September 24, 1995

MAKING IT WORK 2 In numbers, there is prestige: The art of the entourage. INSIDE QUEENS 3 The final resting place of some of Jamaica's earliest settlers is neglected.

AS the Manhattan housing market sputters along, coughing, starting and stalling like an old tin lizzie, at least one segment seems to be moving steadily: large condominiums in prime buildings. Like a mantra, one real estate broker after another cites the apparent success of Millennium Tower, at 101 West 67th Street, where the top 12 stories of the 56-story rental/retail/condominium complex are for sale. The tower's 93 condominium apartments command prices that average $675 a square foot, and go as high as $890 a square foot -- over $1 million for a two-bedroom apartment. After a year of sales, the building is 90 percent sold, with the majority of the apartments sold in pairs, and combined for even bigger spaces.

Elizabeth Morales was in her living room when she heard the beating. She ran to the window and saw Paqualito, a leader of the Wild Cowboys, pistol-whipping her son Tito four floors below. She started to scream. She thought for sure Tito was going to die.

IS THE WORLD READY FOR A Musical comedy spoof of "Faust" in which the Lord is an out-of-touch corporate executive, the Devil an aging, sexually impotent Lothario, and the title character a grungy, Nintendo-obsessed student at Notre Dame? Randy Newman, the La Jolla Playhouse and Warner Brothers Records hope so. This month, Mr. Newman's first musical is making its debut in two forms: as an all-star record album and as a stage production at the playhouse, just north of San Diego. Pop music's sharpest wit, who is famous for writing dangerous songs in which rednecks blast liberals, tall people wish short people dead and bigots and fantasists of all shapes and sizes spill out their twisted dreams, will soon learn how well his brand of hip irony translates to the stage.

President Clinton, who won office talking intensely about policy details, now says that in his first two years he failed to talk enough about "the big picture" of these tempestuous times. As he gears up for his re-election campaign, he says that anxious Americans may feel "like they're lost in the fun house" and that it is his job to "get people out of their funk about it." Returning from a weeklong fund-raising and political trip around the nation late Friday, Mr. Clinton made it clear in a discursive 45-minute conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One that he was long since out of his own funk about last fall's Republican electoral victory. Now, he said, it is his responsibility to help lead people through the "tumult and upheaval" of the information-saturated 1990's.