I can't recommend to you, because I am in UK and obviously it's no good to you over the water.

But look at the websites and see what you get from them, things to look out for:

Cost of transfer to other registrar
Cost of transfer to other individual
Ease of changing name servers
Forwarding options (web,email...)

Some registrars, let you insert nameservers, and that's all. Some might offer all of the above, but for a charge. Some offer all of the above, with no extra charge.

I use 123-reg in the UK, and they offer the above at no extra cost, and they have several methods of forwarding, framed/masked as well as forwarding all domain name traffic to one page, or to the right pages. I obviously use the name servers though as I have proper/paid hosting.
I have seen many people ask how they can point their domain name to free space, they already registered the domain name, and then I find out they can't do this type of forwarding, so thhe answer is they can't.

Most hosts will insert your domain into their DNS tables, and you just provide name servers at registrar. Some hosts might ask that you transfer domain name to them!

Remember always that it can take upto 48hrs for DNS changes to take affect. Mostly less, 12-24, but 48 max.