So you've missed all the good stuff. Couldn't get funded for your reggae version of Flight of the Valkyries. Too scared to dish $3,800 for the chance to parachute into the new millennium right at the International Date Line. Too much of a tightwad to spend $60,000 on a top class ticket for a cruise over the dateline with Tony Bennett and Rita Moreno? Well, cheapskate hep cats who feel the need to mix their cool with a heavy splash of camp for the millennial weekend could do worse than to be in the neonopolis that is Las Vegas for the big countdown. You get your kitsch by the yard, your naff by the bucketful and your early-bird, all-you-can-eat specials up to 6 p.m. Go now.
Environmentalists will rejoice at the news that the Strip is being closed to cars for the evening. A minimum congregation of 500,000 good folk all liquored up on discount cocktails and looking for action will respectfully converge. There may also be hookers and pickpockets, but you will need to be the latter to afford the former.
Action there should be plenty. The Las Vegas police have been stocking up on gas masks, tear gas and riot shields and the first Y2K casualty will either be the drunk who tries to climb the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel or the lunatic who breaches the security at the Bellagio lake.
For a short-odds bet pick the lake. CBS television is broadcasting the whole Vegas extravaganza and Connie Chung, host for the evening, will be perched on a tower above the artificial (what else?) lake which fronts the Bellagio Hotel. The gimmick is that every half hour or so the lake erupts orgasmically, courtesy of 1,000 hidden ejaculating fountains which stir when the PA blasts out the Messiah (hick original version with no clapped-out rock stars - tsk, tsk, very declasse.) The combination of Handel, Connie and the water is bound to be too much temptation for many drunks. Predict casualties and Connie vowing that's the last millennium she'll leave the family nest for.
Down in the old part of Las Vegas on Fremont Street $100 will get you into a millennium gig involving REO Speedwagon and, in the Hard Rock Hotel, a similar amount will get you in to see Santana. In a pinch there is Stevie Nicks at the House of Blues. You don't want to have to explain any of these things to people who ask in future years what you did for the millennium. What you need at such a deeply spiritual time as this is unapologetic camp. Lots of it.
Awake in the sunlit recesses of one of the 6,000 rooms in the Venetian Hotel. Sip martinis while moving through the shopping lobby in a gondola propelled by a man who will sing hits of the three tenors. Order a pink stretch limo driven by a woman in furs ($100 all in) and head up the Strip to the fake beach in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. For enough money they will allow you swim with their dolphins. Recently, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf were spotted in with the dolphins, but prices haven't been reduced accordingly.
Still wet, head to the Liberace Museum on Tropicana Avenue. Strange facts. Liberace's first name was Kieran and he once worked in the AIB in Strokestown. Of course, Liberace did to subtlety what Frank McNamara did to Handel and here to usher you into a new and inevitably dimmer millennium is the fruit of his luminosity.
At this point decisions need to be made. No need to plunge downmarket. Be careful. Rod Stewart at the Rio just aches for a bit more class. If you're going for blonde and peroxide, the underdog in the battle of the Vegas divas is Bette Midler, who is slapping on the greasepaint for an evening at the Mandalay Bay. You know the Divine Miss M is getting her ass whupped just by the ticket prices which cap out at $500 for a seat close enough to see her roots.
Big winner of course is Barbra Streisand, who is bagging a reputed $10 million per evening for two nights at the MGM Grand. You'll have to sell your kidney to get a ticket. They start at $500 and end at $2,500 and extra appearances by lesser mortals such as John Travolta are being threatened. Still, sell that kidney.
Head across the strip and swing into the Rio where the 50th-floor bar will be opening a 200-year-old bottle of Madeira once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Each glass will sell for $1,000, so avoid getting into a round with people you don't know.
If this is too rich for your blood, all that is special about Vegas can be squeezed into an evening at the Flamingo Hilton. Robert Goulet will be entertaining with his baritone voice from 8 p.m. to midnight and beyond. Dinner will be served and your $225 gets you a special "millennium surprise desert". All that and Goulet too. Where would you get better?