Nancy Goodman's employer, a telecommunications company in Boston, offers benefits to help employees care for elderly parents. But she found them nearly useless during four years of caring for her mother, who has Parkinson's disease, and her father, who died of kidney failure last year.

"They say they want to do the right thing," Ms. Goodman, 58, said of her employer, which she would not identify for fear of losing her job. "But when it comes down to it, they're not seeing the true picture."

Ms. Goodman's lament is common, as corporate America scrambles to help the soaring number of baby boomers, mostly working women, whose obligation to frail, elderly parents results in absenteeism, workday distractions or stress-related health problems.

Companies are responding, but experts say they often use child care benefits as a model when they do not suit the different and unpredictable needs of the elderly. In addition, at a time of cutbacks in expensive health insurance and pensions, the most commonly offered benefits are those that cost a company little or nothing, like referral services and unpaid leaves.

Ms. Goodman, for instance, tried her company's referral service to supplement inadequate staffing when her parents lived at an assisted living center in Connecticut. It was "like going to the yellow pages," she said, since it did not relieve her of the time-consuming tasks of arranging for and supervising the services from afar. Ms. Goodman was also entitled to a year's leave of absence, a benefit a new mother might appreciate. But if she took a leave now, what happened if her mother lingered?

Employees with ailing parents, more than 20 million nationwide, cite other benefits that would allow them to focus more on their jobs, like geriatric case managers to guide them through the mysteries of Medicaid and Medicare, or backup care for emergencies like a last-minute business trip. Companies that offer this kind of hands-on assistance generally pay for at least part of the service.

But they are rare. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, which represents more than 200,000 human resource and other corporate officials, 39 percent of its members said in 2003 that elder care benefits were "too costly to be feasible." Only 1 percent of their companies subsidized any elder care benefits last year. And only 3 percent offered the emergency backup care — subsidized or otherwise — that experts say saves money by keeping workers at work.

"The perception among companies is that they can't afford elder care benefits," said Frank Scanlan, a spokesman for the society.

It is the largest companies that are the most generous, but even those often subscribe to the mistaken notion that the Mommy Track and the Daughter Track are the same, said Chris Gatti, president of the Work Options Group in Superior, Colo. Work Options, whose clients employ 400,000 people nationwide, provides in-home care for children and the elderly.

"These benefits fall under the same umbrella but are fundamentally different," Mr. Gatti said. "Child care programs are relatively straight-forward and easy to administer compared to elder care, which is a maze with lots of sharp corners and dark secluded places."

An individual supervisor can ease an employee's burden but still leave them vulnerable to management changes. Just 6 percent of employers have written policies about elder care, according to surveys by the Society for Human Resource Management, while 76 percent say they help employees on a case-by-case basis.

For Ms. Goodman, the one godsend since her father died and her mother moved into her Boston apartment has been permission to work at home. But that is likely to change with a new boss. "I'm walking on eggs right now," Ms. Goodman said.

The distinctions between child care and elder care have become apparent as the first of the 77 million baby boomers turn 60 and their parents live past 85, joining the fastest-growing segment of the population.

The most obvious is that children's schedules are predictable — a school holiday next Monday — while elderly parents' needs — a trip to the emergency room — are crisis-driven. Also, children are raised at home; an elderly parent often lives far away.

Guiding the decisions of an elderly parent also requires mastery of arcane legal, financial and medical matters.

"It's a new and very confusing skill set," said Maureen Corcoran, a vice president at Prudential Financial. "You don't just give people a list; you lead them there. Otherwise they spend hours upon hours figuring it out themselves."

For both employees and employers, the costs of elder care are enormous, according to studies by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, which is in the midst of updated analysis to reflect rapidly changing demographics.

The price tag for employers in 1997 ranged from $11.5 billion to $29 billion a year. Most expensive were the replacement of lost workers (at least $4.9 billion a year), workday interruptions ($3.7 billion) and absenteeism ($885 million). The employees lose salary, Social Security and pension benefits as a result of refusing promotions, switching to part-time work or retiring early.

Certain benefits mitigate these costs, and certain companies have learned there is a clear return on investment. At Prudential, for instance, subsidized emergency backup care prevents absenteeism and workday interruptions. Prudential's 21,000 employees, with one phone call to Work Options Group, can get help for parents by the next morning, for a co-payment of $4 an hour.

A $20-an-hour aide, on an eight-hour shift, would otherwise cost a Prudential employee $160, rather than $32. Yet the company says it will save $650,000 during a three-year contract with Work Options, Ms. Corcoran said, because "if our employees needs are taken care of, they can focus on work."

Diane Yankencheck, a Prudential employee in Newark, said the service kept her working during a crisis. Her father has a degenerative neurological disease and round-the-clock care. Her mother manages the household, or did until she broke her wrist. Now an aide from Work Options cooks, cleans and helps her bathe and dress.

Kent Burtis, a Verizon technician in Bayville, N.J., uses similar backup care for his father, who is paralyzed and incontinent. For a while, Mr. Burtis spent hours before work feeding, diapering and dressing him. Now an aide does the morning shift. "It's kept me from slitting my throat," Mr. Burtis said.

Elder care benefits most often seem a luxury at small companies and nonprofits. So even at AARP, dedicated to the needs of older Americans, Deborah Russell, the director of work force issues, was daunted by coordinating long-distance care for her mother and then missing weeks of work to be at her bedside when death neared.

Ms. Russell and her two sisters, grateful for AARP's excellent referral service, still spent "an inordinate amount of time on the telephone" during working hours, distracted and unproductive. As their mother's condition deteriorated, and the siblings rotated weeks in Florida, Ms. Russell used paid vacation time rather than the 12 weeks of unpaid leave guaranteed by the federal Family Medical Leave Act or AARP's more generous 16-week program, also unpaid.

Another benefit assumed to be useful is the flexible spending account, governed by the Internal Revenue Service and widely offered by companies. It permits the use of pretax dollars for dependent care, as long as the dependent meets the I.R.S. definition. Virtually all children do, but most aged parents do not. That means tax breaks for baby sitters but not companions for the elderly.

Experts disagree about whether women will push employers for help with their parents, as they did 30 years ago when child care was their pressing issue.

Ellen Galinsky, 63, president of the Family and Work Institute, led the charge for a day care center at Bank Street College when she was a researcher there in 1969. After "huge resistance," the center opened in 1974. Ms. Galinsky predicts a similar awakening to elder care issues because "demographics are destiny."

"Everyone I know is dealing with this," said Ms. Galinsky, who recently stayed at the bedside of her 98-year-old mother for the last two months of her life. The institute allows unlimited sick leave for such family emergencies. But even with that leeway, Ms. Galinsky said: "I was on another planet. It's like no other experience. I barely have words for how hard it is."

Todd Groves, founder of LTC Financial Partners in Seattle, who advises human resource managers on long term care, is not convinced that women like Ms. Galinsky will have the same galvanizing effect this time around, regardless of their numbers or their passion.

"Back then you still had a paternal business culture," Mr. Groves said. "Now people feel out on their own. They are fearful about their careers and don't feel they can ask for help."

HOW does Rome taste? An odd question perhaps, but the sort that comes to mind when I read travel accounts that define cities by sights and sounds, colors and tempo. What about the flavor, I wonder, meaning that more literally than figuratively.

Say Rome to me and my first thoughts are not of the swirling traffic around the marble wedding cake that is a monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, nor of the eaten-out stone melon that is the Colosseum, nor of the "Dolce Vita" set as immortalized by Fellini. Rather, I think first of the creamy foam, or spuma, that tops lightly sugared espresso at the always jammed Sant'Eustachio around the corner from the Pantheon, the coffee bar that I still consider this city's best.

Next, thoughts turn to Rome's own big, round globe artichokes available from late February to mid-April and most succulent simmered in olive oil with mint and parsley alla Romana or as carciofi alla giudea flattened and fried to resemble dried sunflowers and one of the many Jewish culinary inheritances from the city's Ghetto preparations that do almost as well by other artichoke varieties in other seasons.

Among Roman pastas, I remember favorites such as the guanciale-and-egg-decked carbonara, cacio e pepe with its cheese and pepper sting, the mellow tomato-and-onion-sauced amatriciana and the unusual, delectable pajata (pronounced pie-YAH-tah), pasta tossed with chopped intestines of newly born lambs that still hold remains of milk, resulting in a creamy, meaty tomato sauce. And gnocchi alla Romana, unlike others in Italy, are rounds of semolina baked under a golden glaze of butter and cheese, an elegant variation.

These lusty eaters enjoy their meats close to the bone, gnawing through roasted abbacchio lamb, suckling pig or braised oxtails. They dote on innards like tomato-simmered tripe and tantalizingly chewy coratella, a savory hash of mixed lamb organs. Suffusing all are the seasonings that define the Roman kitchen: the air-cured pig's jowl bacon called guanciale; salt-etched anchovies; garlic; fiery, red peperoncino chilies; black pepper; the pungent sheep's milk cheese pecorino; and rosemary, sage, parsley and minty mentuccia.

Trying for a genuine sense of place ever more elusive in these days of global homogenization I seek out restaurants featuring traditional dishes and am therefore as unlikely to order artichokes alla Romana in Kiev as to try chicken Kiev in Rome. But it is in markets and shops that I discover most about local food and manners, scouting regional products to look for on menus. Even more intriguing is the tense interaction of vendors and buyers bustling through daily routines, exhibiting manners and mores, trusting or not, bargaining or not, according to local custom.

For enticing displays of both food and folkways, there is no better market in Rome than the Campo dei Fiori right in the heart of the city. A veritable stage set of an antique marketplace, facing the 16th-century Palazzo Farnese and bordered by romantically faded buildings, cafes and restaurants, it comes to life every morning (except Sunday) until 1:30 p.m. The site of public executions during the Renaissance, it is now dedicated to far more felicitous pursuits.

Vegetable and fruit stalls are gardens of temptations, the heavenly artichokes still on long, leafy stems, and in season there is the particularly Roman puntarelle, a tangy salad green with long, jagged leaves, and the tiny sweet strawberries fragoline di Nemi that grow wild in the Castelli hills of Lazio, Rome's province. Usually there is broccolo Romano, a spring green cross between cauliflower and broccoli in pyramid-shaped heads formed of tiny shell-like nodules.

Last fall, I learned more about it in the home kitchen of Paola di Mauro, the culinary doyenne of a wine-producing restaurant family. She has informed the work of many Italian-American chefs including Mario Batali. Among other bracing Roman dishes, she prepared a lovely soup of that broccoli, based on a soffrito, a sauted, minced blend of guanciale, garlic and parsley, and served it with thread-thin vermicelli and grated pecorino.

Fresh mushrooms prevail at some stands in the Campo dei Fiori, while the ancient-looking dried versions are in stock at others. At least six sizes and shapes of zucchini, crimson tomatoes and peppers, garlands of garlic and giant bouquets of parsley and rosemary take center stage, while around the edges open shop stands offer flowers, meats, poultry, cheeses and breads, all noisily hawked by vendors to every passer-by. Each time I return to this market, I am most surprised by the aromas. As beautiful as New York's Greenmarkets are, rarely do apples, pears, grapes, strawberries and, I swear, artichokes exude the perfumes of those at this Roman treasure.

Similar charms abound in the less expensive, more rustic open market in Testaccio, an old district that is a place of sylvan parks and tree-shaded residential streets, but once the center for slaughterhouses and still known as the quinto quarto, or fifth quarter, referring to the innards and trimmings butchers kept for themselves. There one finds the piled-up enticements at Volpetti, a salumeria where, among the luxurious delicatessen, cheeses and candies, I first sampled corallina. It is Rome's prized fresh salami of spicy, lean pork and lard, once relegated to Easter but now available year round, thanks to refrigeration.

Romans claim two special breads the round rosetta with a top pattern suggesting an open rose, and the crusty, oblong pane di Genzano, which comes from a town in Lazio on the slopes of a volcanic crater.

At the sparkling bread bakery and casual food shop that is Compagnia del Pane, the delicious rosetta is baked, as is a house version of the Genzano. That and other breads are the base for many sandwiches that are eaten in or taken out, along with salads, a few hot dishes and pastries including one of the best cornetti (Italian for croissant) I had in the city sheer delight with the very hot and frothy cappuccino. About 10 or 15 minutes' walk from St. Peter's, this is just right for a restorative, inexpensive lunch.

Food is the lure, but obviously not the only reward. Typically, during a weeklong visit to Rome last fall, such quests took me and my husband, Richard Falcone, to parts of the city that we might not otherwise have visited, affording glimpses of different neighborhoods with brief stops for travel poster sights en route. Finally, because authentic Roman fare is served at all levels from the least expensive, casual trattorias like the beguiling, young-spirited Augusto in the winding walker's paradise that is Trastevere to the stylishly urbane and clubby Al Moro, around the corner from the Trevi fountain one can see a range of social and economic differences in service, dress and tone, as well as humble to haute renditions of traditional specialties.

Since my first visit to Rome in 1953, I have begun restaurant rounds at Al Moro, a smartly compact, sophisticated spot displaying portraits of celebrity habitus like Federico Fellini and other denizens of Cinecitt and the literary world. Despite the coolly detached management attitude that Italians describe as strafottente, and the attempt to relegate foreigners to a separate room unless they specifically ask not to be, I am instantly disarmed by the temptations presented at the entrance. In season they might include fresh porcini, the egg-shaped white ovoli funghi, white truffles from Alba, cheeses, corallina and always prosciutto with its earthy, burnished flavor.

Oddly, waiters are friendly and accommodating, suggesting the perfect artichokes alla Romana followed by thick bucatini strands in a refined amatriciana sauce (named for Amatrice, the Lazio town of origin) with bits of guanciale, onion and tomato. Or it might be spaghetti Al Moro we recognize it as carbonara which according to house legend was created here after World War II to please American G.I.'s who ordered spaghetti, bacon and eggs. More likely, it originated in the Apennines where lumbermen cooked this simple pasta over fires of wood charcoal carbona. Consistently, Moro has also had the best spaghetti with clam sauce in the city, made with the tiny, greenish veraci clams that Romans adore, and sometimes at lunch, a coarse, garlicky cotechino sausage nested on broccoli sauted with garlic and olive oil.

Main course winners on my last visit were the Roman roasted lamb, abbacchio with rosemary-accented potatoes, fork-tender oxtail in an airy tomato sauce, and butter-gilded sauted sweetbreads with mushrooms. Fortunately we had just enough room for what must be the world's most scrumptious bab, the rum-soaked yeast bun, here doused with satiny zabaglione.

If Al Moro reflects exclusivity, Il Matriciano practically announces inclusiveness. Close to the Vatican Museum, this is a series of modern, bright and convivial dining rooms, suggesting a big American steakhouse. About 20 to 30 percent lower in price than at Al Moro, most of the same specialties are served with dash and vigor. A house antipasto includes varieties of perfect prosciutto, cheese and tiny fried croquettes of artichokes, meatballs and the like. The Roman stracciatella soup, chicken broth frothed with beaten eggs, was light and lovely, and the thin, fresh egg noodles, tagliolini, were done alla gricia, sparely adorned only with guanciale and cheese, minus the eggs of carbonara. Amatriciana had meatier overtones than at Moro and was well matched with short thick tubes of rigatoni.

Fried lamb's brains with zucchini could not have been more crisp or golden, nor could the big, rustic chunks of oxtail have been improved upon. Although a chocolate pie proved disappointing, it was redeemed by the irresistible millefoglie, a flaky Napoleon layered with custardy whipped cream.

Still descending in price, if neither in charm nor deliciousness, is Matricianella, a homey trattoria with outdoor tables on a narrow cobblestoned shopping street between the Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina and Fontanella Borghese. As pleasant as sidewalk dining can be, serious feeders seem to favor the indoors. In or out, Matricianella provided the very best fried artichoke alla giudea of my visit, with just the right crackle to the outer leaves and the typical velvety softness of the heart. The same can be said for the blessedly hot carbonara with its eggs, cheese, nuggets of guanciale and needlings of black pepper. Rich tomato sauces enlivened silky tripe and, for another main course, Rome's beloved salted codfish, baccal.

About 20 years ago I happened into Osteria dell'Angelo, then a tiny slice of a place in a quiet residential district, not far from the Vatican Museum, only to return whenever I am in Rome. Owned by the congenial Angelo Croce, a retired celebrated racecar driver, it grew into a much larger space still decked with photographs of many sports stars who have visited. Brown-paper-topped tables and a handsome stone floor retain the feeling of the tiny adjacent original, and the strictly Roman fare is listed in local dialect. Thus, the second courses appear on the menu as seconni instead of secondi, and sweets are dorci, not dolci, and nun instead of non means no.

Just as authentic are the no-frills versions of spaghetti or penne alla pajata, the innards still fresh enough to have the milk that tastes like a piquant ricotta. All the Roman pastas are generously served, if not all of them are served every day, and it would be wise to check the schedule for minestra di broccoli e arzilla, a soup of Roman broccoli in a broth of skate (arzilla) and piquant hot peppers.

Tripe, baccal, rabbit roasted with white wine and olives, and an anchovy tart are among weekly headliners. I've never made it to dessert but welcome a few cute biscotti to accompany a final espresso. The house features the wines of the Lazio in carafes adequate for two at lunch at 3.50 euros (about $4.25 at $1.22 to the euro).

On mild Roman afternoon and evenings, the young and the casual gather at the trestle tables set on a tiny, antique piazzetta in Trastevere, there to feast on the savory casalinga dishes of Augusto. Inside two cozy, white rooms hung with movie memorabilia, neighbors gather to chat and feed children. Daily menus change, but you could do no better than to catch the well-soaked and snowy baccal with tomatoes, olive oil and garlic, the tender pollo alla Romana chunks of chicken braised with tomatoes and rosemary any of the typical pastas and a sprightly salad of the bittersweet puntarelle or greens like chicory (cicoria) sweated with garlic in sunny Lazio olive oil.

Dispensing satisfying if not brilliant local fare to the solid bourgeois residents and market men of Testaccio since 1911, Perilli is a modestly priced period piece with white tablecloths, wine bottles and antipasto on display and romantic murals of antique Roman scenes. With old-time formality, waiters present appetizers like steamed, meat-filled zucchini and then rigatoni in a tomato and oxtail meat sauce, and for main courses, pork roasted with potatoes or tender grilled sweetbreads. The little veal roll-ups, involtini, were dry and bland, but there is more than enough here to allow one to enjoy Perilli's old-time appeal.

Three other restaurants invariably mentioned when one asks for sources of Roman specialties are worth noting, because they proved to be a mixed bag.

The most frequently named is Checchino dal 1887, a 119-year old landmark in Testaccio. Offering a fully Roman menu, this tourist-conscious establishment makes it easy for the curious but cautious to try unknown fare. However, in at least four visits, including one in November, I have found dishes such as coratella, oxtails and involtini veal rolls, as well as classic Roman pastas, to be authentic, if less than sparklingly fresh or inspired. Thorough disasters included overcooked, mushy artichokes; gray, tough veal tongue in an oily green sauce; and all desserts including very tired cheeses. Service swings from helpful to borderline brusque toward non-Italians.

A spectacular artichoke dish is the only reason to visit Evangelista, an old-timer done up as a smartly modern bote. Most of the food we tried was lackluster, but the amazing house specialty, carciofi al mattone, makes this a must stop for aficionados of that thistle. Appearing as a bronze, crepelike disk, this riff on the artichoke alla giudea is made by frying the fully opened artichoke under a weight traditionally a brick, or mattone so that it emerges crackling crisp outside, yet meltingly tender within. That, plus a pasta like pappardelle with porcini and a glass of wine would make a satisfying lunch before a walk through the nearby Ghetto or along the Tiber.

Sora Lella is the sort of trattoria I would love to love, a charming old house on the Isola Tiberina, an island between Trastevere and the Ghetto that is also home to a centuries-old hospital and two churches. Despite the trattoria's views of the Tiber and its thoroughly Roman menu, every dish seemed stalely reheated and bland. Too bad, because it was the only place that featured the centuries-old recipe for cinghiale agrodolce wild boar in a bittersweet sauce. The pork substituted for the boar would have been acceptable had it not been gray and dry and the sauce achingly sweet.

As much as possible we tried to sample the wines of Lazio, and found they had come a long way since the days when they were noted only for the whites of Frascati and Montefiascone. We had a pretrip sampling in New York last fall during a Roman food and wine week held at several restaurants like San Domenico and Union Square Cafe where, as red wine devotees, we favored the clear and sprightly I Quattro Mori from Castel de Paolis 2001 and the richer, more complex Racemo rosso l'Olivella 2000.

At Il Matriciano we found a robustly fruity, garnet-colored shiraz from Casale del Giglio for about $26. That same producer also accounted for the best white we tried, a fresh but mellow-edged Satrico chardonnay from Frascati. The tasting in New York was organized by Ian D'Agata, director of the International Wine Academy of Roma, a stunning multistoried installation in a 19th-century town palace beside the Spanish Steps. There one can have tastings of Lazio wines, among others, giving good reason to raise the Italian toast "A cent'anni" "To a hundred years" most suitable in this ancient city.

Soup to Biscotti

The country-city code is 39-06.

MARKETS AND SHOPS

Campo dei Fiori, Piazza Campo dei Fiori. Morning market until 1:30 p.m. every day except Sunday.

Compagnia del Pane, Via Fabio Massimo, 87a-89, 324-1605.

Gastronomia Volpetti, Via Marmorata, 47, Testaccio, 574-2352; www.volpetti.com.

ESPRESSO AND WINE BARS

Il Palazzetto, International Wine Academy of Rome, Vicolo del Bottino, 8, 699-0878; online at www.wineacademyroma.com.

Sant'Eustachio, Piazza Sant'Eustachio, 82, 688-02048.

RESTAURANTS

Prices include lunch or dinner with tip (service) but without wine.

Osteria dell'Angelo, Via G. Bettolo, 24, 372-9470. Lunch for two, about 40 euros, or $49 at $1.22 to the euro.

Augusto, Piazza de Renzi, 15, Trastevere, 80-3798. Lunch for two, about 28 euros.

Checchino dal 1887, Via Monte Testaccio, 30, 574-3816. Dinner for two, 90 euros.

Evangelista, Via della Zoccolette, 11/A, 687-5810. Dinner, 90 euros.

Matricianella, Via del Leone 2-4, 687-2100. Lunch, 70 euros.

Il Matriciano, Via dei Gracchi, 55, 321-3040. Dinner, 80 euros.

Al Moro, Vicolo delle Bollette, 13, 678-3495. Dinner, 100 euros.

Perilli a Testaccio, Via Marmorata, 39, 574-2415. Lunch, 70 euros.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in south Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up.

In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off.

Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?"

Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 corpses, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.

There were the four Duleimi brothers, Khalid, Tarek, Taleb and Salaam, seized from their home in front of their wives. And Achmed Abdulsalam, last seen at a checkpoint in his freshly painted BMW and found dead under a bridge two days later. And Mushtak al-Nidawi, a law student nicknamed Titanic for his Leonardo DiCaprio good looks, whose body was returned to his family with his skull chopped in half.

What frightens Iraqis most about these gangland-style killings is the impunity. According to reports filed by family members and more than a dozen interviews, many men were taken in daylight, in public, with witnesses all around. Few cases, if any, have been investigated.

Part of the reason may be that most victims are Sunnis, and there is growing suspicion that they were killed by Shiite death squads backed by government forces in a cycle of sectarian revenge. This allegation has been circulating in Baghdad for months, and as more Sunnis turn up dead, more people are inclined to believe it.

"This is sectarian cleansing," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of Parliament, who has maintained a degree of neutrality between Shiites and Sunnis.

Mr. Othman said there were atrocities on each side. "But what is different is when Shiites get killed by suicide bombs, everyone comes together to fight the Sunni terrorists," he said. "When Shiites kill Sunnis, there is no response, because much of this killing is done by militias connected to the government."

The imbalance of killing, and the suspicion the government may be involved, is deepening the Shiite-Sunni divide, just as American officials are urging Sunni and Shiite leaders to form an inclusive government, hoping that such a show of unity will prevent a full-scale civil war.

The pressure is increasing on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, but few expect him to crack down, partly because he needs the support of the Shiite militias to stay in power.

Haidar al-Ibadi, Mr. Jaafari's spokesman, acknowledged that "some of the police forces have been infiltrated." But he said "outsiders," rather than Iraqis, were to blame.

Now many Sunnis, who used to be the most anti-American community in Iraq, are asking for American help.

"If the Americans leave, we are finished," said Hassan al-Azawi, whose brother was taken from the pet shop.

He thought for a moment more.

"We may be finished already."

The human rights office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a mostly Sunni group, has cataloged more than 540 cases of Sunni men and a few of Sunni women who were kidnapped and killed since Feb. 22, when a Shiite shrine in Samarra was destroyed, unleashing a wave of sectarian fury.

As the case of Mr. Azawi shows, some were easy targets.

Mr. Azawi was the youngest of five brothers. He was 27 and lived with his parents. He loved birds since he was a boy. Nightingales were his favorite. Then canaries, pigeons and doves.

During Saddam Hussein's reign, he was drafted into the army, but he deserted.

"He was crazy about birds," said a Shiite neighbor, Ibrahim Muhammad.

A few years ago, Mr. Azawi opened a small pet shop in Dawra, a rough-and-tumble, mostly Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Friends said that Mr. Azawi was not interested in politics or religion. He never went to the Sunni mosque, though his brothers did. He did not pay attention to news or watch television. This characteristic might have cost him his life.

On Feb. 22, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra was attacked at 7 a.m. But Mr. Azawi did not know what had happened until 4 p.m., his friends said. He was in his own little world, tending his birds, when a Shiite shopkeeper broke the news and told him to close. He stayed in his house for three days after that. His friends said he was terrified.

The day of the shrine attack, Shiite mobs began rampaging through Baghdad, burning Sunni mosques and slaughtering Sunni residents. Some Sunnis struck back and killed Shiites. The mayhem claimed hundreds of lives and exposed tensions that until then had been bubbling just beneath the surface.

Two Shiite militias, the Badr Organization, which once trained in Iran, and the Mahdi Army, the foot soldiers of a young, firebrand Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, were blamed for much of the bloodshed. Mr. Sadr's men often wear all-black uniforms, and many of the relatives of kidnapped people said men in black uniforms had taken them. Many people also said the men in black arrived with the police.

Around 9 on the night of the shrine bombing, a mob of black-clad men surrounded the Duleimi brothers, family members said.

The brothers lived in New Baghdad, a working-class neighborhood that is mostly Shiite. They were all gardeners and religious men who prayed five times a day. They had relatives in Falluja, in the heart of Sunni territory.

Where a family hails from in Iraq often reveals whether it is Sunni or Shiite. Nowadays, because of the sectarian friction, people are increasingly aware of the slight regional differences in accent, dress and name. Some first names, like Omar for Sunnis, or Haidar for Shiites, are clear giveaways. Others, like Khalid, are not. Tribal names can also be a sign.

A cousin of the Duleimi brothers, who identified himself as Khalaf, said the four men were taken at gunpoint from the small house they shared. The next day, their bodies turned up in a drainage ditch near Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army. All their fingers and toes had been sawed off.

That same day Mushtak al-Nidawi, 20, was kidnapped. According to an aunt, Aliah al-Bakr, he was chatting on his cellphone outside his home in Bayah when a squad of Mahdi militiamen marched up the street, shouting, "We're coming after you, Sunnis!"

Ms. Bakr said they snatched Mr. Nidawi while his mother stood at the door. His body surfaced on the streets seven days later, his skin a map of bruises, his handsome face burned by acid, his fingernails pulled out.

"I told his mother he was shot," Ms. Bakr said.

Sheik Kamal al-Araji, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, said "the Mahdi Army does not commit such crimes."

He also said the militiamen would soon change their uniforms so they would no longer be confused with thugs.

The question of who exactly is behind these collective assassinations has become a delicate political issue. So has the disparity in the killings.

Many Sunni politicians, including secular ones like Methal al-Alusi, accuse the Shiite-led government of backing a campaign to wipe out Sunnis. Many Shiite leaders, including Prime Minister Jaafari, blame "foreign terrorists," without being more specific.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, has expressed increasing alarm about militia violence, saying it is a bigger killer than car bombs, the former No. 1 security threat. But he has been careful to paint the problem in broad strokes, implying both sides are at fault.

There are a few Shiite victims, such as Mohammed Jabbar Hussein, who lived in a mostly Sunni area west of Baghdad. He disappeared on Feb. 26 and was found four days later, shot in the head.

But the militias under the greatest suspicion, and the ones with the strongest ties to the government, are Shiite. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American military, said Shiite militias have played a role in the killings and "the government of Iraq has to take action against the militias."

Then there is the question of prosecution. While countless Sunni insurgents have been arrested and tried on murder charges, very few Shiite militiamen have been apprehended.

Thamir al-Janabi, who is in charge of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigation department, declined to comment. So did several other Interior Ministry officials.

A new round of revenge attacks began March 12, around 6 p.m., when a string of car bombs exploded in Sadr City, killing nearly 50 civilians. Most security officials, Shiite and Sunni, blamed Sunni terrorists for the attack.

An hour and a half later, half a dozen gunmen arrived at Mr. Azawi's pet shop.

Wisam Saad Nawaf was playing pool across the street. He said a man wearing a ski mask arrived with the gunmen, who were not wearing masks, and that when they grabbed Mr. Azawi, the masked man nodded.

"He must have been an informant from the neighborhood," Mr. Nawaf explained.

Mr. Azawi got into a car. The gunmen closed the doors. The next morning Mr. Azawi's body was found at the sewage plant. Autopsy photos showed how badly he was abused. His skin was covered with purple welts. His legs and face had drill holes in them. Both shoulders had been broken.

His brother Hassan carries the autopsy photos with him, along with a pistol.

"I cannot live without vengeance," he said.

Hassan said there were a few Shiites at his brother's funeral, which he took as a grim speck of hope.

One week later, on March 20, the body of Mr. Abdulsalam, another Sunni, was found under a bridge. Mr. Abdulsalam, 21, worked with his father in a real estate office. His family said he was last seen in his BMW, stopped at a Mahdi Army checkpoint.

CARACAS, Venezuela — The actor Danny Glover has come. Harry Belafonte has also been here. So has the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, the prominent African-American writer Cornel West and Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales.

But most visitors are like Cameron Durnsford, a 24-year-old student from Australia who decided to study at a new government-financed university in Caracas. Mr. Durnsford was, admittedly, put off some by the cult of celebrity around President Hugo Chávez, which he says "seems a little bit Maoist." But Venezuela's revolution, he quickly added, was not to be missed.

"You've got a nation and a leader trying to prove an alternative to neo-liberalism and the policies that have ravaged Latin America for 20 years," he said. "That's why people are coming here. There's a sense that it's a moment in history."

Mr. Chávez is decidedly unpopular with the Bush administration, which he has branded a terrorist regime out to get him. That antagonism, coupled with Mr. Chávez's huge oil-generated outlays for social spending, is drawing a following from all over and turning Caracas into the new leftist mecca.

Evoking other cities transformed by revolutionary leaders, like Managua, Nicaragua, in 1979, or Havana 20 years before that, Caracas is attracting students and celebrities, academics and activists, grandmothers and 1970's-era hippies — a new generation of Sandalistas, as some call them.

Some, including many Americans, have come to stay. But others come for a new brand of revolutionary tourism organized by the government or by private groups.

Venezuela welcomes them all, but rolls out the red carpet for high-profile visitors like Mr. Belafonte, the 79-year-old singer and activist.

In January, he led an American delegation that included Mr. Glover, Mr. West and Dolores Huerta, the farm workers' advocate. They met with Mr. Chávez, toured a neighborhood and visited government-run programs promoted as a way to shift the country's oil wealth to the poor.

"We respect you, admire you, and we are expressing our full solidarity with the Venezuelan people and your revolution," Mr. Belafonte told Mr. Chávez during the president's weekly television program. He called President Bush, a constant target of Mr. Chávez's barbs, "the greatest terrorist in the world." Then he shouted, "Viva la revolución!"

Other recent visitors have included the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Ollanta Humala, a leading candidate in the election for president in Peru on April 9; the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, and the Argentine Nobel laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

For less well-known Americans, the new vacation trail no longer goes through the famed beaches of Margarita Island. Rather, groups like Global Exchange, based in San Francisco, take visitors who pay $1,300 on a two-week jaunt through the tumbledown barrios where support for Mr. Chávez is strongest.

The tours include visits to literacy classes, cooperatives and government-financed media outlets. Visitors chat with government ministers, see "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," a documentary favorable to Mr. Chávez, and meet with state oil company officials, who explain how petrodollars are funneled to social programs.

Among the speakers who have met with visitors is Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who is dedicated to unearthing what she claims is evidence of Washington's support for Venezuelan opposition groups, something the Bush administration has denied.

Americans like Pat Morris, 62, from Chestnut Hill, Mass., who never had a good impression of the Bush administration, are usually left speechless. "I thought that our current government was lying and greedy, but I had no idea of the long-term investment in destabilizing the country," she said, tears in her eyes after hearing Ms. Golinger speak.

Reva Batterman, 27, a graduate student, said she had wanted to come to Venezuela to show its people that "we're not all just Bush supporters or imperialists."

"I wish the people in the U.S. would try to understand Hugo Chávez," she said.

Not everyone is as enamored. Julio Borges, an opposition politician, said that while Mr. Chávez certainly had showered aid on the poor, he was also a strongman out to crush dissent.

Instead of lionizing him, Mr. Borges said, visitors should be aware of government ineptitude and growing abuses, like attacks on the press, charges the government denies.

"We always tell people who come with this romantic idea of Venezuela that despite the changes here, the people who carry out the transformation are the armed forces, that Venezuelan democracy is basically a militarized one," he said. "You have to have a profound concern about that. We want to take off the democratic veil the government uses."

Referring to American visitors, an American diplomat in Caracas, who could not speak on the record because of embassy rules, echoed the concerns, saying, "Come down here and get your consciousness raised, absolutely." He added, "My only request of them is that they try to get the other side of the story."

Emily Kurland, a 26-year-old social worker originally from Chicago, said that was exactly what she and the others here were getting.

"They're frustrated with Bush, frustrated with not being listened to, frustrated with Iraq," said Ms. Kurland, speaking in the Caracas house she shares with several foreigners. "They don't trust Fox News. They don't trust the mainstream news. They want to see with their own eyes what's happening here."

She came to Venezuela thinking she would stay just long enough to get a taste for Mr. Chávez's grandly titled "Bolivarian revolution." A year later, she said, she has no plans to leave anytime soon.

She has taught English in government-financed classes for the poor and talks about volunteering at a state-run microcredit bank for women. She spends most of her time, though, leading tours for Americans who flock here for a look at how Mr. Chávez is changing his country.

There is a precedent, of course: Fidel Castro's revolution, which in its early years placed emphasis on "people to people" contacts that enhanced support among vocal members of the American body politic, while neutralizing opponents.

Activists, intellectuals and leftists have gravitated to other governments, from Allende's Socialist Chile in the early 1970's to Sandinista-run Nicaragua in the 1980's, which also declared ambitions to overturn the old order in their countries.

"Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Chile at one point became the mecca for many leftists around the world," said Fernando Coronil, a University of Michigan professor and the author of "The Magical State," a book about Venezuela. "That has been capitalized upon by the governments of these places, in eliciting foreign support but also as a way of focusing on certain elements of foreign policy that have wide appeal, and not focusing on internal problems."

Some of the people who have visited Venezuela or have moved here acknowledge having some doubts. Chesa Boudin, 25, a New Yorker who has worked as a volunteer here, notes that some on the left glorify Mr. Chávez simply because he has positioned himself as the anti-Bush leader in Latin America.

But Mr. Boudin, one of the authors of a book favorable to Venezuela's government, said many people who had been dismayed by the advance of globalization saw the possibility of a better world in Venezuela.

"The fact that we have a country that's trying to create an alternative model is bold and ambitious and unique, and that's why people are wondering, 'Is this possible?' " said Mr. Boudin, whose parents, Katherine Boudin and David Gilbert, were members of the 1970's radical group the Weathermen. "The intellectual in me is curious."

Perhaps nothing so illustrates the intertwining of Mr. Chávez's rhetoric about serving the poor and the government's policies as the three-year-old Bolivarian University, which offers free tuition to its mostly poor student body.

Jerome Le Guinio, 23, from France, came a year ago and works in the university's administration. He lives in Catia, a poor neighborhood where support for Mr. Chávez is solid. "The idea is to find an alternative," he said, "and if you don't find it in Venezuela, you won't find it anywhere else."

PLANS for the afternoon were set. We would fire machine guns at a shooting range and then watch the N.F.L. playoffs in the sports book at Caesars Palace, with its crazed bettors screaming at banks of televisions as a fluke play lost them thousands of dollars.

That's one of the beautiful things about Las Vegas. What would be illegal or underground in most other American cities is ho-hum here, and most likely available at any hotel or mall. You don't need to see a show to see the show. The forests of neon, pirate battles and dancing fountains on the boulevards are free — to lure tourists through the doors where the house always has the edge. You can get a lot for your entertainment dollar just by going there and not gambling.

At least that's what I told myself. I didn't have many entertainment dollars, having drawn low card in the editorial deck: a budget of $250 for 24 hours. My wife turned up her nose at the trip, so I enlisted the help of my buddy Chris.

I knew that I could rely on him to be as resourceful with money as I am. Almost 20 years ago, when we shared a summer house and needed a car to go to the beach, we pooled our meager incomes and paid $1,500 for a 1972 orange Cutlass convertible. He still wheels it around the Hamptons.

I warned him that after the $142 for a room at the Flamingo and $34 for the rental car, there wouldn't be much left. Undeterred, he pointed out that neither of us would feel deprived if we couldn't afford a ticket for Cirque de Soleil or Celine Dion.

It didn't take long, though, to find out where we stood in the eyes of the city. The many levels of status in Las Vegas, based on spending power, are made visible for everyone. Landing at the airport early Friday afternoon, I counted more limo drivers than people waiting for luggage. The road into the city took us by dozens of private jets.

As I drove our Dodge Neon past the valet at the Flamingo to a distant parking garage, I sensed my friend's impatience with my cut-rate mentality. I reminded him that "parking is free at the casinos, and anything free on this trip is good."

Our room was nothing special. Decorated in beige, brown and gold, with two queen beds and a cramped bathroom, it had a view of the Flamingo gardens, where, even at 8 in the morning, the hotel blasted rock 'n' roll over loudspeakers in the trees. Management had done little to ameliorate our stay. As I reached for a bottle of Aquafina on the desk, Chris noted that it cost $3.50, adding sourly that to open it might "break the budget."

OUR spirits began to lift after lunch in the Victorian Room at the Barbary Coast casino next door. The food was no better than mediocre (an overdone French dip sandwich for $11.95), but in a rack at the cashier Chris found an advertising card for the Gun Store. Its folksy slogan — "Stop By and Shoot a Real Machine Gun on Our Air-Conditioned Indoor Ranges" — was irresistible.

The Liberace Museum wasn't on the itinerary, but when we passed it on East Tropicana Avenue, Chris said that a discerning friend had called it a must-see. I pulled into Liberace Plaza and with less than an hour until the 5 p.m. closing, was able to cut my admission to $7 from the usual $12.50.

The showpieces are 8 of his cars (including a Rolls-Royce covered in mirrors), 17 pianos and cases of florid stage costumes. Signed photographs on the walls from friends and admirers, everyone from the Air Force Thunderbird pilots to Pope John Paul II, signified his crossover appeal. Elton John and his red piano, now enshrined at Caesars Palace, seem no more than a knockoff of Liberace and his rhinestone-encrusted Baldwin grand.

The Gun Store had its own array of impressive hardware. Hanging on the wall of the crowded shop were revolvers, automatic pistols, an M-16 and an AK-47, and machine guns, including some vintage World War II weaponry. I wanted to try the Uzi; Chris preferred to be a Chicago gangster and asked for the Thompson M1A1.

Ammunition was the expensive factor. The price for 100 rounds ($75) would bust me, so I settled for 50 ($45). Among the paper targets we could shoot at — a rogue's gallery of Osama, Saddam and an anonymous man and woman with drawn guns our instructor called "my ex-wife and her attorney" — both of us opted for the more abstract and classic diagram of the body.

After donning safety glasses and ear protectors, we entered the range. Guns were loaded and handed over — they were much heavier than I expected — and after some elementary pointers, we blasted away. Even though I was warned to press lightly on the trigger, to fire in short bursts and adjust the aim, I quickly ran out of ammo. When the instructor reeled in my target for inspection, I saw that only a few of the bullets had made their way inside the body's outlines.

The rush was short-lived. I was effectively out of money with 18 hours and three of my accustomed meals to go. Back at Caesars Palace, it was standing room only at the sports book, killing that idea.

I called the art critic Dave Hickey, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and whose number a friend had given me, figuring he might know of gallery openings with free wine and snacks. He directed us downtown to a place that was featuring work by one of his former students, advising us to have a drink beforehand at the Peppermill Fireside Lounge.

This was a great call. This 24-hour coffee shop and bar, across from the Stardust, is a Space Age retreat from the visual hype of the Strip. Soothing pink and blue neon runs along the walls. You feel as if you're wearing sunglasses even if you're not. A bourbon ($7) quieted my stomach's dinner alarm.

Downtown Las Vegas, a largely rundown section of the city, is slowly emerging as a center for contemporary art galleries. When we met Mr. Hickey he stood smoking a cigarette outside one, Godt-Cleary Projects, whose owners, he said, had chosen the art at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. "It's the future of casino hotel design in Vegas," he predicted.

After half an hour of art gossip but with no food in sight, we left to check out his recommendation. With a tastefully subdued lobby — floors of creamy marble, calla lilies on tables, an Arturo Herrera painting and Richard Serra and Jasper Johns prints on the walls — THEhotel is Las Vegas aspiring to be Miami. Chris and I debated whether that was a good or a bad thing.

By 9 o'clock (11 back home in New York), we could no longer stave off hunger and headed for the $10.99 all-you-can-eat buffet at Circus Circus. The cavernous room was surprisingly cheerful — lots of booths packed with families who kept going back to fill their plates, as we did, with roast beef, fried shrimp, fish, lasagna and salads. We were too stuffed to try the pies and cakes.

I was counting on this meal to last me through the next morning. But waking up early, I found that it hadn't. We refueled at Denny's ($9).

(Not until Sunday morning did I discover Hash House a Go Go at 6800 West Sahara Boulevard. Known for its scrambled eggs and hashes with various ingredients, but in copious amounts, for $9 to $13, it's on my list of places to return to in Las Vegas.)

Mr. Hickey's wife, the curator Libby Lumpkin, had suggested that Chris and I drive into the desert to see Michael Heizer's earth art piece from 1969-70, "Double Negative" (doublenegative.tarasen.net). A work I was curious to see, it was famously hard to find. She had us meet her at the Las Vegas Art Museum, where she is the consulting executive director, to get directions.

For three years in the late 90's, Dr. Lumpkin oversaw Steve Wynn's art collection when he owned the Bellagio. Mr. Wynn sold the hotel, but it still has a gallery, currently showing Impressionist landscapes. But the $15 admission was beyond my means on this trip.

She warned us to take plenty of water. People had died, she claimed, after losing their way on Mormon Mesa, where "Double Negative" is carved. The Internet directions she'd handed us turned out to be more precise on paper than in the featureless landscape. After driving an hour and a half northeast to Overton, we followed a dirt road up the side of the mesa.

Rocks on top threatened to puncture the oil pan on the Neon, so I parked. We stumbled around, visoring our hands against the sun. Nothing in sight looked like art.

We flagged down two cars but no one had ever heard of the work. Discouraged and clueless, we were heading back to the city when we saw an S.U.V. The driver, an elderly man from Overton, had been to "Double Negative." He pronounced it a "tax dodge," but agreed to lead us there anyway.

One of Mr. Heizer's earliest earth works, it is art made by subtraction. Both modest and monumental, it consists of nothing more than two cuts, 30 feet wide and 50 feet deep, on opposite sides of a canyon, the two notches ("negative spaces") stretching across emptiness for 1,500 feet. About 240,000 tons of dirt and stone were removed to create the form.

Our guide hung around to hear our "analysis" of earth art, but we soon found ourselves digging a deeper hole as we outlined the history of art that existed in nature itself, outside of museums. Our defense of the piece was undermined a bit: owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, it is in need of repairs. The walls of one side are crumbling, and a smashed television lies at the bottom of one trench.

But we felt triumphant for having found it; and the only cost was gas.

Getting out of town without spending too much money was one of my goals for the trip, and would have been even without my financial strictures. Scientific number crunching drives the casino business, which tries to maximize dollar amounts from each guest. Morality and contrariness dictated that I try to beat the odds by being parsimonious.

As I waited for Chris to come down before we headed to breakfast and the airport — he was moving slowly after staying out until 3 in the morning at the blackjack tables — I played a dollar slot machine. In five minutes of idle levering, I won $10.

Seeing this as a good omen, I quit and headed to Java Coast for a large cup of coffee. It cost $2.25, steeper than at Starbuck's.

But feeling flush now, and no longer obliged to be a skinflint, I tucked $5 in the plastic tip cup and hoped that someone was watching.

Total spent: $267.50.

If You Go

WHERE TO STAY

Mandalay Bay Hotel, 3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-632-7777;

www.mandalaybay.com. Double rooms run $100 to $599.

Flamingo Las Vegas, 3555 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 888-308-8899;

www.flamingolv.com. Rooms can vary widely, $55 to $500.

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

Circus Circus, 2880 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-734-0410; www.circuscircus.com.

Hash House a Go Go, 6800 West Sahara Avenue; 702-804-4646.

Peppermill Fireside Lounge, 2985 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-735-4177.

THEhotel at Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 877-632-7000; www.thehotelatmandalaybay.com.

WHAT TO DO

The Auto Collections, Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino, 3535 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-794-3174; www.imperialpalace.com. Tickets are $6.95, but you can print a free pass at

www.autocollections.com.

Barry Manilow's "Music and Passion" is at the Las Vegas Hilton, 3000 Paradise Road; 800-222-5361; www.lvhilton.com. Tickets $95 to $225 (plus tax and service charge). Showtimes: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 9 p.m., Saturday, at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m.

The Gun Store, 2900 East Tropicana Avenue, 702-454-1110;

www.thegunstorelasvegas.com.

Las Vegas Gun Range and Firearms Center, 4610 Blue Diamond Road, 702-386-4867; www.lasvegasgunrange.net.

Godt-Cleary Projects, 1217 South Main Street, 702-452-2200;

www.godtcleary.com. Closed Sunday and Monday.

The Liberace Museum, 1775 East Tropicana Avenue; 702-798-5595; www.liberace.org. Admisson $12.50.

Shark Reef at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, 702-632-4555. Open daily from 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. Admission is $15.95, ages 4 to 12 and younger $9.95.

"Zumanity," New York-New York Hotel and Casino, 3790 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 866-606-7111;

www.zumanity.com. Tickets $65 to $125. This adult-themed 90-minute production is performed Friday through Tuesday at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m.

THERE he was, Mr. Barry Manilow, looking retro-glam and kinda-fab, splashed across a billboard on my way from the Las Vegas airport to the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Red satin jacket, plenty of hair, dreamy smile. He was playing the Hilton, and I had $1,000 to spend. But on Barry Manilow? I didn't think so.

I'm not cool, but cool people tell me the Mandalay Bay is the place to be in Vegas these days. When I arrived, the gleaming marble lobby was already filling with fancy people in for the weekend. Like the other big Vegas hotels, the Mandalay Bay is a destination in itself, a complete entertainment zone, and the briefest perusal told me just getting out of the place might be a challenge — it has 23 restaurants, 8 lounges, endless shops and an aquarium with 15 kinds of sharks.

My room, on the 20th floor and $283.35 with tax, was comfortable but not luxurious, most notable not for the shark-cam on the TV but for the view up the Strip: I could see the Luxor, the Excalibur, New York-New York, the Monte Carlo, the Tropicana, the MGM Grand, the Bellagio and, far in the distance, Caesars Palace. Each was a palace of branded entertainment in itself — as was the view: not only was I in Las Vegas, but I also got to see that I was in Las Vegas, über-casino of the world.

Indeed, there was betting to do. After breakfast in my room ($25.90), I wanted to check out the hotel's sports book, one of the largest betting parlors in town. Its huge wall of 31 screens reminded me of Mission Control. You could bet on anything: horses, N.B.A. and college basketball, pro hockey, whether the Kansas City Royals would win the 2006 World Series (odds: 200 to 1) and, of course, the N.F.L.

It was a playoff weekend, and though still morning, lines were forming behind the ticket counters. I hadn't followed the N.F.L. season closely and so had consulted my teen-age son, who had prepared a cheat sheet for me. "Pick Seattle to win but Washington to beat the 9.5-point spread," he explained.

The clerk at the counter seemed disgusted by my bets, perhaps because of the minuscule amount of money I'd wagered. Fifty bucks? I slunk away and soothed myself at a $1 blackjack machine.

But other entertainments soon beckoned — as they do everywhere in Vegas, where the limits of self-indulgence are officially measured by one's wallet. You can, for example, legally fire a machine gun in Las Vegas. What? This was a masculine thrill not to be missed!

Soon I was standing in the Las Vegas Gun Range and Firearms Center, where the display of firepower for rent included a Mac-10, an old "grease gun," and a semiautomatic AK-47. After signing a piece of paper that presumably certified that I was not mentally ill, I picked out an Uzi, forked over $53.88 for two clips, and followed the attendant into the range.

The gun was surprisingly light and had no kick. Total elapsed entertainment: 30 seconds, about how long it took to fire two clips. With tax, cabs to and fro, this little fantasy jaunt set me back about $100.

A QUICK lunch in the Mandalay Bay's buffet ($21.31), and it was time to pay my respects to the old downtown, the classic Vegas of Fremont Street, where it all began some 60 years ago. The famous winking neon cowboy atop the Pioneer, the one in all the old black-and-white clips of Vegas — was it still there?

I cabbed downtown, only to discover Fremont Street had become the Fremont Street Experience, a five-block roofed mall. The winking neon cowboy was there, as an exercise in nostalgia, or irony, or both. "Yep, they ruined it," agreed a silver-haired gentleman in the Golden Nugget when I asked him about the change.

Nearby winked the inducements of the Girls of Glitter Gulch, a strip club, and inside, over two rather expensive beers, one of the entertainers agreed that the downtown wasn't what it used to be. Then again, neither was she. But hey, neither am I.

With cabs, beer and a little slot-machine action at El Cortez, I had frittered away another $60. The money was going fast.

It was at the sunny corner of Fremont and Las Vegas Boulevard that I saw him again, flashing hugely by on the side of a municipal bus, retro-glam and kinda-fab. Barry, I muttered to myself, I know your new album is about to come out, that you're hot-hot-hot now, but give it a rest, O.K.?

I explored the Strip in all of its glory. At the Imperial Palace, I wandered past shiny antique cars and watched blackjack dealers impersonate Elvis and Dolly Parton. I felt so good that I blew another $50 playing Big 6 and blackjack.

The crowds along the Strip were dipping happily into one giant casino after another. The distances between them were deceivingly great. Man small; casinos big.

I paused outside the grandly enormous Bellagio. A sense of happy unreality pervaded. Vast sums were being bet and lost, yet all was good. Perhaps it was the warmth of the sun. Perhaps it was the Beatles' tune coming out of the Bellagio's lampposts.

Speaking of vast sums, how were my N.F.L. bets doing? I returned to the sports book at the Mandalay, where the room was packed, mostly with men. Seattle went ahead 20-10 with about two minutes to go, clinching the game and covering the spread. Packs of beery guys high-fived each other; others of us stared miserably at our tickets.

Evening approached; time to pick out a show. I consulted an entertainment guide. Here Celine Dion and Jay Leno, there Joan Rivers and something with Aussie male strippers called "Thunder Down Under." And then, in yet another ad, smiled Barry.

Who was he kidding? I'd never go see Barry Manilow, right? I could hear my wife howling with derision: "You what?"

And yet. He was everywhere — taunting me, teasing me, betting me I'd be entertained. Maybe I could win for once. And why not pay homage to the very idea of the Vegas nightclub act, a sacred line that stretched back to Elvis and Sinatra? How could I understand Vegas if I didn't go?

I succumbed. The ticket was $132.50, and with the long cab ride to the Las Vegas Hilton and a drink, I was out $169.50.

Clutching drink and free glow stick, I settled into a seat designed for plus-size Americans and attempted polite conversation with a 70-ish woman to my right, but she looked at me in sullen silence. Oh, I told myself, I guess she's kind of deaf.

Only later — after Barry had jacked the crowd into a frenzy — did I understand that I had witnessed her disbelief that a stranger might rob her of precious seconds within the Church of Barry. This same somewhat arthritic-looking woman became a fist-thrusting, torso-gyrating soul-groupie so transported by ecstasy that she nearly whacked the drink out of my hand.

Let me say this about Barry. The guy has pipes. He hit all the notes. He mixed his nostalgic, self-deprecating banter with the old hits perfectly. The "Copacabana" finale featured a snazzy runway dropping from above that allowed him to frolic right out over the audience, and as the gray-haired patrons went nuts, I realized not only had he completely atomized my skepticism, but also that the guy was going to do this again, tonight. There was a 10 o'clock show! The guy was pushing 60!

You win, Barry. You write the songs and make the whole world sing.

Next up, a faux sexual adventure. Sex is for sale seemingly everywhere in Las Vegas; there are the strip clubs, massage parlors and flyers for call girls. Taxi drivers sensing even the most modest predilection in their passengers will suggest this pleasantry or that. But for those who want their Sin City experience at a safe distance, the city offers its many fleshpot revues.

I chose "Zumanity," a Cirque du Soleil extravaganza whose M.C. was a vampy Mistress of Seduction who raunched through the show's visual feast of contortionists, near-naked dancers, two Asian girls swimming inside a glass pool and some pretty spectacular gymnastics acts. In a show that featured mountains of grade-A male flesh, the most macho moment was when a dwarf gymnast allowed himself to be flung around at frightening speeds high above the audience. With the cab to New York-New York, the show's home, plus a drink, "Zumanity" set me back $135.

Setting aside a bit of cash for tomorrow's breakfast, I was down to my last $75. What to do? The cool people had told me to hit the Mix Lounge, an open-air bar at the top of THEhotel, the Mandalay Bay's super-upscale facility that thrusts to the sky like a giant gold cigarette lighter. The sum of $25 and a fast elevator take you to the top, where indeed very coolish people were mixing with great intensity.

I wandered about inauthentically with a drink, enjoying the air, which in the still desert night had a kind of crystalline, binocular clarity. You'd need to be in an airplane to have a better view.

I'd like to report that my remaining pocket change held me under my $1,000 limit, but my nascent weakness for blackjack caught up with me the next morning in the airport, where, while waiting for my flight, I blew my last $20 on the slots.

Total cost: $1,000 and, somewhere, a smiling Barry Manilow.

If You Go

WHERE TO STAY

Mandalay Bay Hotel, 3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-632-7777;

www.mandalaybay.com. Double rooms run $100 to $599.

Flamingo Las Vegas, 3555 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 888-308-8899;

www.flamingolv.com. Rooms can vary widely, $55 to $500.

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

Circus Circus, 2880 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-734-0410; www.circuscircus.com.

Hash House a Go Go, 6800 West Sahara Avenue; 702-804-4646.

Peppermill Fireside Lounge, 2985 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-735-4177.

THEhotel at Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 877-632-7000; www.thehotelatmandalaybay.com.

WHAT TO DO

The Auto Collections, Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino, 3535 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 702-794-3174; www.imperialpalace.com. Tickets are $6.95, but you can print a free pass at

www.autocollections.com.

Barry Manilow's "Music and Passion" is at the Las Vegas Hilton, 3000 Paradise Road; 800-222-5361; www.lvhilton.com. Tickets $95 to $225 (plus tax and service charge). Showtimes: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 9 p.m., Saturday, at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m.

The Gun Store, 2900 East Tropicana Avenue, 702-454-1110;

www.thegunstorelasvegas.com.

Las Vegas Gun Range and Firearms Center, 4610 Blue Diamond Road, 702-386-4867; www.lasvegasgunrange.net.

Godt-Cleary Projects, 1217 South Main Street, 702-452-2200;

www.godtcleary.com. Closed Sunday and Monday.

The Liberace Museum, 1775 East Tropicana Avenue; 702-798-5595; www.liberace.org. Admisson $12.50.

Shark Reef at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, 702-632-4555. Open daily from 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. Admission is $15.95, ages 4 to 12 and younger $9.95.

"Zumanity," New York-New York Hotel and Casino, 3790 Las Vegas Boulevard South; 866-606-7111;

www.zumanity.com. Tickets $65 to $125. This adult-themed 90-minute production is performed Friday through Tuesday at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m.