Hello all! I am working on a new comedy mentalism show. I have an assistant who is a wisecracker and another who is a mime. I am looking to do a mind reading skit with my third assistant(Ian MacGregor) my old Scottish puppet. My question is does anybody know of any skits that others have done and where I could find them? I want to gleen ideas from them. I like to write my own material but I love re-incorporating ideas and making them fit my character. I also saw another thread (unfortunately it has not gone anywhere) In which somebody asked about a silent vent routine. That struck me as funny because as part of my routine I was looking at having my mime assistant bring out a mime puppet and try to do a routine. Anyway, thanks in advance for any help.

Start for a vent mind reading could be done by blindfolding Ian and give him very obvious clues....

Use of a change bag with one side with many questions and the other side with one question repeated on slips of paper could have some fun possibilities.

Actual strong presentations might be thrown in as well.

Psychological Subtle....and other books of that nature are being read by this
nearly normal vent...in search of some fun and killer mentalism bits.

The mime puppet has possibilities.

Currently I use two socks in a bit.

One is green and one white.

The first one is snake or frog.

The white one started out to be a ghost puppet, then one night I did a line about mimes and still use it occassionally.

Enjoy the journey.


Harris

Hank Lee has a stethoscope prop with a plunger on the end that would be pretty good for comedy mind reading (http://www.hanklee.org/xcart/customer/product.php?productid=2527&cat=&page=1).

You force the card/item/thought on the kid, then attempt to read the kid's mind by listening to his head with the stethoscope.

Mike

Thanks for the responses and food for thought. This is taking some time. Mostly because I do not want to do this half way at all. One of the obvious (to me at least) things I have is to say that a member of the audience will hold up an object and Ian will divine what it is while blindfolded. I then say to my assistant, "Now, if you will please blindfold the dummy." I turn to Ian and say,"No offense." My assistant comes up and blindfolds me and Ian looks at me and, without skipping a beat says, "None taken!"

"Bill Abbott Performs Stand-Up Magic For Kids" DVD

My little buddy Woodrow and I do a mind reading bit where I have him turn his head around facing backwards and I have someone in the audience select a card from a deck and then show everyone (including me) the card. Then I have Woodrow turn back around and after acting as if he were the greatest mind reader in the world announce the name of the selected card. I act as if I am floored by his great talent and ask for a round of applause for him and of course everyone in the audience gets a laugh out of it. Seriously though, how does he do it?

Steve Taylor's DVD on combining magic with vent has a great mindreading skit. it's worth a look!