Country Song Titles for the Modern Age.

You Just Unlocked the Badge for My Heart

There's No App for Fightin'

My Inbox Is a Ghost Town (Since You Left)

Text Me When You're Sober

Go Check In (With Someone Who Gives a Damn)

Tears on My Profile

Lord, I Was Born to Google

Your Tweetin' Heart

Service Outage Blues

Facebook Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us

Can't Help It (If I'm Still on MySpace)

Any other ideas?

Music: "High-Tech Redneck"

Massage: Body Co.

It's very easy to miss Body Co., which is marked only by an unimpressive sandwich-board sign outside an equally unimpressive office-building door on Connecticut Avenue, just south of Dupont Circle. I walked right by it -- and I had an appointment there.

I'd discovered Body Co. on Yelp while looking for discount massages. I'm very snobby about my massage environments, and I feel that bodywork is most satisfying when it is 90 minutes long.

This unfortunate, because I am not rich. I very much enjoy places such as bluemercury ($145 for a 90-minute massage), Elizabeth Arden Red Door ($170 for a mere 80 minutes in Chevy Chase), and Bliss ($210 for 105 minutes at the W Hotel location downtown) -- but that's only when I decide to be greedy and ask for a birthday or Christmas gift certificate to one of these places. Otherwise, they're out of reach for me.

Body Co., on the other hand, had a $95 special offer for first-timers on its Yelp page -- check this page before you book, because they usually have some good deals on there.

I was nervous about booking a massage at an unknown place, sight unseen, and was not reassured by the run-down office building location. But! Once you get inside, Body Co. is nice and neat. It has a basic waiting room with leather chairs and a water cooler. The rooms themselves are clean, well ventilated, dimly lit, and quiet except for the cheesy, pan-flute-type music I've come to expect and tolerate from most massage places. (I'd rather hear that than awkward silence or sounds from outside the room, which I've experienced even at high-end places.)

My therapist, Cynthia, was attentive and great. She took in that I just wanted a basic Swedish massage for relaxation, nothing fancy, and delivered with divine strokes.

I was sold on Body Co. and decided to take advantage of their package of six 90-minute massages for $572 (not including tip), or $95.30 per massage. That, my friends, is a bargain.

However.

My subsequent experiences at Body Co. were problematic, to say the least. Cynthia (O, Cynthia, why?) disappeared from their roster, so I spun the roulette wheel of therapists and tried again. Anxious to book a massage one evening, I departed from my norm of picking a female therapist and went with Julio. No complaints here -- he's very professional, knows what he's doing, and delivered a nice Swedish massage. Still... I wasn't quite sold and wanted to see what else Body Co. had to offer. That's when things started to go awry.

I picked a female therapist who ... wait for it ... asked me in the middle of a very lame session, "Would you like me to massage your breasts?"

Now. I suppose this may have been a legitimate request and that there are people who are into this, but I've never had it asked of me before and never want to have it asked of me again. I was so distracted by the question -- Was this weird, or am I just prudish? Is it possible there are people who would take her up on this? Did this poor girl work in a different, er, type of massage parlor before this? -- that I couldn't relax for the rest of the massage.

As it turned out, I didn't have much time to recover. The therapist finished up and encouraged me to hang out on the table for awhile, which I thought was odd because it seemed like the time wasn't up. Sure enough, she'd shortchanged me by at least 20 minutes. I was already back in my clothes before she had come back to the room saying she'd made a mistake, and did I want the rest of my massage? I said no and proceeded to the front desk. The woman there was apologetic and said she'd only charge me for one hour. I left stressed.

Amazingly, it happened again -- not the inappropriate offer, but the shortchanging. The therapist left 15 minutes early, again encouraging me to stay and relax on the table, which made me think she was trying to dupe me. Again the desk staff apologized and only charged me the partial amount. Both times, the staff claimed that there was something wrong with the clock in the room. There was nothing wrong with the clock in the room. I told the manager that she had a staff issue she needed resolve, and she thanked me for the feedback.

I've been back twice since then, and only because I had the package to exhaust. Both massages have been good -- not great, but no big complaints. My boyfriend joined at one point and had a great deep-tissue massage.

So, the bottom line with Body Co. is that it offers tremendous value if (big if) you can find a therapist who's right for you.

Where do you go for affordable massage in D.C.?

Details:
Body Co.
1337 Connecticut Ave. NW, lower level
Massages from $45 for 30 mins.

Caught Between the Moon and New York City.

What I like about New York -- at least, today -- is that you can have the most discouraging day, full of letdowns and fatigue, noise, crowds, frustrations; and have it all turn around in the course of an afternoon. You lose a subway token, arrive late to a job interview, stammer your way through it, get lost (for a second time) on the subway, can't find an affordable sofa, and arrive back at the apartment to learn that your other job interview had been canceled once again.

You regroup, and re-emerge. In the 13-block walk to World of Ice Cream (yes, that's the name), you pass the usual parade of companions and characters: dogs walking their owners, toddlers walking their parents, schoolchildren roaming in packs, random snippets of their conversation echoing in your path. You hadn't ever noticed Steve's Antiques, tucked in the basement of a brownstone, so you wander in. It's hard to be down when chatty Steve has you discussing the merits of globes and being glad there's no war in Haiti today (despite that fact that you had guiltily ignored the whole conflict -- too self-absorbed).

Then later you look out the window from 13N because a gray light coming out of the dark attracts you, and you see a white full moon smack in the center of the sky over the building across the street. The moon is marvelous, but doesn't provide the same comfort as seeing people move through the yellow windows in front of you, caught between the moon and the street and acting as though neither existed.

-- Sept. 19, 1994

Music: "Arthur's Theme"

Free Fall.

"I'm sorry, but I still say they never would have dared to do this directly after Sept. 11."

I usually get ignored when I make this comment during the opening credits of Mad Men, probably because the observation is a plain one. Still, I don't watch Mad Men regularly enough to get over how offensive and impossible this sequence would have been after the unimaginable events of 2001. And when I type in "mad men+9/11" in Google, I don't get the reaction I expect.

I know that I am very late to this, since Mad Men is in season 4 at this point, but surely I'm not the only one who's had this reaction. What awesome coverage of this topic did I miss? I was living in San Francisco the year this show debuted and obsessed with non-media stuff at the time.

I am strongly in favor of not censoring themes because they bring up disturbing memories. I do not think that certain scenes should be off-limits because of Sept. 11. At the same time, when I see a show made for pure entertainment using such boldly evocative imagery, I feel somewhat betrayed.

Victory.

I have never smoked. Not once. Not a cigarette, not a joint, not a hookah.

Unless you count Victory and Round Up cigarettes. I've had a few packs of those.

The FDA is apparently banning candy cigarettes, which is an entirely sensible decision. Children should not be offered My First Tobacco products, priming them to take up the habit for real later. Can you imagine if it were possible to buy chocolate joints, or some kind of kiddie "brew" that came in a beer can but was really Kool-Aid or something? Of course we would quash such a product right away. But candy cigarettes -- chocolate, bubble gum, straight sugar -- have been around for years.

I should be happy about this ban, but I'm not. I'm really bummed. I'd be in favor of banning, say, Big League Chew. (I'm guessing it must be included in the ban?) Even as a kid I thought the idea of taking a big wad of something between your fingers to chew on was somehow indelicate and unappealing, whether it was tobacco or bubble gum. But candy cigarettes?

I went to Dylan's Candy Bar in NYC, hopeful that the ban was not yet in effect. And, happily, I found a whole display of kiddie cigarettes. I bought two packs of bubble gum and one candy. Bubble gum is the best, because it has that white preservative powder on it, so when you blow through the wrapper, the powder comes out in a cloud and it looks like you're actually smoking.

Okay. I know that it's offensive and children shouldn't get these. When I think of my nephews and niece getting hold of them, I shudder. Still, I grew up with them and never ever smoked. Can that count at all in defense of this very wrong product that I still do not want to go away? No?

Antoine.

So, a former colleague of mine at NPR (among others) has been tweeting about Antoine Dodson for a couple of days. And now NPR has a story that sums up the whole thing pretty well.

I initially thought my friend's tweets were just about a silly rap song, because she kept talking about it getting stuck in her head. So I ignored it, because I get enough silly rap songs in my head and I thought the video she tweeted was just too bad, even for my low standards.

Little did I know that it was not a rap video but a parody of an outcry from the brother of a woman who was the victim of an attempted rape.

There are so many things going on here that I literally don't know how to react. Watching the news story that originated this meme, my thoughts were roughly:

- wow, that's horrible what happened to that woman

- how great that she fought back and that the guy did not get what he wanted

- how great that her brother intervened

- wow that is quite a response from her brother

- ha, I like his chutzpah

- ha, wow, more of his reaction -- again, like the moxie, but it's kind of excessive within the framework of the news story

And then I watched the auto-tune parody. Thoughts were (as they were originally):

- This is unwatchable

- Now that I know the context, it's weird to make this into a joke

And then I went to Antoine's blog:

- OMG, all his fans in the "fan outing" are white. Like, all but one. This is really weird and uncomfortable.

- He sure could get a lot of white-lady action if he wanted some.

- Whoops, I see from this thank-you video message where he's styling hair that he probably doesn't want any lady action.

I think it's great that this guy who's a minor hero is getting a bunch of love and seems very happy about it. And even though I know the reporter's argument that it would be wrong to "censor" Antoine is self-serving, I also agree, to an extent. He was understandably angry, and in everything he said, he was RIGHT (except maybe the part about husbands being in danger too).

But then again, the reporter had to have known what she was doing when she edited THAT much footage of him into her news segment. And the way it's being parodied and embraced by people who (I'm assuming) do not live in those projects is both bizarre and sickening.

Dodson is now apparently negotiating a ringtone. If that gets his family some much-needed money, who am I to say anything? But at the same time, if the majority of people downloading said ringtone are doing so because they think it's funny, how is that empowering for anyone? It's an attempted rape. Can we please not turn this into a joke? In any way?

Many of the commenters on Antoine's blog seem to express genuine concern for his sister and his family. But just as many just wish him a reality show. "Get ya money homie!! Capitalize off this s**t! Get you a reality show!!" wrote one. "Post more videos……post them on youtube. Get you and your family some money!!! All these other stupid folks have reality shows and make money off silly stuff. GET YOURS!!!!" wrote another.

I have to believe that things wouldn't have gone this far if the rapist had gotten away with the crime. Otherwise we're in more trouble as a society than you think.

Music: "Bed Intruder Song"

UncMo Since 1971.

Me: I just passed [coworker A] and [coworker B]
Me: [coworker A] did a double take and said," Are you going somewhere today?"
Me: I said no, why?
Me: He said, you look all dressed up
Me: [coworker B] had complimented me on my dress earlier
Me: not sure how to take that

Him: well
Him: you look beautiful

Me: it means either I look too dressy today

Him: so ya

Me: or I look like shit most days
Me: aw

Him: haha
Him: do you over analyze every situation?

Me: have you seen my blog?

Him: oh ya
Him: good point

Commuting Protocol.

It was 6:30 p.m. at Penn Station and I was standing with a group of people looking at the train departures screen, waiting for my train's boarding gate to come up. I'd been staked out here on the lower floor for half an hour now, and my Amtrak Northeast Regional train to D.C. was late -- later than the screen implied.

Most of the other Amtrak passengers were upstairs with the big flip-letter board, where I like them. The downstairs area is slightly less chaotic, and more the domain of local commuters. Group after group assembled and rapidly dispersed around me, as train after train to New Jersey was called. I stuck by my spot at the pillar near the screen, and another woman seemed stuck there too. We both stared blankly ahead, resigned.

Suddenly, our vision was obscured by a tall workaday guy in a plaid buttoned shirt and khakis, iPod earbuds firmly in place along with his cluelessness. He planted himself right in front of me, the other woman, and the three or four people behind us who were all trying to see the screen. I sighed and peered around his shoulder.

The woman next to me did not have this option, as she was several inches shorter. She tapped the guy on the shoulder. When he turned around to look, earbuds still in place, she made a quick windshield-wiper motion with her right hand that said, Get out of the way, dumbass.

He gave her a deeply perturbed look. "What's your problem?" he said, shifting a little but not really moving.

"We were here. You can't just come stand in front of everybody," she said. I had to give her credit. I am not that ballsy.

The guy looked like he was going to argue. "Dude. You're standing in front of a bunch of people," I said, but I couldn't tell whether he heard, because his earbuds were still in.

He reluctantly moved off to the side, and kept mean-mugging the woman. She, in turn, gave me a stony stare that said, "Can you believe this?" and possibly "Will you be my second?" This made the d.b. turn and cast his glare on me too, with confusion and anger in equal measure. I darted a glance and a smile toward the woman that said, "What a d.b., right?" and then stared straight ahead, monitoring the sitch in my peripheral. I felt conflicted. Part of me wanted to stare the d.b. down, but the other part of me just wanted to be on a train home and not really here at all.

He really kept up the hating as he stood there, which surprised me, because he looked like a total office/family type -- medium build, not very in shape, pretty unremarkable in every way. Yet he was determined to mean-mug right up until his train came and he had to leave. Like he was a tough guy and we were all dudes in a nightclub or something. I couldn't imagine that whatever he was listening to on his iPod -- Train? An NPR Podcast? Peter Bjorn and John? -- could really be fomenting his rage. It was completely self-sustained. After about two minutes he left when his train was called. It was a local one, and I didn't get how he managed to do this commute regularly and yet fail to grasp the basic screen etiquette that everyone else seemed able to master.

When he was gone, the woman next to me shot me another piercing sideways glance. She was short, slight, blond and was wearing a neutral-colored suit. I looked back at her. She was talking to me, but I had my own earbuds in.

"What?" I said, taking an earbud out.

"I said, I thought that guy was going to kick my ass," she said. She had a look of disbelief on her face.

"He was just being a dick," I countered, not sure what else to say.

She affirmed this. "I'm glad you said something," I added, and put my earbud back in. But I felt like she deserved more than that, in a weird way. She'd stood up for both our screen rights, and was clearly weirded out.

I took my earbud back out. "I would have had your back," I said to her. "I think we both could have taken him." That seemed to make her face relax a bit. She nodded and we laughed.

And you know what? I bet we could have. A guy like that might even deserve to get roughed up by two skinny chicks. To be honest, I couldn't really picture it, even though I tried to as I walked to my train after it was finally announced. But I felt unreasonably sure that somehow, justice would have prevailed.

Music: "Stand Up"

Boba Fete.

OK, that headline isn't quite right, but the pun was hard to resist.

If I could, though, I would have a bubble tea party every day. Until that moment in my life comes, I am content to visit two primary bubble tea suppliers in the Dupont Circle area: Teaism and newcomer Du Froyo.

Bubble tea was invented in Taiwan, apparently, but I've encountered it more in Vietnamese-owned settings such as Out the Door in San Francisco, Eden Center shops in Falls Church, Va., and Du Froyo, which appears to be a sister business to the Vietnamese-run nail salon next door.

What's so great about bubble tea? For starters, it's a drink you can chew. For many people, that's a dealbreaker right there. For people like me, it's a heavenly combination of activities. It's sweet black tea with milk combined with chewy, gummy tapioca pearls and a big straw. What's not to like, other than a slightly elevated choking hazard?

The boba teas at Eden Center don't do much for me, personally. They taste more cloying and non-tea-like than the ones at Teaism and Du Froyo. Teaism has one flavor and one size: the equivalent of a Starbucks grande black tea boba, around $3.50. It's somewhat mild but perfectly sweet and enjoyable. The environment here is a plus: You can choose from a perch in their mini-garden out front or a spot in their somewhat claustrophic but nicely appointed upper floor.

Du Froyo offers three sizes and many flavors of boba, including frozen ones. This might seem counterintuitive -- why would one need the texture of frozen in a drink that already provides the texture of tapioca? -- but the combo is actually quite nice, especially in the frozen coconut boba.

Du Froyo is a bit more expensive, with prices starting at $3.95 for a small regular boba and $4.50 for a frozen one. However, it does offer a rewards card, in case you happen to be a frequent boba drinker. And it tends to be emptier, with an upstairs seating area that's rarely inhabited.

If you prefer to keep it simple and prefer wooden decor to neon colors, hit up Teaism. Either way, you can't go wrong.

Details:
Du Froyo
1709 Connecticut Ave. NW at R St.

Teaism
2009 R St. NW at Connecticut

Figs.

This morning I went to the Whole Foods, which is one of my favorite places and I do not apologize for that.

I went in search of breakfast fruit, preferably some raspberries to have with whole milk. The first thing I saw when I walked in the door to the P St. store, though, was fresh organic mission figs from California, on sale for $2.99 a box.

Involuntarily, I dropped my sunglasses and said "Oooh!" to myself.

And serendipitously, my brother happened to be right there in the store witnessing this moment.

Unfortunately, most of the time I conduct myself as if I am alone and no one is noticing me, which is usually the case. But this time I sensed for a split second that someone was looking at me and then I heard a mocking "Ooooh!" and saw Ben standing there laughing at me.

Mortifying. But I had to laugh.

"You don't understand," I said. "Figs are usually really expensive, and they're so good."

"How do you eat them?" my brother's girlfriend asked. All of a sudden I was an authority on figs, even though I didn't really know that much about them.

"You can put them on a plate with some blue cheese and honey," I said reflexively, thinking of farmer's market demonstrations in San Francisco. Put any piece of delicious California produce on a plate with cheese, and you're a gourmand. Simple as that.

"That sounds good. Do you want to try it, Ben?" she asked. I got nervous. I envisioned the figs sucking, or the cheese combo sucking, and them thinking I was insane.

"I don't know," I said. "You might just want to look into some other recipes. That's just one idea."

"No. We're going to blame you if it sucks," Ben astutely countered.

"Ooooooh!"

Of course, when I tried the figs at home, they sucked. They were completely bland and mealy, devoid of the sweet lusciousness I experienced the first time I ever ate a fresh fig in San Francisco.

So not worthy of the "Oooooh."

I wrote to my brother and his girlfriend, acknowledging that the figs sucked and asserting that it was NOT MY FAULT.

She wrote back. "I have to admit by itself it was pretty bland; however, when I added the blue cheese and honey it was yummy!!!"

That was kind of her. But no, they suck. So now I'm left wondering: If I pay more are they good? Or can you just not get good fresh figs at all on the East Coast?

What a bougie question.