyishness of this world! Methinks it would be kind of like Mexico but without the government. A Mexico where aged scotch and fine wine flow down freely from the hills.

      Rosey is currently enduring the frigid winter of the Great White North and spring could not come too soon for her. She lives with her husband John and son Adrian in Winnipeg, Canada. A grand adventurer in the classic Hemingway-style, Rosey is always looking for an editor to send her overseas on her next photoassignment. And to all you editors: HIRE HER! She does good work and is worth it!

Check out the wine list at Raunchy Rosey's Roadhouse!

      Kelly Hubbell was probably the girlfriend I got along best with in terms of truly having a communion of the souls. We started dating back in 1992 when I was a wet behind the ears recent college graduate of 24 years and she was a fully mature woman of 33. We met while working together at the UCLA Emergency Room and before we knew it the thing had turned into this blazing-hot out of control romance. Kelly was the closest I got to making big "life decisions" with respect to marriage and family. I learned many important things from Kelly; it was a time of rapid maturation for me - perhaps a relationship from which I "entered a boy and exited a man" (Kelly's own words). And I still continue to learn from her as we remain great friends to this day.

      Kelly is presently a veteran emergency room nurse who is the Nurse Educator at the UCLA ER. She is also a recognized expert on domestic violence and issues relating to emergency room nursing and often is found lobbying in Sacramento or testifying in front of the LA City Council. She works too hard, and I continually have to tell her to stop and smell the roses. But Kelly likes her work and feels fulfilled in it, and that is something not many people can say.

      Keith and I first met back as students at UCLA where we worked for the campus police department providing security for the UCLA Emergency Room. Keith was just a wee bit of a lad back then, utterly unable to contain his alcohol. We played many a practical joke on each other in the long hours of all night shifts in that crazy emergency room where anything could and did happen. Keith and I having spent many a marathon 'Net cruising session with the Stone Temple Pilots playing in the background utterly exhausted yet glued to the screen. There is no computer problem so complicated that Keith and I cannot resolve it given enough time!

      Keith is now a police officer and is one of the few people I know who truly loves his job. He is also good at it, and has been awarded the Medal of Valor by his department. Keith is one of those outstanding individuals who excel in whatever they do: he graduated Cum Laude from UCLA with a degree in Spanish, finished second in his police academy class, prestigious high school wrestler, entrepreneur, all around-stud, captain of men, etc.

Keith is making a good life for himself and I am always in a certain awe of his ability to take life by the horns and force it in his direction. He is engaged to be married to his beautiful and classy girlfriend and has grandiose plans with regard to the future. Knowing Keith now for more than a year or two, I would bet good money he will realize them!

      Martin and I first met at UCLA and since then we have worked, lived, and traveled together. Martin and I have one of those friendships where if you need to move in a hurry you can call him at midnight and say, "Hey, can you help me move tomorrow morning?" and they will do it - no questions asked. This, of course, has happened between us many times.

      Martin and I did Europe together, the LA riots and the Northridge earthquake, disastrous girlfriend breakups - the whole nine yards. I enjoy living vicariously through his many (sometimes concurrent) amorous adventures. Recently we both toured Hong Kong together and had our typical wild time. Especially with women, there is never a dull moment with Martin. Short, tall, fat, pretty, intelligent, dumb - Marty likes them all; the man is a true lover of women and this is something I very much respect about him. Marty earned the nickname "the vat" in college for being like a vat of simmering testosterone brimming over. There are some who say that I had something to do with corrupting innocent Martin in college. This, of course, is utter hogwash.

      On the first day of school our seventh-grade year Rick Roshan (AKA the Hunter S. Thompson of the beach cities) was a brand-new student at Lincoln Junior High when he arrived late to Mrs. Mohs class and was told to sit next to me. At first I thought he was one weird guy since all he did was draw elaborate pictures of rock bands in his notebook and invariably fail the weekly spelling tests. Yet before long we were school-yard buddies and the rest of middle and high school, college and beyond is history. Ricky, myself, and his sister Michelle had especially good times in high school with our biology study nights, track meets, pizza nights with my family, etc.

      Ricky is well-known for his aggressive partying, guitar playing, banzai skiing, home beer brewing talents and enjoyment of the female species. If you are ever in the County/Long Beach area in some bar or club and hear someone yelling savagely like a primeval caveman, chances are likely it is Ricky or one of his sybaritic roommates.

      Ricky attended the California State University at Long Beach where in addition to being a very active member of the Sigma Chi fraternity he majored in business and art. The business degree was to placate his father, but art was really where his passion lay. Ricky heads up the family business Pacific Coast Management, Inc. of Newport Beach where he spends long and stress-filled hours. He currently lives in a beautiful house high up in Spyglass area of Newport Beach, California.

      I met Karen Wang at my fraternity house back in the fall of 1987 and we immediately got along well. She became my "little sister" in the fraternity, a role I have been more or less playing since. Karen was a nascent UCLA freshman at the time we met and I have had the pleasure of watching her develop into a dynamic and independent young woman. She has changed in some ways, but in others she is exactly the same as when I first met her. It has been a lot of fun listening to all of her dilemmas and crises over the years; Karen never lacks for drama in her life. A typical rejoinder from Karen is "can you believe what 'x' did?... But even if Karen tends to complain a lot, you will have trouble finding a more generous and devoted friend.

      Karen graduated from UCLA with a BS in Psychology in the spring of 1992. She currently works as an agent for Mark Lindren and Associates, Inc. in the Century City area of Los Angeles, California. Unlike myself, Karen has always been enamored with the "industry" of Hollywood and probably always will be. She works long hours and I have little doubt she very soon will be one of the "movers and shakers" of the showbiz scene. She is finally engaged to be married to her long-time boyfriend, Ed.