DECATUR - The two friends volunteered to be hypnotized for a lark, with no real belief they actually would be.

But when Paul Rheaume "put the whammy" on his group of volunteers and told them they were sitting in a movie theater where first, the air conditioning didn't work at all and it was uncomfortably hot, then it started working and it got too cold.

"I did feel it, but inside," said Courtney Anderson, one of the volunteers.

"And when he said it was cold, I felt it," Brittley Oakley said.

Rheaume's act is at Franklin and North streets, billed as Street Hypnosis and Funky Magic, and this year is his 11th appearance in 12 years - he missed one due to illness. It's unusual for the same artist to appear at Celebration so often, he said, but he always comes up with a different act.

"I'm one of the few exceptions," he said. "It's like old home week to me."

One year, he did a medicine show, another year, he portrayed W.C. Fields; he's done a time machine, a carnival sideshow and now the magic show.

In his 45 years as a professional magician, celebrity impersonator and all-around entertainer, Rheaume has played from coast to coast in every kind of venue. He's performed in libraries, nursing homes, hospitals, day care centers and street festivals such as Decatur Celebration but admitted with a chuckle that an indoor, air-conditioned theater is more comfortable than working outdoors in August.

He opened with the perennial favorite rope trick, where he showed the audience three lengths of rope - a short one, a medium one and a long one - and even let members of the audience examine the ropes.

"Nothing here," he said, showing his open left hand. "Nothing here," showing his right. "And nothing here," indicating his head. Laughing, he added, "Oops, got carried away."

Folding the three ropes so their ends were between his fingers, with the loops hanging below, he pulled them out of his hand and voila, all were the same length.

The show stopper was swallowing razor blades. After the obligatory, "Don't try this at home" warning, Rheaume called for a volunteer to assist him and used the blades to cut newspaper to prove they really were sharp. He handed his assistant, 11-year-old Jacob Albert, a set of hemostats and appeared to swallow the razor blades and a red thread. When the blades emerged from his mouth, the first one held by Jacob in the hemostats, they were connected by the thread.

Valerie Wells can be reached at vwells@herald-review.com or 421-7982.