Teen-age sophisticates can snicker as much as they like, but Mrs. John Mitchell's first experiment with marijuana was a sure enough bad trip. The Attorney General's wife offered to help dramatize a Bureau of Narcotics briefing for Justice Department wives by taking a whiff of some marijuana leaves burning in a pot. "I stuck my head right over it," Mrs. Mitchell recalls, "and no sooner had I got my head up off the stuff than my eyes started running and my throat was all irritated." Despite medication, a violent 24-hour allergic reaction set in, leaving her looking, she reported, "like I had been burned around my eyes and cheeks." That very day Anthropologist Margaret Mead was testifying on Capitol Hill that pot wasn't harmful. Said Mrs. Mitchell: "I was dying to get her on the phone and say 'You should see me.' "

. . .

No lady should have to compete with a bullhorn, even if she has the vocal equipment to drown out a dozen of them. Policemen in a Tampa, Fla. concert hall were trying hard to restrain a surging, frenzied audience reacting typically to Janis Joplin's Try a Little Harder. The cops resorted to a bullhorn, and that annoyed Janis. "Listen," she shouted, "I know there won't be any trouble if you'll just leave!" The officers refused and sounded the horn again. That did it. Janis, as a fan reported, "simply went nuts," blistering the air with a string of oaths and obscenities, whereupon the cops hustled her off to jail on charges of using profanity and indecent language. Free on bail, the queen of hyperthyroid blues insisted: "I say anything I want onstage. I don't mind getting arrested because I've turned a lot of kids on."

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A Temple University audience that included many clergymen and nuns was stunned by the sex, brutality and abrasive language of a play called The Meteor. Nor did the playwright ease their discomfort, as he accepted an honorary D.Lit. before the final performance at Temple's Tomlinson Theater. Friedrich Durrenmatt, 48, irreverent son of a Protestant minister, read his acceptance speech seated on a rumpled bed on the play's set--the same bed where, a few minutes later, a naked woman sprawled as her husband painted her portrait. Said the Swiss dramatist: "My academic career has now been successfully completed. I broke it off 23 years ago to write my first play instead of a dissertation, because I came to believe that one can think not only in philosophy but on the stage." Added Durrenmatt: "My first drama caused a scandal. I still thrive on this start."

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WHILE THREE ARE HEADED FOR THE MOON, read the banner headline, A LOVER ASTRONAUT IS IN IZMIR TO SEE HIS SWEETHEART. Former Astronaut Scott Carpenter may have thought that he was paying a quiet visit to an attractive young painter he had met in the States. What he didn't know was that Umran Baradan, 24, had told reporters that they would marry when Carpenter's divorce becomes final next spring. Then the papers had them sharing a hotel room, had Umran's father suffering a paralyzing stroke at the prospect of the marriage, had her mother reacting with a nervous breakdown and an impassioned uncle threatening to dismember the lovers if they approached him. Umran backed down, Carpenter denied and denied, but there was no stopping Istanbul's Hiirriyet, Turkey's biggest daily. "No one in the world understands me better than my brunette Turkish sweetheart Umran," Hiirriyet quoted Scott as saying. "When I am divorced, I will come back and take her to Cape Kennedy. We will spend our honeymoon in a space capsule."

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"Have you seen it walking around?" the First Lady challenged newsmen. "Have you seen me in 65 new outfits?" Offended by a recent Associated Press story reporting that her 1969 wardrobe cost $19,000, Pat Nixon explained that she had some clothes "left over from before that people hadn't seen because we didn't live here." She also revealed a number of family economies that make life in the White House sound somewhat underprivileged. Julie, it seems, "hasn't bought any new skirts since she started college." Not only does the younger Nixon daughter hem up old models for the miniskirt look; she even makes do with hand-me-downs from Sister Tricia. Does the President ever check up on his ladies' fashion spending? "He doesn't check up on me," said Pat. "He knows how chintzy I am."

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Auto racing's Andy Granatelli, eminently successful businessman as president of STP Corp., went up to Harvard Business School to deliver a lecture on marketing concepts. But Cambridge's embryo tycoons were surprisingly curious about other things--like why the big congratulatory kiss Andy planted on Driver Mario Andretti after their Indianapolis victory this year? "What else could I do and still be an Italian?" the burly Granatelli replied. "I like to kiss people. After the meeting today, if you get in line, I'll kiss all of you. I suppose you think I like Mario because he's Italian, but that's not true. I like him because I'm Italian." There was laughter and warm applause, but no one rushed up to the podium for a peck from Andy.

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