MICHAEL PATERNITI

Sloppy casual has always been my default look. My preppier classmates in high school would sometimes sport two, three, even four shirts at a time - Lauren, Izod, Brooks Brothers, all collars-up - while I wore secondhand faded olive German-army fatigues and this cool T-shirt with a troll on it.

The telling room is, in Spanish, known as 'el contador.'

What the Khmer Rouge had in store was a radical agrarian revolution, one with the professed aim of completely renovating society while giving the peasants a better life, of evening the rewards and feeding the hungry, of bringing a rational and utilitarian nation-state into being.

I'd never bought a bottle of cologne in my life, never dabbled in Drakkar Noir before the big high school date or Polo before the prom.

'El Gordo' is the name given to the oldest lottery jackpot in the world - and the richest. Held every year in Madrid on December 22, the Christmas Lottery culminates with the picking of the El Gordo number, the Fat One, which, for many, has become the true Christmas miracle in Spain.

Albania is located sixty miles across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. It borders Montenegro and Kosovo to the north, Macedonia to the east, and Greece to the south. If you know nothing about 'the Land of the Eagles,' relax. You're not alone.

The monastery of Christ in the Desert had its resident hermit, Brother Xavier, chosen after years of devotion and service, a monk so trusted and experienced that he qualified by Benedictine standards to be sent to the front lines in the fight against the devil.

It is not uncommon for angels to take corporeal form, to appear before us on earth as people with names and credentials.

Being partly Italian or, rather, having an Italian last name, I've always dreamed of really becoming partly Italian, of eating piles of mouthwatering fettuccine in the piazza, speaking a language that demands music over mumble, and yes, if I'm honest, perhaps dressing a little better.

Storytelling is about patience, about making sense of the moments of pathos and beauty that you find, and about carrying these moments back into your own life.

Being a Barca fan means certain God-given inalienable rights: It means that, no matter what its record, Barca is, and will always be, the greatest team on earth. This is a fact. And it means that your love for Barca is like no other love in the world. It's the kind of love that clouds your memory and gives you hope.

I love when stories have something a little magical in them, and there's wonder and curiosity. Somewhere there are people living these improbable stories, and our job is to go out and find them and bring them to the page. And so, the more surprising, the more uplifting, the more sort of even inspiring a story is, I find myself gripped by those.

Writers like John T. Edge, whose work is all about the cultural histories behind food, have done so much to show that these stories are a really vital part of our cultural heritage.

At its height, Guantanamo's population of alleged combatants swelled to nearly 800.

When somebody tells you a story, as long as that story lasts, you're caught in this sort of timeless moment.

Listening to Brunello Cucinelli is like getting your own personal tutorial with a very glamorous, fatherly professor. He is charming and solicitous, speaking in an urgent, musical voice. Associates say he is both disciplined and happy, as well as extremely meticulous. When it comes to business, he's known as savvy and calculating.

Legend has it that when Franco's troops crushed Catalonia in 1939, relegating it for the next thirty-five years to abuse and neglect, one of his generals was asked what more he could possibly want now that he had Barcelona.

Going to Cambodia to cover the genocide trials, I did read a lot about the Khmer Rouge; I read a lot about the country and its history.

Luck is not having to worry, but also working hard to preserve the things that once gave your life meaning, like work and love.

Operating from 1975 to 1979, S-21 became the most infamous of 196 such prison camps the Khmer Rouge established throughout Cambodia, primarily because so many of its prisoners were the purged party loyal - and because Duch's methods were so stunningly brutal.

'Supercentenarian' is the term used by longevity experts to signify a near numerical impossibility: those who've outpaced 99.9999 percent of the population and landed in the 110+ Club.

Those who know the sport of swimming understand that the grueling practices that fill a pre-Olympic winter lay the base for any success that might come later in the Games, especially if one has it in mind to swim an astonishing eight events.

As a kid, I watched 'Bugs Bunny' cartoons, and for some reason Pepe Le Pew, the indomitable French skunk pursuing his would-be kitty paramour, left his mark on me: became an instant emblem of odoriferous hubris, hedonistic bad behavior. He was an entry-level Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a rookie Marquis de Sade.

Albanians love topiary and fancy doors. They speak Albanian, an Indo-European language with traces of Greek and Latin - and the lek is their monetary denomination, which trades at one hundred to one on the dollar. Their food is excellent, a melange of Greek, Turkish, and Italian cuisine, all very fresh and legume-y.

There's Jay-Z, who morphs a certain street hustler's cool and indifference into CEO extravagance. But for all his prominence, Jay-Z hasn't written a lot of crossover hits.