Lioz Shem Tov, mentalist, America's Got Talent

Mentalist because he's mental. The judges didn't like him until they realized the real nature of his act. They're such duds sometimes. The audience is way ahead of them.

The guy is hilarious when he said, "This is not comedy" when Simon Cowell told him "I thought this was stupid, then I thought this is really stupid, pause, then I thought, this is really funny, keeping up the act all the way through never coming out of mentalist character.

Two things. 

1) A high school friend in Louisiana was the most unique student in school. It wasn't that hard to stick out in the small school, but Gary Hennigan stuck w-a-a-a-y out beyond everyone else in talent and imagination. 

He had this thing about magic and mystic powers from television shows Bewitched and Dark Shadows. So he faked them. For example, I never saw him turn on a light the usual way. Instead, he'd back up to the light switch, draw attention to himself, then stare intently at the light fixture and dramatically reach toward it and snap his fingers at the light fixture while simultaneously snapping the light switch behind him. 

He especially liked magnets.

I adopted some his ways for fun with my nephews. I took them downtown and parked at the FRB where I worked. Upon leaving the parking lot the unseen guards inside the building watch on cameras and open the gates when the car approaches the exit ramp. They never miss you. They are ever vigilant. I acted like I'm magic and said dramatically and powerfully addressing the gate, "Open sesame" with power coming from my fingertips. The gate opened and the boys went nuts. The older boy knows about electronic eyes and he wanted his brother not to be misled, but come on, there is no electric eye, that would defeat security, and I had just opened the gate with my psychic telekinesis power. 

2) In Shirley Maclaine's book Out On a Limb, I think, I read two of her books and they're both oddly interesting. Like candy is interesting. She describes a drive in Peru to a mountaintop with high UFO activity. On the way up the mountain in a van a Peruvian woman got ahold of Maclaine's box of tissues and pulled one out as Lioz does in this video, instantly replaced with another tissue. Fascinated as a child would be, the woman kept pulling out tissues one after another trying to figure out the magic and Maclaine just sat there and watched as the woman emptied the whole box of tissues.