Kamay Kamay

My uncle Ninong, who became a Mormon not because he believed the indians were a lost tribe of Israel, but because of his Poligamist sympathies, used to give me violin lessons when I was 10 or 11. He loved slight of hand tricks and was the person that first took us to the magic shop in Hollywood—is this shop some kind of venerable institution among slight of hand artists, I don't know, didn't recognize any of the photos they had on display, No Penn and Teller, No Blane, no Ricky Jay. I don't really know why my Uncle Joseph wanted a deck of marked cards, or why his son bought a dvd to learn misdirection and palming techniques with nerf balls. I can only imagine that it's something to amuse their kids and buddies back home, drinking with their barcada, they can't be talking about chix all the time, and everybody has the same 3-minute bluetooth porn that they trade around like scabies ("scandals" they call them, soon to be if not already the rage in the states along with wireless-machineless karaoke), so maybe every once in a while someone breaks out with some cheeseball trick, pulling red felt balls out of his compadre's pants pocket. "I've got your balls!" Maybe Filipino boys grow up learning different bare-handed skills: eating rice without utensils, uncapping beer bottles with other beer bottles, and then there's the ubiquitous overgrown thumbnail that many a Filipino man's man/street tough seems to cultivate, and use like an all purpose decal scratcher, pimple popper or letter opener or what have you. And of course there's that other league entirely of slight of hand artists who palm pig hearts and goats intestines, as seen on that's incredible and RIpley's Believe it or not:
" One of the most dramatic forms of faith healing that has attracted significant international attention is "psychic surgery." "It involves the painless insertion of the healer's fingers into the individual's body, re moval of tissues, tumors, growths, or foreign matter, and closing the incision without a scar" (Harper & Fullerton, 1994, p. 62). Numerous Western scientists have investigated tales of "miracle cures" produced by psychic surgeons and found evidence of fakery; however, they also have reportedly witnessed incredible feats of healing (Harper & Fuller ton, 1994)"— http://www.livinginthephilippines.com/philculture/practices.html
Why magic tricks? Maybe it's one of the few ways boys can show such delicate manual dexterity and gesticulate so elegantly and still be manly. Maybe it's just more stupid shit, to kill time, and if you say so then you're just a killjoy. I dunno but it makes for a lovely trope, don't it, the whole thing with presentation and misdirection. Can't deonstruct everything all the time. It's okay to be a fool for magic.