Anthony Cools rose above a pack of late-night hypnotism shows by offering the raunchiest act, delivered with a stand-up comic's timing and pacing. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky.

You know Las Vegas tourism isn't going back to a family focus anytime soon when Excalibur, a gleaming shrine to that ill-fated era, now hosts the raunchiest show on the Strip.

You won't see paid showgirls simulate oral sex anywhere on the Strip. I think there's a statute against that. But you can see a volunteer audience member, a sort of matronly one at that, do that very thing in Anthony Cools' dirty hypnotism show.

And when the "chair-cam" angle of this amateur performance is replayed immediately after the show at the merch stand? Well, let's just hope the kiddies are in bed, or at least downstairs playing carnival games, by 10:45 p.m.

The late Buddy Hackett used to say if something is funny, it isn't dirty. At Cools' show, it's outrageously funny, and I guess it's not illegal-dirty if the performer is not getting paid and happens to be under hypnosis.

And Cools, who is funny in his own right, gives them fair warning. In his 10-minute preamble, the leeringly charming hypnotist mentions at least three times -- in more blunt terms than can be used here -- that volunteers will end up having sex with a chair. (I think that would be a better name for his specialty drink than the Coolspell, an $11 concoction in a souvenir cup).

The only part he fails to mention is the chair-cam. This was unanticipated by the 40-something woman who performed as part of her "porno movie audition." Back to full consciousness and reviewing the footage after the show, her scream sounded something like "Ohgodthere wasa(expeletive)camera!" before she stood immobile, her face in her hands, for what seemed like a full minute.

There was also a post-show attempt at damage control on cell phone calls made from the stage by Dennis, one of the two men who emerged as the stars of this Saturday performance.

You see, most volunteers at hypnotism shows are like Danny, the goateed young showoff who wasn't particularly embarrassed to discuss his performance with his heavily pierced friends after the show.

But the real prizes are the people who don't seem like they belong up there. Cell Phone Dennis was square-looking with a service-station haircut and a T-shirt under his patterned short sleeves. As he looked at his phone menu, trying to figure out how many obscene calls he had placed to family members on the East Coast during the show, his wife consoled him by shrugging her shoulders and saying, "What are ya gonna do? You were hypnotized."

The other star was Emmanuel, a huge guy in a football shirt who didn't even volunteer. No, he was put under while sitting in the audience, during the few minutes when the whole room is asked to be quiet to facilitate the process onstage.

"This is the whole (expletive) show waiting to happen," Cools observed after Emmanuel took his seat onstage. Knowing these things, and clueing the crowd in on them, is what separates Cools from the other hypnotists who come and go in Las Vegas.

Cools first set up shop at the Stardust in the summer of 2003, then created a venue in the tour and travel lobby of Paris Las Vegas. In January, he made a step up to this curtained-off lounge at Excalibur, which is tightly packed with folding chairs but has better sightlines than the tour lobby.

Besides the aforementioned built-in leer, the hypnotist conveys the aura of a professional party guy, a fraternity brother who never grew up and can coax a crowd into hoisting a toast and yelling "Sociable!" along with him.

And he's got the comic timing. The first thing he does after thinning the 20 volunteers to the 11 who get to stay is to make them perform as a pantomime orchestra. He keeps orchestrating and conducting long after this bit ends, building things to a literal climax -- a feigned orgasm for every subject as the grand finale.

Though Emmanuel had been made to dance like a nerd every time a Tom Jones song played, he didn't look like he wanted to knock anyone into the turf after the show. No, he was waiting for the instant-burn DVD so he could have a permanent record of his performance. Not to mention that of the matronly woman.

And that's why you can figure that even if Vegas does drift back to the family thing again, there will still be a place for Cools and his sex chair.