New York City Mayor John Lindsay, freshly Democratic, strolled in his shirtsleeves through a black neighborhood in Brooklyn, got an unenthusiastic reception, and heard some griping about the city's low-income housing programs. Seizing on a momentary point of agreement with one critic, the mayor shouted "Right on!" and beat a hasty retreat. "Perish the thought!" Lindsay exclaimed when reporters asked if his second consecutive day in the Brooklyn streets heralded the start of a presidential campaign. "I don't know how you could possibly arrive at such a conclusion."

On tour to parcel out 4,200 acres of Government land for public use, Pat Nixon was ambushed in Minneapolis by a group from the American Indian Movement who yelled "Squatter" and waved placards claiming THE LAND REALLY BELONGS TO THE INDIANS. "Well," said Pat, smiling wanly, "we have a few friends here. Thank you for coming." Outside San Diego, the smile came easier when a dripping, bare-chested surfer appeared to thank the First Lady for the beachfront real estate.

"Little more than an artless potboiler," criticized the newspaper of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, after viewing Film Producer Stanley Kramer's Bless the Beasts and Children. The Mormon Church, which operates the school, was more critical. It banned the film, objecting to its strong language and shots of youngsters urinating and masturbating. Kramer took an ad in the Salt Lake City Tribune, accused the Mormons of trying to "block out ideas and the right of discussion," pleaded that his film merely has things to say about gun control and killing. "Some," read Kramer's ad, "have even compared it to Kent State."

"I don't like myself," says Marcello Masfroianni in a lavishly self-flagellatory article in the September McCall's. "I never did, even physically. I don't like my body when I look at myself naked. These childish legs and arms. I don't like my face, with this short nose and these fleshy lips. I'm cute. And a man must not be cute." Other admissions: "I'm ignorant. After ten pages of a book, my eyes close. I can't even read the newspaper. I don't feel at ease with American women. They're too perfect; their paradise of honesty doesn't excite me a bit. It's good only for unisex." Mastroianni is equally hard on Italian men: "We bore women with our insistence, our enthusiasm, our generosity. Except we get exhausted very soon."

While the 65 youngsters scrambled around an old island fortress off the coast of Plymouth, England, and took lessons in sailing, rock climbing, canoeing and camping, they were watched from shore by Secret Service agents peering through binoculars. A youth conspiracy under scrutiny? Actually, the watchers were agents assigned to protect ten-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr., who with his cousin Anthony Radziwill had enrolled for two weeks in the youth center for the standard fee of $75 a person. "I'm not sure why Mrs. Onassis decided to send him to us," said an official of the center, "but we are getting quite well known abroad for the course."

"We must give the North American volleyball team a very polite welcome," said Premier Fidel Castro during a 55-minute speech. "They are representatives of the North American people, not their government. No one should compare their trip here with Yankee imperialism." Meanwhile the U.S. volleyball team, in Cuba for a series of warmup games for the 1972 Olympics, was getting a glimpse of life behind the Sugar Cane Curtain. One bit of information gleaned from the Cubans by Team Physician Dr. Robert Pike was the reason Castro's speeches are so long. "They told me that Castro realizes he is trying to reach people, many of whom cannot read or write," Pike said. "The only way he can get them to understand what he is saying is by repetition. In a way, that makes sense."

For eight years, on TV and in the movies, Harold J. Smith was known as Tonto, the bass-toned sidekick of the Lone Ranger (played by John Hart). But now Smith has assumed a more authentic Indian name. "Jay Silverheels is a translation of my Indian name," he explained after having it legally changed, "and since I'm an Indian, I've never seen a reason why I shouldn't use it." His grandfather became a Smith, Silverheels noted, when Indian officials advised members of the family to change their names "so that they wouldn't be signing papers 'Bird Sitting on the Grass' or 'Cow Jumping Over the Moon.' Mother preferred Smith, but now she's in her mid-eighties and doesn't care any more."

Holy skulduggery! Or possibly, holy infringement! Gleeps! at the very least. Batman and Robin think that they have been wronged by Big Business, and their response has been uncharacteristically undramatic. Resorting to the courts rather than their fists, Actors Adam West (Batman) and Burt Ward (Robin) contend that the American Broadcasting Co. and 20th Century-Fox among others never paid them their share of the profits from the sales of $300 million worth of Batman sweaters, T shirts, toys and other bits of fledermausian frippery that were inspired by their TV series. Their asking price: $2,000,000 in compensation and $4,000,000 in punitive damages--which is hardly guano.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.