Cosmo, pool parties drawing Vegas hotties

Sauntering through a nightclub that will go unnamed, you see only one goddess ravishing enough to be an elite model in Iowa -- a stunner in a Vegas club.

That is not a good showing for a club on the Strip. Afterward, you shuffle out of the club and through the hotel, observing happy people who surely must be kind and generous but nonetheless are not cursed by model good looks.

By the time you reach your car, you feel better looking than the last 3,000 people you've seen, an experience you previously believed only possible at an Eminem concert.

Several clubs on the Strip suffer this trickle of top-tier pretty people this calendar year, as The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has stolen them by the litter.

It's almost as if every highly attractive clubber in town has relocated to the Cosmo to await the zombie apocalypse, cocktail glass in hand, creating at other hotels a safe democracy of the blissfully average.

WHERE IT'S WET

The glaring exceptions to the Black Hole of Good Looks at the Cosmo are the day clubs/corporate pool parties at hotels across the Strip.

The reason is simply light: To appear as a shirtless male or as a bikini wearer splashed under harsh desert sunshine, you must be in good shape, say, an Adonis or an Aphrodite. At least, you must think you're Adonis or Aphrodite, and carry a credit card if you're male.

A typical Sunday at the Encore Beach Club: Flowing red curtains drape over $5,000 to $10,000 bungalows; they sell out as a matter of course, because of their being swathed in sumptuous beauties and moneyed interests.

Standing around the pool or in it, men are fatless specimens of gym nation. Women dance to DJ Afrojack. Quite a few resurrect a trend from the early '00s: butt cleavage. Or maybe their bikini bottoms are sagging.

Compared to a few years ago, hair in brown or black is now law. This is a brunette recession. Bottle-blond dye costs money. Also, for the past few years, an infusion of partyers of Hispanic and Asian heritages has put blondes in the corner.

Another trend still in force: Some women wear bikinis resembling form-fitting lingerie -- a little cloth here, a flirt of lace there. It's sexy.

Tattoos aren't as prevalent as a Strip-/tattoo-hater would suspect. But there is a woman who advertises in script on her lower back, above her butt cleavage: "Playful."

On the shoulders of a weightlifter man, an inky dragon threatens all comers with its talons; a tall Schwarzenegger chap defines himself with "Native Pride" on one arm; another large man's chest tattoo is confusing, appearing to spell "Salad Amy Diamond" if you catch only a glance, but that can't be correct; and a woman has a permanent 10 Commandments on her back -- but it's her own 10 Commandments, not in the biblical sense.

Taking it all in, a male tourist in the pool, overwhelmed by his inaugural trip to Las Vegas and to a Vegas pool party, recalls he mistakenly packed a book, but he chose not to read it, nor would he have found a reading cove.

"This is the first time I've ever felt inappropriate bringing a book to the pool," he says to friends.

KARDASHIAN PRIMING THE PUMP

These party people now have one more nightclub choice in a crowded market. At Planet Hollywood, Gallery has taken the place of Prive, which shut amid scandal concerning word of topless and lewd behavior. On the Vegas Strip, can you imagine?

The space inside much resembles Prive, with a few modifications.

On a capacity-crowd Friday night, Kourtney Kardashian walks a red carpet for Gallery's grand opening, with boyfriend Scott Disick, who poses emotionless and upright, all "American Gothic," no pitchfork.

She's very pretty, and incredibly nice and generous with reporters. Truly. But since her every sentence is documented on TV and by People magazine, there's not much left to quiz of her.

As fortune dictates, you have a question always in reserve for celebrities: When was the last time you cut your own nails or pumped your own gas?

Kourtney is unfazed and not insulted. She files her own nails, she answers, but her nails get done weekly.

"I go to my mom's house and she has her nail person come over, and then they hang out with Mason," her child.

"I actually pumped my gas two days ago," she says. "It's fun to do my own stuff. But if I'm in a rush, I'm definitely not afraid to ask my assistant to pump my gas before I run out."

She also shops at the market without makeup.

"I throw on the biggest glasses I can find," to conceal identity, she says.

There is, when she thinks about it, one great, little benefit of wealth.

"I don't make my own bed really, and I like that. I'm not afraid to leave it unmade, if no one's there to make it," she says. "That's a good one."

There's your week in glamour.

Doug Elfman's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Contact him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.