Last night Mrs. Bali Hai and I went to see The Second City's touring company perform at our local arts center.

An elderly couple was seated next to us. The old man apparently was a little hard of hearing because his wife had to keep repeating the punchlines to him.

At one point in the show, the following exchange occurred:

Old man: "What?"
Old woman: "He ate her pussy."
Old man: "He ate what?"
Old woman: "HE ATE HER PUSSY!"

Thank you, thank you. They'll be here all week in the main lounge. Please try the veal.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When my wife and I decided to build our home tiki bar, we both agreed that it had to have a pinball machine. Since I managed an arcade for a couple of years, I have a lot of experience restoring and repairing pins, so I figured I'd pick up something old and cheap, then fix it up.

Well, thanks to Jaime over at the Nonist, my plans changed slightly when he sent me the above image of the backglass art for a 1973 Bally pinball called...wait for it...Bali Hi! I knew immediately that this was the one-true pinball machine that the Tiki Gods themselves had decreed be enshrined in my bar.

Unfortunately, this particular machine is quite rare, only 80 units were ever built, so I had resigned myself to a long and arduous search, but lo and behold, all it took was a bit of Googling and the pinball of my tropical-fever dreams was staring me right in the face on eBay! There was only one catch: the seller lives in Cleveland, and he's unable to ship it to me here in Western Wisconsin.

Well, to make this long story short, after exchanging a few e-mails with the gentleman, I decided that I was just going to have to bite the bullet and embark upon a 1400-mile roundtrip to Ohio next weekend to bring Bali-Hai back to the place ordained for it.

Yes, I've gone completely insane. Thank you, and goodnight.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Needless to say, I was quite surprised (and pleased) to see the Goof get a mention as Mark Frauenfelder's favorite 'blog in this Associated Press article, Six more pop culture blogs you should be reading. Thanks, Mark!

Now the money, book, and television movie-of-the-week offers start rolling in, right?

NOTE: when you click the link above, select "Chattanooga Times Free Press" from the pulldown menu, then click the "Go" button to read the article.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

My old high-school chum, Johnny Heck, sent me a bunch of scanned photographs from a gig that Low Budget played at a private home in the Whittier hills back in 1977. In case you don't recall, Low Budget was the punk band that X-8 and Tory from Flip Side formed, along with drummer, Jim Prado. I did occasional vocals and schlepped equipment around for the band. X-8 designed the fliers and printed them on one of the school's mimeograph machines.

The gig was at the house of a girl named Pam Tourigian, I'm pretty sure she had a major crush on X-8 (along with a lot of the other girls at Whittier High). Another local band called Jekyll and Hyde played outside by the pool, but the cops showed up, so we moved it inside. LB managed to get a few songs in before the police came by again and shut the party down for good.

I think that's Pooch at the bottom-left of this photocollage; I don't remember him being there, but that's not terribly surprising considering how bad my memory is.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 6:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Today is my 46th birthday. I'm now officially older than dirt and beginning my slow decline into senility, loss of mobility, and incontinence. Break out the aluminum walker and adult Depends[tm].

As a gift to myself, I'm taking the day off and heading over to Stillwater, MN with my wife and mom to do some antiquing while the kids are in school, then we'll all go out for dinner this evening at a fine dining establishment of my choice.

In other news, the tiki bar is progressing by leaps and bounds this week and it's looking fantastic if I do say so myself. The entrance to the bar area is going to be magnificent when it's finished. I have to give a lot of credit to my contractor Dan for doing such a great job implementing my original plans. He's really enjoying the opportunity to do something different and creative. Ironically, he's also a recovering alcoholic (maybe I will be too a couple of months from now).

Smell you later.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)