Note: It seems that our web host is doing some sort of thing that involves taking our site down and then putting it back up someplace else. The address and appearance ought to remain the same, but some of the photos might not make it, they say. That, in addition to my chronic laziness, is why there haven't been new photos of our trip to the mountains and such. When we are safely in our new home, I'll put up fun new pictures. As they say in Barcelona, "Disculpeu les molesties"

I am a sucker for marketing. After experiencing the Fundació Antoni Tapies once , and having a sort of “where’s all the art?” feeling, I went back. Why? Because they had plastered the city with black and white posters that read, “KILL ‘EM ALL.”

Who among us wouldn’t have been curious?

The KILL ‘EM ALL exhibit consisted of three huge video screens, of the sort used to show the Pats game at the Good Times Emporium in Assembly Square. Projected on the screens were an array of underfed young men, dressed in plain old jeans and t-shirts. They sat in cars with the doors open, or lay on the ground near the cars. They were supposed to be dead.

But they were not. They were so not dead, in fact, that some of them kept blinking. Some appeared to have fallen asleep and were breathing the sort of deep breaths that are rare in the dead. This went on for a while, during which time there was exactly no violence or exciting stuff. Then a title flashed on the screen: “4 puertas, 5 cuerpos.” Four doors, five bodies. And then it started over. And then I went to the gift shop.

Maybe we’re done with museums. Last weekend, for example, we tried to enjoy the spoils of Catalunya differently, by going to a house we had rented in a town called Argestues. There would be no festivals, no parades, no museums or castles. Just a lot of mountains and goats. Though no mountain goats. In fact, we got stuck behind a herd of goats on Friday night when we were driving up there. Luckily we were almost there when that happened.

Like most of our unstructured time in Spain (and, I suppose, in the rest of Europe, and also in the US) we broke the day into manageable portions by eating, sleeping, and thinking about what to make for the following meal. Early Saturday, after frying ourselves on the house’s front deck for a while, some of us ventured into town for provisions. “Venturing into town,” when you’re in Arguestues, means driving down a mountain, across a river, and on a little highway for twenty minutes. Then you’re in Organyá, a wild metropolis consisting of one street, one general store, eight cafés, five or six meat markets that sell raw meat, five or six different meat markets that sell cured meat, and about four bakeries. We bought something at each of them, including an ice cream cake, and headed back up the mountain.

Then it was time for fire. We grilled whatever we could get our hands on and had, well, a little too much meat, to be frank. There was a field of sheep below, admittedly a little hard to find cute while you are grilling a lamb chop. Dominos was played.

Later, three of us went for a walk. It would have been a hike, since we were in the mountains, but it occurred on a dirt road and therefore, in my mind, doesn’t qualify. In search of a river to in which to swim, we came upon a mildly scary looking family who did not appear to have left the mountains in a few generations. They were holding pointy sticks. Yes, the pointy sticks were about to be placed in a tomato garden, but they were scary people holding pointy sticks all the same. Albert (not the one who lives in our building) talked to them for a while in Catalan, and I could tell he was a little scared himself because he stopped swearing while he did it. If you had seen him hold the baby who belonged to the couple that owns the house we rented, swearing in the same voice you would use to say something like, “Hey, you’re a nice baby,” or whatever, you would know how surprised I was.

Soon we found the river, after turning left at the pile of abandoned bedsprings as we had been instructed. It led to a small waterfall and was so cold that it hurt your feet to step into it. That, however, didn’t stop Albert from getting in in a hurry and taking Katie, his wife, with him. It was a very good river.

Blah, blah, blah, more grilling, more dominoes, more grilling, more dominoes. No conceptual art, unless you count meat and dominoes. And at one point, we turned on the tv. It was about three in the morning. We quickly saw the Mighty Ducks pop in three goals against the Devils – live – and went to bed. Satisfied that they wouldn’t close out the Stanley Cup that night, which would have led to some kind of big celebration, which would have meant a crowd, which, even on TV, we’re trying to avoid these days, we went to bed. We had to be up early to start the fire, look at the mountains, not go to museums, and plan lunch.