Don't try to get into Greece's Kavouri hotel for a while. The beach resort south of Athens has turned over all but twelve of its 72 rooms to Saudi Arabia's ex-King Saud and retinue, who spend $33,333 a day. Six of Saud's 47 sons also came along for the ride. Some ride. Piloting five Maseratis, a Buick Riviera and a Cadillac as if they had all Araby to maneuver in, they have careered into two pedestrians, busted a bus, wrecked a private car and demolished a lamppost. After all, the more gas they burn, the richer they get.

When in Rome, she does as she always does. There were some boos after the first act of a gala opening-night Norma in 1958, and Soprano Maria Callas stomped out without further ado. So the Rome Opera canceled her contract for three additional performances. Their mistake. The reason for her hasty exit, said La Callas, was a sore throat, and a Roman court that examined her medical certificates agreed. The opera management now has to honor her original contract and pay the diva $2,800 for the operas she didn't sing. With Callas, even silence is golden.

Horticulturally speaking, a Virginia azalea and a Texas rose aren't even kissing kin. But showbizwise, what casting! So Norfolk's International Azalea Festival set a date with Washington's Luci Baines Johnson, and not only got a gracious four-day queen but an unexpected visit from L.B.J. in the bargain. Daddy may be busy these days, but he could hardly use Viet Nam as an alibi when it came to crowning Her Majesty Luci Baines Azalea.

Popping up in New York City to reopen the World's Fair, he shared the limelight with a new friend, James Nathan Jr., 3, from The Bronx. Without a single line of oratory, he caused a small traffic jam on Broadway as he left the musical Any Wednesday, next night got caught in the celebrity jam that turned out to see Rudolf Nureyev on the Royal Ballet's opening night. Then off to Norfolk, Va., for a luncheon speech on Viet Nam. Up to Washington to present awards to Agriculture Department employees whose ideas had saved the Government money. Down to Orlando, Fla., to convoy Astronaut John Young on his triumphal return home. Then on to North Carolina for a Sunday at Civil War historical ceremonies. So the Vice President of the U.S., Hubert Horatio Humphrey, 53, is having trouble keeping busy?

"She knows what she wants," sighed South African Impresario Peter Toerien. "And she knows she will get it." Fair exchange. For after signing a list of contractual demands that took 41 pages and nine months to accommodate, Sexagenarian Marlene Dietrich agreed to a two-week stand in Johannesburg, her first South African appearance. Among other whims, such as having every last speck of dust hand-whisked from the stage before curtain time, Marlene insisted on two separate dressing rooms: one to "relax" in, one to dress in, so to speak.

After smoothly outmaneuvering the legal difficulties that kept him out of New York City, Manhattan's Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., 56, still has to pay the $46,500 in libel damages and interest that he has owed a Harlem widow for two years. So, flying back from his $75,000 Puerto Rico beach house, Powell put the whammy on his Harlem friends. After explaining his plight to the congregation at his Abyssinian Baptist Church, he toured the nightspots, drumming up guests for one of his $25-a-head "Justice for Powell" cocktail parties, which have helped to raise $16,000 to date. "I'm just," said he, "a poor parish priest." He will be poorer still if Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin has his way. The California Democrat has introduced a bill that would trim the Government salary of Powell's wife Yvette from $18,907 to a mere $1,500.

A year ago she was a sexy, professional dumb blonde of 36 who posed for photographers doing dumbbell exercises to improve her 39-in. chest and promote the grade B flickers she appeared in. Now Joi Lansing is a sexy, smart, successful nightclub singer of 27 who has just finished making her first record. Her new pressagent may be watching the wrong figure, or else Joi was only twelve when she got married in Juarez, Mexico, 15 years ago.

"I began to have strange illusions," confessed a Chinese bacteriologist in Peking's party newspaper Kuang-ming Jih-pao, "about a world filled with friendly love." Horrors! It wasn't imperialist propaganda he'd been listening to, but the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, newly blacklisted by the Chinese Communists because they "paralyze one's revolutionary fighting will."

When she was 18, everything came up roses. Now she is 19, and all that comes up is spuds. Drafted into the Israeli army, Private Ronit Rinat, Miss Israel 1964, is on K.P.--and swears that she enjoys peeling potatoes just as much as peeling for the Miss Universe contest, where she placed third. When she's served her 18-month hitch, honey-blonde Ronit hopes to study medicine.

Meanwhile, she's not eating potatoes.

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