A few weeks back I went to Bali to help celebrate a mate's 40th birthday. On the night of the party, there was the usual amount of drinking, eating, chatting and laughing. It was the typical fun party action and all (messy) business as usual until the dancing girls showed up. They wandered around to the beat of frenzied local percussion as they waved some flaming batons through the night air.

The lovely lasses left to be replaced with a guy in a glittering jacket, who started twirling the fire with more impressive speed and enthusiasm. After his short demonstration the girls came back, resuming  their absentminded noodlings with the fiery sticks. Normally I'd probably have devoted more attention to them -- scantily-clad Asian girls are hardly cause for me to wrinkle my nose in disapproval -- but tonight my gaze was captured by this guy:

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