The Best Las Vegas Shows

Splashiest opening: The beginning of O gets things off to an astonishing start when a regal curtain is whooshed away into the backstage recesses as though sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner. But when Lady Gaga is in town, nothing quite tops her descent from on high as she hangs from a wire to play keytar for the "Just Dance" show-opener of Enigma.

Best finale: The climactic scene of LOVE just had to be "A Day in the Life." Cirque du Soleil rises to the challenge of the famous orchestral buildup with a symbolic, moving scene featuring an angelic, floating mother figure. (Remember that both John Lennon and Paul McCartney's mothers died young.)

Best band in town: The blue baldies in the Blue Man Group never talk, so it's even more important that their silent antics be backed by a rocking sound track. The seven-piece band keeps the sound percussive and otherworldly.

Most words per minute: Penn & Teller discuss everything from "ocular hygiene" to "petroleum by-products" (meaning Solo cups), conveniently overlooking the fact that most Vegas shows push spectacle over words. What's even more amazing? Only one of them (Penn) talks.

Most deliberately provocative: Is a show offensive if everyone laughs not just at the jokes but at the very act of trying so hard to be offensive? It's the shared in-joke of the deliberately low-rent Absinthe, carried to even more juvenile extremes in the newer sister-show Opium.

Best guilty pleasure: The title says it all: Zombie Burlesque. The unlikely fusion of two hot trends is a smartly silly twist on Cabaret. As an opening video explains, a truce between zombies and humankind results in the undead entertaining us with original songs and a live band in a place called Club Z.