Deaths

Satirist Don Martin, 68, who drew a bead on society's foibles and deflated them in countless MAD magazine cartoons, died of esophageal cancer on Jan. 6 in Miami. Renowned for his onomatopoeic coinages (ga-shpluct accompanied a drawing of a boot trudging through mud; a wet mackerel ricocheting off a man's face produced spladap), Martin at one point in his life came up with SHTOINK for a vanity license plate....

Author Patrick O'Brian—whose exquisite 20-novel Aubrey-Maturin series, set during the Napoleonic era, looked at love, sex, death, manners, seafaring, passion, music, language, food, botany and, above all, the nature of friendship—died in Dublin on Jan. 2 at 85. Initially dismissed by many as a crafter of "mere" historical fiction, O'Brian later found himself compared to the writer he most admired: Jane Austen....

Home builder James Walter, 77, whose prefab, finish-it-yourself shell-frame haciendas once sold for as little as $1,195 and made the billion-dollar Jim Walter business synonymous with affordable housing, died on Jan. 6 of complications from lung cancer in Tampa.

In Court
On Jan. 5 a judge in L.A. sentenced Jim Brown, 63, to six months in jail after the former football star refused to accept terms of his probation, including domestic violence counseling. The court order stemmed from a June 15 incident when Brown smashed his wife's car with a shovel. He remains free pending an appeal.

Moved
Trading a 67,200-sq.-ft. house (the White one) for a not-incommodious 5,232-sq.-ft. Dutch Colonial, Hillary Rodham Clinton, 52, spent the first night at her new home in Chappaqua, N.Y., on Jan. 5, as part of her bid to establish residency in the state and run for the senate.

Moving Violation
Former Victoria's Secret model Jill Connick, 35, wife of singer Harry Connick Jr., 32, complained of back pain after a hit-and-run motorist rear ended an SUV in which she was a passenger in the Shippan area of Stamford, Conn., on Jan. 6.

Law and Order

On Jan. 8, Barbra Streisand, 57, and her husband, actor James Brolin, 59, filed a police report that they were followed that day on L.A.'s Highway 101. A few hours later, while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, the couple spotted the same man trailing them and managed to flag down a deputy. Photographer Wendell Wall, 28, was held for investigation of stalking in lieu of $1 million bail and was released on Jan. 11 after the D.A. declined to press charges....

On Jan. 10, L.A. police arrested actor Max Wright, 56, who played the father on the sitcom ALF, for suspicion of drunk driving after he crashed into another car.

Births
Actress Elizabeth Keifer, 37, who plays redheaded Blake Marler on the daytime soap opera Guiding Light, and her husband, Bobby Convertino, 44, a construction manager, welcomed son Keifer Jack (9 lbs.) on Jan. 8 in Morristown, N.J. Married three years, the couple have a daughter, Isabella Grace, who turns 2 in April.