Plump and prosperous at the age of 45, ex-Middleweight Champ Rocky Graziano knocks out little more than cliches these days as a TV "personality." His old nemesis, Tony Zale, also ex-champ, and now 54, reserves his clinches for an occasional guest in the Manhattan pub where he works as "greeter." So when the two retired fighters met last week in a flack-fixed rematch, their panting efforts damaged nothing but the memories of the three Pier Six brawls--among the most savage in all boxing history--that they slugged out from 1946 to 1948. Graziano, the Dead End kid from Brooklyn, and Zale, the "Man of Steel" from Gary, Ind., wheezed through all of three rounds, swung such friendly punches that they scarcely ruffled a hair, and quickly retired to ringside to mix it up instead with their referee, Comic Alan King, who tactfully scored it a draw.

Pausing in Paris to visit his uncle, U.S. Ambassador R. Sargent Shriver, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 14, took an afternoon to try out a motor scooter in a brisk, hair-raising spin through the byways of the Bois de Boulogne. On the next lap of his summer work-vacation, Bobby pushes on to Dar-es-Salaam, on Africa's east coast. From there, Tanzanian game wardens will help him in his study of African wildlife--and Bobby will doubtless work with them in their efforts to conserve the herds of elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, wildebeest and antelope that roam the rugged Serengeti Plain 150 miles from the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. Taking care of animals is nothing new to young Kennedy: at home in Hickory Hill he has tended over a crawling, fluttering menagerie of one iguana, one scaly teju, two hawks, two geese, six chickens, six golden pheasants, and assorted turtles, snakes, and leopard frogs.

Never one to go gently into a good fight, Britain's Bertrand Russell came caustically to the defense of atheism in countering rumors that he had got religion at the age of 96. "There is a lie factory at work on behalf of the afterlife," wrote Lord Russell to a U.S. housewife who queried him on his alleged conversion. "My views on religion remain those which I acquired at the age of 16. I consider all forms of religion not only false but harmful."

A tall, well-dressed man walked into the police station in Middletown, Conn. "I lost two friends by assassination in the past five years," he said. "I want to do everything I can to encourage people to turn in their guns." Then William Manchester, 46, author of The Death of a President, handed over his own .45-cal. automatic pistol to the officer on duty.

After speaking for tighter gun-control laws during an evening talk show on Manhattan's educational TV station WNDT, former Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., 46, was strolling out of the studio when an unscheduled interruption blared from the monitor. A flock of 20-odd not-so-gentle love children suddenly burst into the studio, pummeled the guards, twisted the director's arm, and took over the program, shouting slogans and obscenities while the cameras still looked on. The mayhem did not end until Manhattan's police, doing their own thing, arrived and collared the unruly invaders. Commented Glenn, while watching the boobs on the tube: "And they say there is violence on commercial television."

Georgia's Governor Lester Maddox, 52, is a man of few words, his favorite one normally being the all-purpose expletive "Phooey!" On occasion, Maddox applies it personally to irksome political critics and statehouse correspondents ("Phooey on you, phooey on you, and phooey on you!"). Last week Atlanta Attorney James H. Moore and a band of reporters hatched up their revenge with something called a "Phooey-gram," a telegram sent directly to Maddox bearing nothing save the sender's name and one word--"Phooey." Already hundreds of Phooey-grams have been wired to the capitol, and Moore plans to kick off an entire Phooey campaign, complete with Phooey buttons, Phooey bumper stickers, and even a sky writer to spell out the word high above Atlanta's state capitol. And there's more to come, says Moore, since "we have not yet begun to phooey."

Although it remarked favorably on her 35-26-36 measurements, her "dazzling" smile, "pretty" legs and "clear" skin, the London fashion magazine Nova nonetheless lamented last week that Britain's Queen Elizabeth II--at 42 --is "by no means a glamour girl." So Nova took the problem to the French for frank answers. "Pluck the eyebrows," ordered Carita of Paris. "Mold the cheekbones . . . The eyes must be emphasized ... A little light in the hair . . . Mouth toned down . . . Transparent makeup." While Courreges decked the Queen out in a modestly mod dress and jacket, Alexandre cropped her royal mane and Roger Vivier prescribed a pair of shoes that made up in sex appeal what they lost in good sense. Out of the imaginary exercise came a composite photo of a rather lovely Liz, but one that her subjects will probably never see, inside or outside Buckingham Palace.

"You are guilty either of grave oversight or willful neglect in regard to Richard Nixon," read the stern letter to the editor of the New York Times. Its author, David Eisenhower II, 20, Ike's grandson, was in the thick of his new job as chairman of the Youth for Nixon organization. David and Julie Nixon, 19, are so optimistic about her dad's chances that they may move up the date of their marriage, originally planned for after their college graduations in 1970, to "sometime after the election." That could make it a White House wedding.

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