DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

For a change of pace we went to the local pub to see if we’d like the band. As it turns out, we did, but that’s not why I’m writing.

A man at the bar had impressive hair, straight and black, down past his belt. He nursed a beer, but was occupied doing card tricks on a fuzzy red placemat. I thought, in passing, that maybe the bar handed out cards and fuzzy red placemats, to accompany the dice cups that are certainly more popular.

The tricks were as impressive as the hair — one-handed cutting, fanning the deck, spreading the cards across the placemat and flipping them all over like dominoes. I admit I stared briefly. What the hell; he was a showman.

Later he took a table with a woman who he’d clearly just met. His attention was nearly evenly divided between the conversation and the cards. The cards won. At one point he’d put the deck back into the box, but within 60 seconds he was shuffling and dealing again. I glanced over from time to time and was wowed repeatedly. At one point he’d done a two-story fanning trick; at another time he held the deck, split into two stacks like a ‘V’, and by jiggling his hand the cards would fall evenly into two piles. A third time, I kid you not, I glanced over to see flames coming out of his hands. What’s up with that?

He left soon after that. I was amused at the sight of him carefully rolling up the fuzzy red placemat — not bar property after all.