In Spain, attempting to obtain a chicken salad sandwich, you wind up with a dish whose name, when you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to mean: Eel with big abcess.

I read Warren Zevon's bizarre biography, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." His wife, Crystal Zevon, posthumously published a journal he wrote and some interviews with ex-band members. Like [Keith] Richards's book "Life," it's brutally honest.

Dear Hotel People: We don't need a cheeseball clock-radio. WE NEED PLACES TO PLUG STUFF IN. Thank you.

I walked out of the movie "Lincoln" and bought the book [of Doris Kearns Goodwin] at the bookstore next door.

You kids have fun, and be home by Thanksgiving!" our parents would call to us on Halloween night, as we staggered out the front door, weighed down by hundreds of pounds of concealed vandalism supplies, including enough raw eggs to feed Somalia for decades. By morning, thanks to our efforts, the entire neighborhood would be covered with a layer of congealed shaving cream and toilet paper that, around certain unpopular neighbors' homes, was hundreds of feet thick. This is how the Appalachian Mountains were formed.

Dogsled-riding is a sport that is relaxing as well as fragrant.

Bill Clinton, who, to his credit, has established a clear and consistent foreign policy, which is as follows: Whenever the president of the United States gets anywhere near any foreign head of state, living or dead, he gives that leader a big old hug. This has proven to be an effective way to get foreign leaders to do what we want: Many heads of state are willing to sign any random document that President Clinton thrusts in front of them, without reading it, just so he will stop embracing them.