Uncanny

Glen Seator, 46, a highly regarded sculptor who became known in the 1990s for work that replicated architectural situations with uncanny verisimilitude, died Dec. 21 at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was working on the chimney of his house when he fell to his death, said his sister, Patricia Seator. Mr. Seator created works that blended realism and surrealism, and commented on social issues. In 1999, he transformed the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, Calif., into a check-cashing store, painstakingly replicating the street facade and interior of a business in a Latino neighborhood on Sunset Boulevard.

NEW YORK CITY - Jason Maltby settles into a padded seat in the upper reaches of the balcony at Carnegie Hall, his right thumb resting in the crease of his left palm. He is peering steeply below to see the Soggy Bottom Boys sing gospel music from the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Only this time, their soulful songs are performed at the behest of CBS, and their lyrics tweak the network's competitors. It is late May, the kickoff to CBS' entry in the "upfronts" - essentially a weeklong, floating trade convention for the TV industry, in which executives from each network try to promote the shows they will be putting on the air this fall.

The Way We Live Now is a big, fat, Masterpiece Theatre, English melodrama full of ladies and lords, young men on the make and old ones in decline, weekends in the country, romantic misunderstandings and so much social class stratification and confusion that it almost makes you dizzy. The six-hour, four-part miniseries starring David Suchet is also highly addictive. And, while it's based on the 1875 novel by Anthony Trollope and set in Victorian England, The Way We Live Now could not be more of the moment and American.

Part I An American hero -- and antihero Beyond anything else, Marlon Brando is the towering original who came out of the Midwest 58 years ago and electrified Broadway and then Hollywood with the visceral excitement and veracity of his acting. He exploded propriety and expressed intimate yearnings with unprecedented nakedness and power, only to have studio executives try to cut him down to conventional stardom. Even now, he seesaws between living legend and butt of late-night jokes. Whenever another maverick is profiled or interviewed, Brando is apt to be invoked as a model or a friend.

Like everyone else, Mike Flanagan carries a moment, a flash that offers an indelible impression of Cal Ripken, his former teammate who grew to become, as Ripken's younger brother Bill liked to say, "the biggest man in the game." The moment was Aug. 9, 51 days after Ripken had formally announced his intention on June 19 to retire and less than two months before the schedule said it was time to leave. Ripken had just suffered an 0-for-4 game against the Kansas City Royals, a faceless performance within another anonymous loss of a fourth-place season, except it had ended Ripken's hitting streak at 16 games, one shy of his career high.

WHILE the nation girds for war of unknown dimension, the American Visionary Art Museum opens its seventh yearlong major exhibition of intuitive art by untrained artists, on the theme of war and peace. Peace, it turns out, is better. With an uncanny timing characteristic of this museum at the foot of Federal Hill, "The Art of War and Peace" is open from Friday through next August, touching a chord in the American soul. It is about all war, real and imagined, certainly about the war that terrorists made on the United States last month and almost certainly about the response to come, as well as other battles, inhumanities and tortures of the human spirit.

SAD AS THIS is to admit, I am not altogether unaccustomed to writing about people who walk around in weird get-ups. Some months ago, for example, this space was devoted to a guy who dressed as a giant bell pepper for his job at a local supermarket. Then there was the column about the lunatic Ravens fans who, on game day, wore purple hard hats and heavy-duty utility gloves of such bright orange intensity they'd induce a migraine in a blind man. Finally, there was the piece a couple weeks ago about the dentist with the Star Trek obsession who met me in his office wearing a commander's uniform from the Starship Enterprise.

Violinist Gil Shaham gave a spectacular account of his abilities Sunday evening in the first concert of the Shriver Hall series.Spectacular is certainly the word that best applies to the closing piece on the printed program and to the encore that immediately followed it.The first of these was a Fantasy on themes from "Carmen." There are several violinistic tours de force based on the Bizet opera, most famously those by Pablo Sarasate, which was written for himself, and by Franz Waxman, which was written for Heifetz.

WHEN aspiring entrepreneurs asked Madam C.J. Walker how she turned a $1.50 investment into a cosmetics empire worth millions, she attributed her success to tenacity, perseverance, faith in herself and in God, quality products and "honest business dealings.""There is no royal flower-strewn path to success," she said. "And if there is, I have not found it, for if I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I have been willing to work hard."Born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, La., in 1867, this daughter of former slaves was a laundress until 1905, when she formulated hair and scalp preparations for black women.

The kinder and gentler Bob Dole won't wash. It's the mean and caustic Dole whom people admire and respect.Kemp is a backup quarterback who knows the playbook by heart.Republicans have two four-letter words on their ticket, Democrats only one.Gingrich spoke as the bleeding-heart anti-Gingrich bearing an uncanny physical resemblance to the real one.Pub Date: 8/16/96