Aaaahh … lap dances and trivia … God bless Las Vegas

In this economy, I realize I'm lucky to have any job. But getting paid to watch TV? It's enough to make a man feel guilty.

But then I got an overnight delivery from Playboy TV, and an entirely different feeling took over.

Civic pride.

Sure, the capitals of Europe each have a millennium or two of history, and New York has its art and its theater.

But where else other than Las Vegas would you tape "Show Us Your Wits" (9 p.m. Saturdays, Playboy TV), a new game show in which regular guys try to answer trivia questions without being distracted by the fully nude lap dance they're receiving?

Seriously, trivia and strippers? It's like where good nerds go when they die.

During filming at the Palomino Club, contestants were told they'd be judging a lap dance competition, says Daphnee Duplaix, the "Show Us Your Wits" host and Playboy's Miss July 1997. "Then I come storming in, so they're completely caught off guard. They have no idea," she says, that they're about to be on a game show.

What happens next is a mix of the outrageous, the tacky and the just plain goofy. It's virtually impossible to look away from, much like the proverbial train wreck. Assuming one of those trains was grinding its caboose all over the other one.

The show also is a prime example of why the terrorists hate us, and it has to be at least one of the signs of the apocalypse. But terrorists have to hate somebody, and the world is going to end sometime, right?

Before the surprise of being on a game show can sink in, "Show Us Your Wits" contestants are handed a $100 bill, and the questions begin. For every correct answer, they earn $100; for every incorrect one, they lose everything but the original $100 and start all over. And did I mention there's a stripper? (Honestly, you can't make this stuff up.)

After two minutes, contestants can keep what they've won or opt for the double-or-nothing round, which consists of one question, and, naturally, an additional stripper. It's one of the few instances where a guy can leave a gentleman's club with more money than he came in with.

The dumbstruck men soon learn how hard it is to think clearly in front of the bright lights and camera crews while trying not to stare directly into a stranger's uterus.

On the other hand, it gives them a crash course in what it's really like to be Bret Michaels.

For her part, Duplaix says "Show Us Your Wits" is the strangest thing she's ever been involved with on camera. And that's saying something, considering that she was a regular on "Passions," the daytime soap that featured a 300-year-old witch, her doll that came to life, a perky blond zombie named Charity, and a nurse played by an orangutan.

The bubbly Duplaix, who also hosted "The Palms Girl Search" in 2004, laughs easily and often, which helps move along some of the show's clunkier moments. (To the question "What variety of apple shares its name with Japan's highest mountain?" a dazed contestant eventually mutters "Red Delicious." Exactly. Last summer, four people died climbing Mount Red Delicious.)

She's the same way on the phone, taking several opportunities to practically purr "You're funny," even when I'm not. And, yes, I've made that sound bite my ringtone. It's also the sound of my alarm clock. And my doorbell. The oven timer. And, thanks to patent-pending technology, the dog next door's bark.

Duplaix went all Charlie Sheen during the shoot, spending three straight 14- to 18-hour days inside the strip club. Only she did it standing up the whole time. On 6-inch stilettos.

But that was far from the only hazard.

"There was a point, how do I put this," she says, laughing again, "... where I'm on set, and we're ending the show, and I turn around and there's just ass right there. And I'm like 'Oh this is great!' So, you know, in those moments, you're like 'What is going on here?' "

Whatever was going on, there's no question where it was going on.

In the greatest city in the world.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.