Bars

In addition to the venues reviewed, consider hanging out, as the locals quickly began doing, at Aureole, Red Square, and the House of Blues, all in Mandalay Bay. There's a separate bar at Aureole, facing the wine tower, where your wish for wine sends comely lasses flying up four stories, courtesy of Peter Pan-style harnesses, to fetch your desired bottle. At Red Square, keep your drink nicely chilled all night long on the ice bar, created by water that's freshly poured and frozen daily. Or hang out and feel the blues at the small bottle-cap-bedecked bar in the corner of the House of Blues restaurant, which gets quite lively with off-duty locals after midnight.

You might also check out the incredible nighttime view at the bar atop the Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower -- nothing beats it.

There's also the Viva Las Vegas Lounge at the Hard Rock Hotel, which every rock-connected person in Vegas will eventually pass through.

Lounge Lizard Supreme

All those faux-hipster artists doing woeful lounge-act characters in Hollywood and New York only wish they could be Mr. Cook E. Jarr, whose sincerity and obvious drive to entertain puts mere performance artists to shame. With George Hamilton's tan, Cher's first shag haircut (it's certainly not his factory-original coif), and a bottomless, borderless catalog of rock, pop, soul, swing, and standard favorites, he's more Vegas than Wayne Newton.

Cook has a cult following of blue-collar casino denizens and the youthful cocktail set, who listen enraptured as he plays human jukebox, complete with karaoke-style backing recordings, terrible jokes, an array of disco-era lights, and (his favorite) a smoke machine. He's actually a solid, throaty singer, with a gift for vocal mimicry as he moves from Ben E. King to Bee Gees to Tony Bennett turf. And his tribute the night Sinatra died -- a version of "My Way" in which he voiced, alternately, Sammy, Dino, and Elvis welcoming Ol' Blue Eyes to Heaven -- was priceless.

He moves around a lot, but you can often catch him on Friday and Saturday nights, 6 to 8pm, at Harrah's Carnaval Court Lounge, at 3475 Las Vegas Blvd. S. (tel. 702/369-5222; www.cookejarr.com). Don't miss him! (And if he has left there by the time you read this, try to track him down.)

No Smoking! -- Long the last best hope for smokers, Vegas is considerably less smoky these days. A recent ban forbids smoking in any place that serves food, such as a restaurant, supermarket, or bar with a pub menu. Stand-alone bars and casinos are exempt, which, in theory, means you can't smoke in a hotel lobby, but you can a few feet away in a casino. It's an interesting evolution for a town so dedicated to hedonistic pursuits.

Bathroom Break -- When you gotta go, you gotta go, particularly if you've tried drinking at every bar listed here. So when you do, do try to do so in the unisex, free-standing Space Age pods at Mandalay Bay's China Grill.