My friend the alleged murder- update.

This Sunday, I went with my friend Jose to visit another friend, lets call him Ed, who is being held on charges of having murdered the mother of his child. It felt surreal to be visiting a friend behind bars. Ed wasn't my closest friend, but he was a part of the group of friends that used to hang out frequently before I went to work as a lawyer. We called the group: "the zoo crew." He used to get together frequently for carne asadas, expeditions to Baja and sometimes just for a beer or two. Sometimes we would all laugh so much that our stomachs hurt too much to eat.

Now one of us was incarcerated, perhaps for life, and would probably never hang out with the guys again.

Ed was always the type of friend that was extremely easy going. The first time that I met him was when I was an undergrad back home on vacation. Ed had joined a group of us on a day trip to TJ. On our way back home, we decided to stop off to eat, but Ed offered to cook lasagna for all of us. He claimed to have a recipe for microwave lasagna that would take 10 minutes. It turned out to be disastrous, but E's response was just to laugh and laugh.

I wondered how often E would laugh in jail.

The visit took most of a day of waiting to see Ed for a half hour. when we got in to see him, he looked truly happy to see us. We took turns talking to him on a phone and he seemed in good spirits, everything considered. He asked me to tell him some jokes and I obliged- (why did the blonde get fired from the M & M factory? She kept throwing away the W's...).

We almost forgot that we were talking in a jail.

I wanted to ask him about the alleged crime, but I didn't want him to say anything incriminating. The conversations in jail are monitored and since I was there with a friend- there was no attorney client privilege.

So, I just asked how he was doing. His eyes turned sad and he asked me if I could defend him- but I knew that I couldn't. As part of a partenership- it wouldn't be fair to my law partner to have me take on a pro-bono murder defense. Instead, I offered him advice on how to best work with his public defender.

But I felt awful about it.

My favorite tequila- The Finer Things Part II

Let's say that you have fifty bucks and want to purchase a bottle of alcohol. The average person might buy a bottle of vodka- say Grey Goose. But, why be like everyone else?


You can't go wrong with a bottle of Don Julio tequila. It's smooth with a nice amount of complexity. You can almost taste the air in Jalisco, where the tequila was produced.

There is nothing finer for sharing with a small group of friends- you can drink it straight in shots or can mix it with just about anything. One drink that i would recomend is tequila with Squirt and a squeeze of lemon or lime.

Of course, you should drink it in moderation. The finer things become coarse if you indulge too much!

The joy of tea!

As those of you that are friends of me probably know, I am a fan of the finer things in life. I enjoy a good tequila (Herradura or Don Julio, anejo), a good porterhouse and very occasionally a good cigar. While I am equally comfortable with a burger and a coke for lunch, there is definitely something to be said for enjoying the finer pleasures.

What relatively few people know is that I take my tea very seriously. I think that tea is the best thing that you can drink. Think about it- both Chinese emperors and British conquerors would take their tea breaks. It used to be that tea was beyond the ability of commoners like you and I to drink. Now, we got tea!

But most of us wouldn't know a good cup of tea if it was poured over our heads. Repeat after me. Herbal tea is not tea! It's nothing any self respecting man would drink, either. Good tea has to come from a tea leaf- not from something that looks like potpourri. Good tea doesn't come in a tea bag, either.

I put a great deal of thought and preparation into the tea I drink. There is something about a good cup of tea that soothes me and reinvigorates me. If there were tea bars in the US, I would frequent them. But aside from a place in La Jolla that I like- Infusions of Tea- I generally have to go home to enjoy a good cup of tea.

I think that the finest tea that you can drink is a black tea from the Darjeeling province of India. And the only way to prepare it is with good quality loose tea leaves. Those of us that use tea bags are using the tea leaves that the rest of the world throws away. I like to buy my tea from Upton Tea- it's about 30 to 40 bucks for a tin of good 2008 Darjeeling.

The preparation of a cup of tea is easy, but can't be hurried. First, you boil a pot of water. While the water is boiling, you measure out a teaspoon of tea per cup that you are drinking and place it in a seperate container. When the water starts to boil, immediately pour it over the tea leaves and let them sit for 2:30 to 3:00 minutes. Then you strain out the tea leaves from the tea, add an ice cube or two, and voila- one perfect mug of tea (which for me is two cups worth).

Drinking tea brings me back to a more civilized moment. The world may be hectic, but a good cup of tea takes a peaceful moment to sip and contemplate. It reaches into your soul and steadies it.

Really one of the finer things in life.

A wall of books in my garage!

A client was asking me the other day why I didn't have a set of law books like the lawyers that she'd seen on TV.

I replied that everything was on the internet and that lawyers that had these walls of books only had them for show. She accepted the explanation, but afterwards I felt a little bit inadequate. I wondered why I shouldn't have my own set of useless law books to fill my walls with the musty smell of lawyerly success.

So, I searched on the internet for some law books and ended up buying them the next day. My friend Paco and I took a few boxes to pickup the law books. We ended up filling the bed of the pickup entirely with books.

I have room for maybe 100 books in my office bookshelves and have some 1,000 books purchased!

Now I need a larger office!

My tocayo

Would you believe, Ray E s t o l a n o and Ray S o l a n o? One a Defense Attorney. The other in law enforcement. I'll let you guess who is who.

In case you are wondering, the beautiful beach that we are at is San Felipe. The beach is still as pretty as ever. The town has become dilapitated and strangely overdeveloped at the same time. Once upon a time, I remember loving the place. During my friend Cody's last vacation as a student before joining the work force, we went to San Felipe with a simple mission- shrimp in every meal and ice cold beer in every mug.

The beer and the shrimp are still good...

Getting back to the topic of my tocayo (which is Spanish for someone with the same name), I met him through one of my closest friends- Ruben L. Ray's agency made the decision to hire Ruben and Ray himself made the call.

"Mr. L, this is Ray S o l a n o from SDSU. I'm calling to offer you a job."

"Ray E S T O L A N O? Yeah, right. I'm Elvis Presley. Pleased to meet you."

"Excuse me?"

Somehow Ruben still got the job. Later Solano and I became friends.

It's a small, weird world, but it's comforting to have a tocayo. Even if he doesn't spell E S T O L A N O correctly...

I love you man!

The other week, I was drinking with a couple friends. It must have made an interesting sight- three fat older guys in semi-conservative suits, telling jokes and pounding back pitchers of beer in the early afternoon as if we were still college students. We were all done with court for the day and were blowing off steam. We were also escaping from the heat outside. In Imperial County, it's hot five to six months out of the year.

It's probably true that alcohol isn't the best thing to drink on a 100 plus degree day because it dehydrates you, but somehow a very cold pitcher of beer always refreshes. The waitress kept the cold pitchers of beer coming and the mostly deserted restaurant echoed with our laughter and stories of court.

Then conversation turned to friendship and one of us made a point of saying that we were the truest friends that he had. He looked at us earnestly and said "I love you guys."

There was a uncomfortable pause before my second friend seconded the notion, saying something vague enough to be manly, but yet specific enough to make the point. He said "I don't really have friends like you guys."

Then they turned to me, expectantly. I didn't quite know what to say. I've never really been one of those "I love you, man" guys. It's not that I don't care about my friends, but I've never been too expressive with words. I mean, what are words compared to actions?

"I'd appreciate you guys more if you'd shut up and let me drink my beer," I said.

I've wondered since if my reaction was wrong. Should I have been more like the "I love you man" guy? Are we better off if we express our emotions plainly or does it cheapen those emotions? At every party with alcohol, there is at least one "I love you guy." Sometimes what he is says is true, most times it isn't. My wife met an "I love you girl" who proclaimed that my wife, who she had just met hours earlier, was her "soul sister."

I think it's not necessary to be overly expressive when your actions make the point for you.

Neither my brother nor my father said "I love you", when they drove 200 miles at midnight during my senior year to pick me up in Los Angeles, where I'd driven my car to the point of breaking down. Neither of them had to say it- it was enough that my butt was being driven home.

But, given the realities of perceptions and such, let me just say to all of my friends out there:

I love you man!

Palin panic! Are the people really this dumb??

God save America! Can it really be true that this woman could be a heartbeat away from the presidency? A so-called Reformer that used her office to try to fire her sister's ex-husband? A proponent of family values, whose teenage daughter becomes pregnant? A former member of an Alaska seccessionist group? Someone who believes that abortion should not be allowable even when there is incest or rape?

It really distresses me to see the state of the country. As a lifetime democrat, I hope Obama saves us from the possibility of a president Palin, but I fear that he will bring a pretty speech to a knife fight.

Listening to her speak, I hear shades of Reagan and fear that people won't really understand that behind that persona of hers lies a very conservative worldview. She has a laser sharp sense of humor and it's scary to think of how Biden will do against her in a debate- not on substance, but in flash.