From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: All 6 Sep 94 21:17:42 Subject: The Week in Death: August 19-25 UpdReq QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "Please don't bury me Down in that cold, cold ground I'm gonna have them cut me up and Pass me all around Throw my brain In a hurricane The blind can have my eyes The devil can have both of my ears If he don't mind the size." -- John Prine THE WEEK IN DEATH (August 19-August 25) Albert P. Blaustein (72), law professor. Blaustein was an expert on constitutions. He wrote Liberia's and Fiji's, and helped draft those of Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Peru, Romania, Nicaragua, and Russia, among others. Gen. Ramon Camps (67), politician. A mean, pinheaded brute, Camps was a member of the junta that controlled Argentina in the late '70s and early '80s. He bragged of being responsible for the deaths of over 5,000 of the disappeared in Argentina's ``dirty war'' against its (suspected) leftist citizens. Joyce Chen (76), restaurateur. TWIDman recalls that whilst a schooltyke, many of our classmates had a fondness for eating paste and Elmer's glue. Now that we're a man, we still find that bewildering, but it does explain why that pseudo-sino glop sooey that most Americans think is chinese food is so popular. Blessed are we gourmands, then, for having benefitted from Chen's success in establishing authentic Mandarin Chinese cooking here in this country. Hugh Culverhouse (75), businessman. The penny-pinching owner of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, one of the most consistently bad teams in pro sports. Looking at how Culverhouse operated, and looking at how the Bucs performed, one can't help but suspect that winning and losing in pro sports is irrelevent when it comes to the bottom line. Then again, maybe that's just capacitive-coupling bitterness about baseball owners forcing a strike... Joan Harrison (83), scriptwriter, producer. Wrote or co-wrote several Hitchcock films, including "Rebecca," "Suspicion," and "Shadow of a Doubt." Linus Pauling (93), scientist. A biography of Pauling would provide as good a snapshot of the 20th century as one could hope to get out of a single life's story -- in the 1930s the man helped decrypt the nature of the atom, in the 40s got sucked into the Communist witch hunts, helped kick off the 50s anti-nuclear and 60s anti-war movements, and in the 70s and 80s got involved in the health craze. In 1954, he won the Nobel in Chemistry for his research into chemical bonds, which reflected discoveries in quantum physics. In the 40s, he began trying to determine the nature of DNA, and though he took a wrong turn in his research, his efforts (and his self-promoting showmanship) spurred James Watson and Francis Crick to make their discoveries. Meanwhile, Pauling was demonstrating against nuclear testing, nucear proliferation, and war in general, for which Sen. Joseph McCarthy accused him of being a Communist. Interestingly, the Soviets castigated Pauling for his chemistry theories, which they deemed ``hostile to the Marxist view.'' Over 10 years later, he won a Nobel Peace Prize for his activism. In the 1970s, Pauling proposed massive doses of vitamin C as a preventative measure against colds, and later said such treatment would protect against cancer. Neither theory proved valid. Francis Simmons, Sr. (94), coach. One of the greatest lacrosse coaches of all time, from 1932 to 1970 Simmons led Syracuse to a 251-130-1 record, including several championships. His son has coached the team ever since. The elder Simmons also brought the Orange a football title, in 1959, with Jim Brown running the ball. Rikki Streicher (68), gay rights activist. A founder of the Federation of Gay Games, and proprietor of two bars in San Francisco, Maud's and Amanda's. Tyk (21), circus performer. Just before a show in Honolulu, Tyk, a female African elephant, kicked one of her trainers into the ring. A second trainer tried to come to the aid of the first, but was killed by the rampaging animal. Tyk broke out of the compound, was cornered, and shot. Danitra Vance (35), entertainer. In 1985, she became the first black woman to join the regular cast of "Saturday Night Live," a dubious distinction given the dreadful inability of that show's writers to script comedy for women. She also starred in several Broadway shows. Breast cancer. From the Old Rock Stars Never Die, They Just Deliquesce Into Memorabilia Department (ORSNDTJDIMD): Although we spotted a t-shirt with the NYTimes front-page obit of Kurt Cobain just two days after the rocker died, the marketing objectification of Cobain has now begun in earnest. A Seattle company called PostMortem Art is offering copies of Cobain's death certificate and medical report, while Grunge Enterprises, Vancouver, Wash., hawks Cobain's ``actual handwritten'' suicide note on a t-shirt. Some Virginia operation called I.S.S. is advertising bumper stickers that proclaim ``A Star Has Died. A Legend Is Born,'' an epitaph that should get an award for self-abnegating banality. All ads culled from the back pages of "Rolling Stone." Meanwhile, the flame-war about whether Cobain was a spokesman for his generation or not continues to burn bright and hot. It's basically a battle for control of the soul of a generation -- or of its image, at least. TWIDman, with his known dislike for strife (``Can't we all just get along?''), has decided it's time to settle the matter, so listen up. The counterculture gets to define the mood of the times while the times are happening -- those crazy kids do have a knack for getting press, don't they? Decades later, historians get to define the character of a generation, and historians go for the mainstream like chickens on a june bug. Beatniks, for example, were cool for a spell, but their square peers bumbled into a military-industrial trap that got us into a stupid and ugly war that will define their generation. Love Children were momentarily groovy, but their contemporaries' greedy manipulation of Wall Street markets, savings & loans, and other branches of the global economy will define their generation. Slackers/Generation X'ers/whatevers are having their day, and many of them have adopted Cobain as a spokesman. So it's a done deal: Cobain is a (as opposed to ``the'') spokesman for his generation. On the other hand, you don't have to get used to that if you don't want to, because there's a bunch of twentysomethings certain to do something much more stupid, counterproductive, and/or hideous than complain that life sucks that will stamp their generation for the ages. Meanwhile, pity us 32- and 33-year-olds? Too young to be Baby Boomers, too old to be slackers, not numerous enough to impose our values on anyone, and with few cultural signposts left to claim for our own. Elvis? "Ozzy & Harriet"? The Beatles? Nixon? Self-absorbed Boomers guard them like religious artifacts. Elvis? "The Partidge Family"? Metallica? Reagan? Rapacious Gen X'ers snarfed 'em up like weevils in a cotton field. Oh, "Newsweek!" Oh, "Time!" Why hast thou forsaken us?! So before it's too late, on behalf of our contempos -- truly, a Lost Generation -- TWIDman's calling dibs on Olivia-Newton John, "Marcus Welby, M.D.," The Captain and Tenille, and Ford. Anybody got a ``Whip Inflation Now'' button we can wear? (The Week in Death is by Brian Santo, [B.SANTO@genie.geis.com].) 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718