So I'm at The Block the other day for an exciting double-feature of Eastern Promises (pretty good) and Shoot 'Em Up (outstanding) with a break in between for appletinis made with Absolut Pears, and this woman walks up to me asking me something blablabla, D.C. I say, "What?"

"Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea?"

Of course I have. I even got a bar of soap for Christmas a couple years back made with mud from there.

"Come this way. For 15 seconds."

I didn't really want to, but you never know. Anyway, she takes me to her little cart of stuff, rubs rock salt on my hands that is apparently from the Dead Sea, and tells me to start rubbing my hands together. This feels more or less like applying ultra-coarse sandpaper directly to the skin.

"Keep rubbing, keep rubbing!" she says. "But it doesn't feel good, like, at all," I reply. Eventually she comes over with a spray-thing and squirts oil on my hands. I rub some more, and most of the salt starts coming off into the basin below. Finally I get to dry off my hands, and she shows me the water left in the basin.

"You see that?" she asks, pointedly.

"Yeah, looks like soapy water," I respond."

"That's DEAD SKIN" she says, emphatically. "You need to exfoliate."

This is not interesting to me. Thankfully, she then goes "Okay, you can go now."

No sales pitch. She knows she'd be wasting her time.

So ladies: rubbing hands with rock salt -- do y'all actually do that?