A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

ide a motorcycle for the show , but , because of a hectic shooting schedule , is

 still operating with a restricted license . Noseworthy , 24 , has been doing qu

ite well recently . After appearances in the movies `` Alive '' and `` Encino Ma

n '' and a regular role on the short-lived CBS show `` Teech , '' he landed a ch

allenging part as Sissy Spacek 's son in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production ``

 A Place for Annie . '' `` I was the only male in the cast , and I got to work w

ith some really powerful women , '' he said , clicking off the names of Spacek ,

 Joan Plowright and Mary-Louise Parker . `` It was nice to have a challenging ro

le where I played a character in the beginning , middle and end of the movie , '

' in which Spacek portrayed a pediatric nurse who tries to adopt the HIV-positiv

e daughter of an AIDS patient . Then there was the casting for `` Dead at 21 . '

' Noseworthy , already selected for the role in part because of his non-glamorou

s appearance and look of vulnerability , read with three actresses and was asked

 for his recommendation . He picked Ryan . `` I connected with her , '' he said 

. `` There was a ` Taming of the Shrew ' type of energy . She 's a joy to work w

ith . '' In the premiere the two ride Ed 's cycle into the sunset , with the bad

 guy lurking somewhere in pursuit . It 's part of the paranoid reality on which 

the show plays . `` When you are young , you don't trust anybody , '' Davola sai

d . `` Everything 's a conspiracy . The government is after him ; his parents ha

ve deceived him ( by not revealing that Ed is adopted ) . It 's ` The Fugitive '

 meets ` Logan 's Run. ' ' ' While on the run , and in search of the mad doctor 

who planted the time bomb in his head , Ed and Maria journey through familiar ni

ght clubs , shopping malls and coffee houses and try to decipher the clues conta

ined in his freakish dreams . `` MTV is a step ahead of every other network , ''

 Noseworthy said of the program , which will have a 13-week run . Davola agreed 

. `` Dead at 21 '' joins the unscripted soap opera `` Real World '' and the dram

atic series `` Catwalk '' in the stable of first-run series as MTV strives to be

come `` a full-service network . '' Before returning to MTV last year , Davola s

pent five years at Fox , where he was involved with `` In Living Color , '' `` T

otally Hidden Video , '' `` The Ben Stiller Show , '' `` Code Three '' and `` Si

ghtings . '' During that tenure , Davola struck up a friendship with writer Larr

y David , who , after repeating `` Joe Davola '' several times at a party , proc

laimed he was going to use the name for a character on `` Seinfeld . '' The Davo

la character is an obsessed fan who stalks Jerry in several episodes .

 BEIJING On that night five years ago this week , high school sophomore Jiang Ji

elian decided to go to Tiananmen Square one last time . There , Beijing 's stude

nts had camped at the gates of political power , demanding democracy in the most

 serious challenge to 40 years of China 's Communist Party rule . On June 3 , 19

89 , Beijing was under martial law . Authorities had warned residents to stay ho

me . But Jiang , who had marched in peaceful protests for democracy all spring ,

 was worried about the safety of the university students still in the square . H

is mother begged him not to go . She bolted the front door of their ground-floor

 apartment . But Jiang came to her , kissed her on the cheek and said goodbye , 

using a Chinese phrase that means farewell forever . He then locked himself in t

he bathroom and jumped out the window . `` I remember saying to him , `` What ca

n you do ? You 're only a high school student , ' ' ' his mother recalled , figh

ting back tears . `` He said , `` If all parents were as selfish as you , there 

would be no hope left for our country. ' ' ' About 30 minutes later , Jiang was 

shot and killed by Chinese army soldiers about two miles west of the square . Li

ke thousands of other civilians who tried to stop the troops as they advanced fr

om the city outskirts toward the square , he was unarmed . When soldiers opened 

fire on the crowd , a bullet hit him in the back and ripped through his chest . 

He died on the way to a hospital . He had turned 17 the day before . Jiang 's de

ath launched his mother , Ding Zilin , on a one-woman campaign to locate the fam

ilies of those killed and wounded by the army . Ding , a 57-year-old aesthetics 

professor , defies government harassment and contacts the families and distribut

es to them money donated from abroad , much of it from Chinese students in the U

nited States . And underlying this campaign is another cause . `` I don't care h

ow long it takes , '' she said in a recent interview in her apartment on the cam

pus of People 's University . `` I want the real truth to be known . I want to k

now how many were killed by the government . '' Does the government know how man

y were killed ? `` Of course they know , '' she said . `` But this is their secr

et . '' The Tiananmen Square massacre , which has considerably influenced the wa

y Chinese and foreigners view China , remains the most politically taboo subject

 in the country today . The official version is that the Chinese army was forced

 to quell a `` counterrevolutionary rebellion '' that night to ensure stability 

. The civilians killed were `` counterrevolutionary rebels , '' `` thugs '' or `

` rioters , '' authorities have said . But China has refused to give a complete 

public accounting of the number of dead and wounded or hold an inquiry into the 

circumstances in which unarmed civilians were killed . Ding and other families h

ave gotten no official compensation for their loss , she said . The government c

laims that only about 300 died , most of them soldiers and `` thugs . '' U.S. Em

bassy officials concluded at the time that between 500 and 800 Chinese died , wh

ile human rights organizations have said several thousand were killed . Ding 's 

family gathered evidence corpses viewed or accounts from hospital staffers of 21

6 dead , and Ding said she believes this represents a fraction of the total . Di

ng has located 84 families of those killed and nearly 50 other families of peopl

e seriously injured . She is pursuing leads in 10 other deaths . In a recent pet

ition asking for an official reassessment of the crackdown , seven dissidents , 

including former student leader Wang Dan , said it was time for the government t

o `` untie the knot in the people 's heart . '' But instead , on this year 's fi

fth anniversary of Tiananmen , authorities have ordered stepped-up surveillance 

of families of those killed in the massacre , Ding said . Ding , a soft-spoken w

oman , is the prime target . Of the hundreds of families of victims , only she a

nd her husband , Jiang Peikun , also a university professor , have dared to ackn

owledge consistently and publicly that a family member was killed by the army . 

Policemen watch the couple 's apartment and harass anyone trying to visit . Ding

 said police have kept 24-hour surveillance on her since May 20 including follow

ing her to the medical clinic where she receives treatment for heart ailments an

d a slipped disc . Ding said Sunday by telephone that she had written to the par

liament to say she and her husband will start a two-day hunger strike Thursday u

nless their freedom is restored . Writing from her apartment , where the couple 

keep their son 's ashes in a shrine in the bedroom , Ding asked , `` Is he not e

ven allowed to have one untainted space in which his spirit can rest ? '' `` Can

 his parents not even have a moment of peace to commemorate the fifth anniversar

y of his death ? We can hardly bear it , '' she wrote . Ding 's campaign has hel

ped reveal how deep is the fear of Tiananmen 's survivors . Families of those ki

lled are afraid to acknowledge the deaths to neighbors or their work units , she

 said . Several have refused to see her or accept her donations , even though th

ere are no strings attached . Ding went public with her case in 1991 to counter 

a claim by Premier Li Peng that families did not want an accounting of the dead 

and injured . Because she mourned publicly and challenged the government , Ding 

was expelled from the Communist Party and lost her teaching job . Her husband , 

59 , was dismissed as director of the university philosophy department 's aesthe

tics institute . Starting this year , he can no longer take on new graduate stud

ents and his monthly bonus has been cut . The couple have become pariahs . `` No

w old friends we have known for 10 years avoid me and pretend they don't even kn

ow me , '' Ding said . Her neighbor across the hall , an elderly worker , used t

o be friendly but now keeps his distance . Each year , on June 3 , Ding plays fu

neral music and burns paper money in her son 's honor . As the date approaches ,

 she said , her dreams of him often turn to nightmares . Ding knows her work is 

a growing threat to the government . But she said she is not afraid . `` What mo

re can they do to me ? '' she asked . `` They have already killed my son . ''

 Once there was a marvelous woman named Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle , who understood chil

dren so well that she was able to get naughty children back on the straight path

 of growing up . She could get a messy boy to clean up his room . She could pers

uade a girl who hated baths to wash . She knew ways to cure a boy who lied . She

 could cure a ' fraidy cat and a tattletale and get a child to go to bed . In sh

ort , she was terrific . People who grew up in the 1940s and '50s might remember

 Betty MacDonald 's character . But not many modern children do . Neither did Je

an Stapleton , who did grow up in the '40s , or the younger Shelley Duvall , who

 has a large collection of children 's books and makes award-winning productions

 for kids . But by their own accounts , they were entranced by MacDonald 's hero

ine and set about bringing her to life in stories inspired by the books . Guests

 include Christopher Lloyd , Ed Begley Jr. , Joan Cusack , Meshach Taylor , Phyl

lis Diller and James Whitmore , who shows up as Mr. Piggle-Wiggle ( `` He was de

ceased in the books , '' Duvall confided ) . Executive producer Duvall has also 

made creative changes in the stories . `` We contemporized them . There were cer

tain things in the books that I wanted to bring up to speed . '' `` Mrs. Piggle-

Wiggle , '' Duvall 's fifth series for Showtime , begins Tuesday night with a on

e-hour parents ' preview that includes two stories : `` The Not Truthful Cure , 

'' featuring Lloyd as Grandpa Moohead , who is given to overexaggeration , and h

is grandson , Egbert , who fibs ; and `` The Pet Forgetters Cure , '' about a gi

rl who forgets to feed her pets . Begley and Cusack play her parents . Weekly ep

isodes begin June 14 . Duvall and Stapleton talked about the series recently ove

r lunch in a Washington hotel . Duvall said the publishers of the original `` Mr

s. Piggle-Wiggle '' books are considering reissuing the books . If they do , she

 said she hopes they hire the original illustrator , Maurice Sendak . Any illust

rator who takes a cue from Duvall 's color-drenched televised version will be ob

liged to dress the character in stripes . `` You can tell a Piggle-Wiggle by the

ir stripes , '' said Duvall , who plays Mrs . Piggle-Wiggle 's daughter Potsi . 

Stapleton , whose character lives in an upside-down house , has played in severa

l Duvall series : the fairy godmother in `` Cinderella , '' the ogress in `` Jac

k in the Beanstalk '' and Mother Goose in `` Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme . '' A 

veteran actress , she won three Emmys for playing Edith Bunker over eight season

s of CBS 's `` All in the Family . '' `` It 's good to be talking about ( ` Mrs.

 Piggle-Wiggle ' ) again , because it was so delightful , '' Stapleton said . ``

 We don't have a lot of delightful material on television . I 'm beginning to th

ink we 're all going to regress to childhood , because that literature is the mo

st revealing . '' Duvall , whose collection of illustrated children 's books num

bers about 3,000 , agreed . `` There is some great children 's literature out th

ere . It 's an untapped natural resource . We have not explored all the marvelou

s children 's literature to its full extent . With ` Faerie Tale Theatre , ' I d

id some of that . '' It was one of Duvall 's staffers , visiting in Seattle , wh

o reported that a children 's theater there was doing a play based on the books 

, and that local children were flocking to it . `` Kids , from having seen the p

lay , were writing in to the theater saying , ` I have a cure for my older broth

ers ' or whatever , '' said Duvall . `` And suddenly there were these Mrs. Piggl

e-Wiggle fan clubs . So we pursued the rights and got them . '' For Duvall , the

re was only one choice to play the lead : `` Jean : the perfect Mrs. Piggle-Wigg

le. There were no others . '' Stapleton snapped up the part . `` If you are a ch

aracter actress , ` Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle ' is a dream . I was in Toronto doing a m

ovie for Fox , and I had two movie scripts . And here comes this bundle of stuff

 from Shelley : three scripts , outlines for others , and the books . As soon as

 I read them , I said , ` This is it . I 'd rather do this than the films . ' It

 's the quality of writing that drew me , the literacy and the wit . '' `` Mrs. 

Piggle-Wiggle '' was co-produced with Universal Family Entertainment and New Zea

land 's South Pacific Pictures . The cast and crew went to New Zealand to make t

he 13 shows in 10 weeks , working 12-hour days for six-day weeks . Stapleton , D

uvall said , was `` indefatigable . ''

 CHICAGO Richard Graff is every municipal bureaucrat 's nightmare . Eccentric an

d excitable , he bounded back and forth in front of his downtown newsstand here 

the other day while providing a stream-of-consciousness commentary on the evils 

of the local government . Arrayed on the newsstand racks behind him were thousan

ds of comic books and a smaller collection of adult magazines tucked into a disc

reet corner , but no newspapers . Rick 's Newsstand , as it is known , does not 

sell newspapers , a fact that its proprietor blames on his long-running feud wit

h the city . `` It 's degrading to me , '' Graff said . `` I 'm the Michael Jord

an of newsstands . I 'm the best . '' To city officials , however , Graff bears 

no resemblance to Jordan , the Chicago Bulls ' former superstar . To them he is 

a nuisance and his newsstand is an eyesore , blighting the sidewalk area near an

 entrance to the Chicago Cultural Center , a graceful , 19th century building th

at is an official Chicago landmark . Graff and the city have been battling on an

d off for years . Earlier this month , their dispute reached the Supreme Court ,

 which refused to consider Graff 's appeal of a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal

s decision upholding the city 's right to order Graff to move the newsstand to a

 new location or dismantle it . For Graff , June 6 is indeed D-Day , the deadlin

e for him to leave the location where he has operated since 1984 and where a new

sstand has existed for more than 70 years . The legal battle centered on Graff '

s assertion that a 1991 city ordinance regulating the size and location of newss

tands and limiting their number is an unconstitutional infringement on the disse

mination of information . But his cause , according to sympathizers , also invol

ves a larger struggle between those who want to preserve such colorful , gritty 

reminders of Chicago history and the forces of sterile gentrification who would 

turn the city into a sanitized theme park , a sort of Daleyland by the Lake . Th

e chief villain , to Graff and his supporters , is Mayor Richard M. Daley , D , 

who also has pushed for the dismantling of another grubby Chicago institution th

e ramshackle Maxwell Street Market where street vendors have hawked their wares 

for more than 100 years and whose vision of the city 's future focuses on a plan

 to create a `` family entertainment center '' theme park built around several r

iverboat gambling casinos . Even Daley 's recent decision to abandon his family 

's ancestral home , the working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport , for an upscal

e development south of the central business district has been linked by critics 

to what they call his obsession with tidiness . `` It 's kind of like the Disney

landization of America , '' said Jonathan A . Rothstein , one of Graff 's lawyer

s . `` That attracts tourists , I suppose , and it 's good for the economy , but

 do you want to live on Disneyland 's Main Street ? It 's not real . '' To Roths

tein and others , the newsstand is `` as much a landmark as the building '' and 

Graff is part of the vitality and color of the downtown city streets . He is cer

tainly colorful . Dressed in a black Marvel Comics jacket , he chatted the other

 day with regular customers who browsed through the comic books , including a ma

n who identified himself as a lawyer for the city government . `` How do you fee

l about the newsstand ? '' Graff demanded to know . `` Bad , '' the lawyer repli

ed sheepishly . To amuse pedestrians who rush by , Graff sometimes outfits his A

laskan malamute , Tasha , with sunglasses and watches the reaction . `` See , I 

just made two people smile , '' he said proudly as two women paused and laughed 

at the dog . `` That is why I should be here , '' Graff added . `` For the flavo

r of the city . It 's not just a newsstand . '' Graff said he paid $ 50,000 in 1

984 for the newsstand and prime location a few feet from the entrance to a commu

ter train station and busy Michigan Avenue . But he has never had a city permit 

to run the stand . Denied a permit , he filed suit in 1991 challenging the exist

ing ordinance that restricted newspaper sales to publications printed in Chicago

 , a widely ignored provision . Rather than defend the ordinance in court , the 

city enacted a new law later that year . Lawrence Rosenthal , deputy corporation

 counsel for the city , argued that the new ordinance cleaned up a loosely regul

ated system that was rife with another Chicago tradition the opportunity for cor

ruption . `` If you were pals with someone in City Hall , you got to run a newss

tand , '' he said . `` Graff 's predecessor evidently had some kind of a handsha

ke agreement with someone . But that 's the worst way to protect First Amendment

 rights . '' Under the new permit ordinance , Rosenthal said , newsstand vendors

 are protected `` even if they offend the local alderman . They have rights now 

. '' He said this includes Graff , who has rejected offers to operate a smaller 

newsstand at a less desirable downtown location . Meanwhile , the larger debate 

over whether there is room for places like Rick 's Newsstand and the Maxwell Str

eet Market in the city 's future continues to rage . Gerald W . Ropka , a geogra

phy professor at DePaul University , said he sympathized with Daley 's efforts t

o clean up the downtown area rather than risk the slow strangulation by suburban

 shopping malls that has occurred in cities like Detroit . But political scienti

st Larry Bennett , Ropka 's colleague on the DePaul faculty , said he has misgiv

ings about grandiose plans to transform a historically messy melting pot into ``

 a very tidy city . '' `` The problem will be when Chicago becomes insufficientl

y distinctive from other cities so that it no longer has its own identity , '' h

e said .

 In the 1930s , flight attendants were called `` skygirls . '' They were to be s

ingle , under age 25 , less than 115 pounds , act like a `` well-trained servant

 . '' An airline manual of that era instructed skygirls to `` treat captains and

 pilots with strict formality while in uniform . A rigid military salute will be

 rendered as they go aboard and deplane . '' Times are different now , but the a

viation community is gradually coming to realize that some of the old attitudes 

hang on in modern jetliners and that can be dangerous . Research has shown that 

there is a greater gap between pilots and attendants than just the cockpit door 

, and in rare instances it has killed . A report published by the Flight Safety 

Foundation said that pilots and attendants sometimes show animosity toward one a

nother , are often confused as to when to communicate problems , have little awa

reness of the other 's duties in an emergency and sometimes don't even introduce

 themselves prior to a flight . These problems do not exist with every airline c

rew , and only rarely lead to a safety problem , but the report 's authors , Reb

ecca D . Chute of San Jose State University and Earl L. Wiener of the University

 of Miami , gave two examples when they did : In 1989 , 24 people were killed in

 an Air Ontario crash on takeoff from Dryden , Ontario , because of ice on the w

ings . Flight attendants saw wet snow on the wings , but did not tell the pilots

 because they assumed they knew and were reluctant to `` second-guess the pilots

 . '' Before a disastrous British Midlands fire in 1989 , the captain reported o

ver the public address system that he had a problem with the right engine . Alth

ough the attendants and passengers could see fire in the left engine , they did 

nothing as the pilot shut down the wrong engine . `` Although cabin and flight d

eck crews share the same goals , the two crews have evolved into two distinct cu

ltures , resulting in communication and coordination problems between them , '' 

the report said . Clay Foushee , Northwest Airlines vice president for flight op

erations , said he is well aware of the problem , and Northwest `` is moving ver

y quickly toward doing some joint training and crew resource management '' betwe

en pilots and attendants . Crew resource management or CRM is the aviation buzzw

ord for teaching pilots to communicate and not to intimidate subordinates , prob

lems blamed for several crashes in the 1980s . CRM for pilots and flight attenda

nts is a fairly new concept , and is endorsed by the Chute-Wiener report . `` Da