Hypnotists are standard fare in night clubs, but one hypnotist takes the genre to the limit.
His name is “Anthony Cools”, and he’s hard to miss; He drives a Lamborghini and dresses in tailored suits and bow tie, with skull ring and pointy-toed, black-and-white wingtip shoes. He must be doing something right. In his hypnotism “performances” Cools makes his subjects do very weird and often lewd things; like simulated sex with chairs, for example.
He won’t be helping anyone stop smoking, though he might make some people start. And there are dangers. During one performance, Cools pretended to give an imaginary joint of marijuana to a hypnotized policeman onstage. The policeman tackled Cools and tried to handcuff him, giving Cools a gash in his forehead.
Cools, (his real name) calls himself an “entrepreneur of embarrassment”, making his hypnotized volunteer subjects hope that what PLAYS in the casino,STAYS in the casino. No such luck: he sells videos of the evening’s “performances”, calling them “perfect blackmail material”.
“Some people consider hypnotism to be low entertainment” Cools says, “and a lot of bad hypnotists contribute to bringing the art form down; I want to do something different”. He has, but whether his act is an “art form” depends on whether one considers simulated sex with furniture a step up in quality.
Apparently many do; Cools now has his own “Anthony Cools Experience” theater, and a contract through 2017. In a town like Las Vegas, that’s a Lifetime Contract.