January 2, 1994

I AM starting the new year with a telephone story so banal that it qualifies as one of those everyday urban droplets that eventually gathers into the steady drips that leave grooves in our souls. Sometime on Friday, Dec. 10, I called (212) 890-2350, the NYNEX Order Center, and ordered new telephone service from Mrs. W. Johnson, whose warm voice vibrated No-o-o Problem. I never bothered to keep a coper's log, she was so positive. She promised that sometime between 1 and 5 P.M. on Monday, Dec. 20, a technician would arrive and install my new phone. Mrs. W. Johnson even gave me my new telephone number, although she did suggest that I shouldn't give it out quite yet. If there was any problem -- and she chuckled at that improbability -- I should just call back and ask for her.

An old six-story building on the Upper East Side is getting a facelift, thanks to MaxMara, an upscale Italian women's clothing company. MaxMara, which also owns stores in San Francisco and Palm Beach, Fla., is renovating the facade of the 10,000-square-foot building at 813 Madison Avenue, on the northeast corner of 68th Street. Most notable will be the new limestone shop-front on the first two floors.

HEATING costs will rise this month for the 25 percent of Long Islanders who heat their houses with gas. But experts expect lower costs for people using oil. Last month the Long Island Lighting Company was given a 4.7 percent rate increase for gas effective Jan. 1. The rates will rise 3.8 percent on Jan. 1, 1995, and 2.8 percent on Jan. 1, 1996.

Marin Karmitz, a leading French movie producer, has a simple theory about how the United States, through Hollywood, wants to fashion the way the world thinks. "Of course the U.S. movie industry is a big business," he says, "but behind the industrial aspect, there is also an ideological one. Sound and pictures have always been used for propaganda, and the real battle at the moment is over who is going to be allowed to control the world's images, and so sell a certain life style, a certain culture, certain products and certain ideas.

STATE lawmakers face some hard decisions when they reconvene on Jan. 10. Foremost among them is whether to override Gov. Jim Florio's veto of a plan to raise gasoline and home heating oil taxes to help gas station owners upgrade or replace aging underground storage tanks that could cause pollution. None of the options available to the Assembly and the Senate are politically safe. In addition to the potential for angering the state's long-suffering taxpayers by overturning the veto of the 1.65-cents-a-gallon fuel tax, lawmakers run the risk of causing early friction with Governor-elect Christine Todd Whitman and her often-repeated stand against raising any taxes. On the other hand, she has voiced support for the gasoline and home heating oil taxes.