May 28, 2005

If you soak up the Jackson Pollocks at the Museum of Modern Art while listening to the museum's official rented $5 audio guide, you will hear informative but slightly dry quotations from the artist and commentary from a renowned curator. (''The grand scale and apparently reckless approach seem wholly American.'') But the other day, a college student, Malena Negrao, stood in front of Pollock's ''Echo Number 25,'' and her audio guide featured something a little more lively. ''Now, let's talk about this painting sexually,'' a man's deep voice said. ''What do you see in this painting?''

A monthlong conference at the United Nations to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended Friday in failure, with its chairman declaring that the disagreements between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear states ran so deep that ''very little has been accomplished.'' The conference, which takes place every five years, had once been seen as a chance to deal with gaping loopholes in the treaty that have allowed a resurgence in the spread of nuclear weapons.

One of the busiest intersections in Harlem erupted in gunfire last evening as a suspected robber -- an ex-convict on lifetime parole -- engaged the police in a running gun battle. When it was over, more than 20 shots had been fired, the gunman was dead and two bystanders were wounded. ''It was like a Wild West shootout,'' said Alisha Robinson, 32, a pharmacist who was in a cab nearby when the first shots rang out about 6:30 p.m. at 126th Street and Lenox Avenue.

For everything that Pedro Martínez has done for the Mets made them popular, made them credible and made them cool -- he has never frozen them with one pitch the way he did Friday night. Leading by a run with one out and a runner on third base in the seventh inning, Martínez unleashed a curveball that Mike Piazza could not catch and Juan Encarnacion could not follow. It started around Encarnacion's eyes, finished at his kneecaps and fooled about everyone at Dolphins Stadium. The pitch helped seal Martínez's first shutout with the Mets and defined his 1-0 victory over the Florida Marlins.

THERE were those intensely squinted Clint Eastwood eyes and the way his mythic left arm whipped the ball around the corner of his ominous 6-foot-10-inch facade with the reckless speed of a getaway car. Randy Johnson once created panic and fear and sent hitters scattering, all before his pitches darted toward the plate. But what happens to ferocity without velocity? Can an intimidating presence be reduced to shtick by a speed gun?