"Sarah Palin," the contestant answered onstage.

The crowd -- hundreds of men and women in swim gear -- hooted at her answer, from the lip of the Hard Rock pool.

When the contest ended, that contestant, Roxanne Martinez, 29, told me she was taken by surprise by Lange's interest in her mind.

"That whole brain thing ended up all: These questions! I was, like, 'What did I get myself into?'" Martinez told me.

Lange also asked her and another contestant: When did America declare independence? Who freed the slaves? What year did 9/11 happen? A contestant answered, "September."

"How about a hand for this dumb bitch?" Lange, the comedian from Howard Stern's radio show, joked.

Making fun of these ladies seemed like destiny during the talent portion, when a contestant described her best skill: "I just like to rub my boobs."

Lange's bikini blowout on Saturday afternoon, followed by his Saturday night standup at the Hard Rock, was as close to Howard Stern as Las Vegas is likely to get for a while.

Some years ago, Stern came to Vegas several times to broadcast a week's worth of immensely popular national shows from the raucous Hard Rock.

But after redefining radio and parts of pop culture, Stern seems content to perform only in his Sirius satellite studio.

Lange was a welcome stand-in. In his eighth year on the Stern show, he's reinvigorated personal drama in the cast, talking openly about his recent recovery from heroin and coke, while cast members have worried he'll relapse and die.

And so, for Lange, Vegas is where demons beckon. In a chapter of his best-selling autobiographical book "Too Fat To Fish," Lange tells of coming to Vegas with friends in 1996, losing his life savings of $20,000 while gambling, doing eight balls alone in his room, punching a hotel security guy, and lashing out at people while snorting coke in airport and airplane bathrooms.

Lange told interviewer Terry Gross in November why he loved heroin. "I'm bored to death with my life," Lange said. "I have the greatest job in the world, but I'm just so bored."

Before Saturday's bikini contest started, Lange sat in shorts on a lounger in a cabana by the pool, chewing lunch and watching sports on a flat-screen TV.

He wasn't having any trouble visiting Vegas without heroin, he told me:

"I like sittin' around and laughing more than anything, so I got a lot of funny people around me, and it's not that bad. I'm having fun. Being clean is being coherent, so that's not bad. I'm eatin' a lot and smokin' a lot, but you can't quit everything."

He told me the Vegas episode in "Too Fat To Fish" is only "one of a billion flashbacks" he was having in Vegas.

"That's not even in the Top 5 horrible things" he ever did in Vegas, he said.

In a second book, he will revisit Vegas memories, hinting to me about only one:

"It involves gettin' robbed by a hooker," he said, and "me having to see a doctor because of something after being with a hooker. That's all you're gettin' for now."

The last time he was in Vegas was a few months ago when, as he said on the Stern show, he lost money in a charity poker tournament but got free sex from a prostitute.

"It was free because I had known her a while," Lange told me, as he's said on "Stern."

Lange thanked me for being a lifetime subscriber to Sirius ("We appreciate your business") then walked onstage and got into performance mode for the bikini show.

"Does anyone have any heroin? Can't do heroin -- wah!"

The crowd chanted, "Artie! Artie!" He was quick with the put downs. He ejected an older woman from the contest for being as ancient as "Zsa Zsa" Gabor:

"I love that you're 45 years old with two kids, but I don't think that was the point of the contest. Are your kids hot?"

He tossed another contestant, Vegas stripper Corissa Garberich, after joking, "Your ass smells like Dennis Rodman's" been there.

"He was so wrong about Dennis Rodman," Garberich told me afterward, earnest and dejected. "I used to dance at Scores. He gave me money to sit for him. ... Dennis doesn't like girls to shake their asses."

She still hopes to meet Stern and persuade him to fund new fake boobs, bigger than "D" cups. She also hopes to stop stripping soon, so she can focus on making a rap CD.

A few hours later, Lange's concert started at the The Joint at the Hard Rock, where opening comic Joe Madenis recapped the bikini contest.

"Were you at the pool today" for the "Who Was The Underachiever of the World Contest?" he joked.

Lange slowly walked on stage and joked that he spent the day going down memory lane in Vegas:

"I went to my old coke dealer's kid's bar mitzvah. He's a good kid. He rolls a good joint."

He cussed out a guy and had him thrown out after the guy kept saying something to Lange.

"Just kill him," Artie joked. The crowd roared.

Lange said he was drinking water and still off heroin. The crowd booed.

"You know you're a true Howard Stern fan when you say you stopped doing drugs and 2,000 people boo."

His comic timing, confidence, storytelling and delivery were consummate. But he lost momentum since much of his material was more like event material, getting a few easy applause lines from merely mentioning Stern cast names, like BeatleJuice and J.D., or telling premises instead of fully fleshed-out jokes.

But there were funny, fleshed-out bits about Alcoholics Anonymous, Mike Tyson and A-Rod, and he did a great hand puppet bit to warn everyone not to trust hookers with their coke money.

When Farrah Fawcett died the other day, he said (crediting friends for this joke), God asked her to make a wish. She asked God to protect all the world's children. So God killed Michael Jackson.

Then came face-to-face roughness. He asked the "Miss Howard TV" contestant to saunter onstage, the woman who thought Palin was vice president. She said she now knew it was Joe Biden.

"I went home and got on the Internet to see if I was right. I thought I was right," Martinez said.

"If you could do one thing to help all the children in the world, what would it be?" Lange asked.

"I would make sure they have all the toys they wanted," she said.

"So while a kid in Kenya was starving to death, he could dress Malibu Barbie," Lange cracked.

Being the butt of his jokes seemed to be wearing down Martinez's fallen smile. She looked more and more like a damsel roped to train tracks.

"Are you a drug mule?" Lange asked.

"No," Martinez said.

She tried to keep her composure.

About 100 fans started walking out, probably just sensing the end of the show and getting a head start on the exit, but a few told me they were overdosed on Lange's harsh style. Some fans said they thought opening comic Madenis was funnier.

But they all got what they came for, not just to make sure Lange didn't die in their absence, but to see him survive and thrive in a city that's a bastion to Stern fans and Lange's demons.

Had he been too mean on stage? A contestant in the bikini contest had accused him of being merely angry.

"I'm not angry. I'm funny," Lange responded.

Obviously, he could be both. But if he isn't angry, if he isn't full of rage at women and athletes and boredom, if it's all an act, then he's doing a stellar job of portraying that character trait, and he needs to be cast in another Tom Cruise movie right away.

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 702-383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.