The Cast of Characters for a Thousand Eyes

In honor of The Dilettante recently passing five hundred unique hits, I decided to give a brief background to those individuals mentioned in my blog. The following are my six best friends:

Bri
My sister is two and a quarter years younger than me, three in school. She presently attends UC Santa Cruz. She is adored by everyone she meets. Not so haunted by internal demons, she is less overtly smart than me, yet she is my intellectual equal. Though we hardly look alike, we think in similar but complimentary ways. Where I was my father's student, she was mine.

During our childhood she was my worst enemy. In those years she defined "annoying". With our parents' divorce, we became the only people we lived with continuously. As age mellowed her out, we became as close as brother and sister can be. I love her more than anything or anyone.

Matt
I met Matt in preschool and soon we were best friends. In grade school our mothers had a falling out and we drifted away. We shared a common group of friends until I cut ties my junior year of high school. Just as I made my own way, however, our friendship rekindled. By senior year he was one of my three best friends and we again shared most of our friends.

Matt is careful, steady and in possession of excellent taste. He has been going out with Parisa since high school and will soon graduate UC Santa Barbara with a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering.

Allison
Allison and I first met in preschool at age three. Though we continued to different schools, her's became our closest family friends. Those years I played with her brothers and she with my sister.

My Junior year I developed a huge crush on her. We became close through AIM conversations and dated briefly. After she rebuffed me, we returned to our lives at our respective schools. The summer before college we discovered that we were the only friends we had going to Davis. I was simultaneously overjoyed and horrified because I knew my crush was liable to kill me. True to expectations, I was haunted through much of college by my feelings for her. Things have been much simplified since I got over it.

Allison is an animal lover and a creative writer of savage wit. More than any of my friends she has endeavored to keep my ego in check. When we went to college she reinvented herself as the outgoing, friendly "Allie", but I will always see her for her thoughtful, bookworm self.

Marisa
In possession of a million best friends, a brilliant mind and a sterling work ethic, Marisa is the friend I most respect. Hardly wasting a spare minute of life and sleeping some fraction of that required by mere mortals, she is the most intense person I have ever met.

She befriended me my Junior year of high school and I have never enjoyed competing with someone more. We frequently discussed politics and she remains in my mind the epitome of the intelligent, articulate conservative. We became especially close after my friend Caius broke up with her. She approaches her Mormon faith with as much intensity as everything else in her life. She is presently on Mission in the Czech Republic.

Caius
Acquainted first at high school's outset, Caius and I weren't friends until our Senior year. Sophmore year he actually told me, "Go away. I don't like you." That crystallized why the year was my lifetime nadir. The next year, he epitomized the incredible turnaround in public opinion of me and we became close friends within weeks of Senior year's start.

Our friendship was founded on mutual fascination. He moved to California from Romania in middle school, but that cannot hope to explain the depth of his eccentricity. Caius is among the most mathematically gifted individuals I have ever met. He is an idealist with his head in the clouds, fascinated with nature, eastern philosophy and nineteenth century poetry. He found a natural affinity with the sometimes patently crazy residents of Berkeley's coops as well as apparently every hobo he has ever met.

Caius's European charm is such that he is quite the ladies man and he approaches his relationships and aspirations with remarkable passion. However, his passion is mitigated by his flakiness. He dropped out of school at Berkeley for a year, but has since returned to his studies.

Brandon
A consummate nerd and politico, Brandon passed out business cards with his name and facebook URL our first day in the dorms. At first, I didn't want to be his friend. Our interests made almost perfect overlap and I thought the inevitable comparison to his disadvantage.

That first year our discussions of religion and politics played a role in his decision to reject the Republican party (to my smugness) and his Jewish faith (to my horror). I decided to take him under my wing. He fast became my closest Davis friend and he proved at least as much an asset to me as I to him. Many if not most of my Davis friends can be traced back to him. His Junior year he joined and quickly rose to high position in the Davis College Democrats (DCD). That same year his grades tumbled and he is now attending classes at a community college. He has participated in two major political campaigns.

Brandon is the salt of the earth. He is affable, hard working and more talented in California politics, geography and music than I could ever hope to be.


In addition to the aforementioned, the following friends have also been mentioned on The Dilettante:

Howard Luong

I became friends with Howard almost immediately at college's start and we've been roommates with Brandon since we moved out of the dorms. He's a quiet and studious physics major and has been going out with Tammy Leung since almost as long as we've been friends. Though we laugh at his resemblance to a couple stereotypes, Howard is full of wild ideas. He's the brain behind our household's ghetto improvements and spends his spare time improving his Chinese and following the stock market.

Greg Webb

Greg is a Junior who joined us this year as our fourth roommate. He was originally a friend of Brandon's from DCD, and he's also intensely involved in our student government and a charity group called Circle K. He is running for ASUCD Senator as an independent and secured The Aggie's number one endorsement.

Elisa Hough

Elisa is a recent UCD graduate who remains a fixture at KDVS. She held the title of Publicity Director and edited KDViationS, the station's quarterly mag. This past summer she hosted folk acts in her backyard on a semiregular basis and they rocked everyone's socks off.

John Lazur

John works under my boss Richard at the Chem Dispensary and occasionally supervises me. He's a Penn State grad in his late twenties. We became friends talking about music, philosophy and East Coast/West Coast culture. Though disarmingly likeable, he's quite intelligent. He's also an accomplished rock musician.