Chicago Symphony Conductor Sir Georg Solti slipped as he stepped out of an elevator, and his assistant fell into a heroine's role. With Solti bedridden after straining a ligament in his back, Symphony Chorus Director Margaret Hillis, 56, was tapped as a last-minute stand-in to conduct a Manhattan performance of Mahler's difficult Eighth Symphony. Hillis spent an hour with the ailing maestro going over the score, listened to a radio tape of an earlier performance, and with just two days' preparation stepped up to the conductor's podium in Carnegie Hall. "I did my job; I'm surprised it caused such a stir," said Hillis after earning a standing ovation. How did she feel afterward? "I was blind, deaf and my feet hurt. I felt a great relief."

During a busy three-day visit to Alaska, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoli Dobrynin rubbed noses with an Eskimo, panned for gold on the beaches of Nome, donned a hard hat for a tour of the pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, and collected postcards at every stop. He also paused to reflect on how Secretary of State William Henry Seward had bought the territory for a mere $7.2 million from Czar Alexander II in 1867. In the U.S., Dobrynin noted, the deal "was known as Seward's Folly, but Alexander was known as foolish in my own country long before he sold Alaska. Sometimes we feel it's another proof of how stupid czars were." Dobrynin then cheered himself with the observation that the Soviet Union is big enough as is. "Our Alaska is Siberia," he said. "It's bigger than all the United States."

"We're not very strong in football," noted Frank H.T. Rhodes, considering Cornell University's door mat status on the gridiron this season. "But we're very good at Frisbee." The British-born geologist, who this week will be formally inaugurated as Cornell's president, may not help his school's pigskin standings, but no matter. "The great universities are those in which people grow by contact with others in ever-widening circles," insisted Rhodes, 51, after suiting up in his new Cornell colors to throw the old platter around.

Tough sentencing earned him the nickname "Maximum John," but now Watergate Judge John Sirica, 73, has stepped down from full-time duty on the federal court to handle only civil cases, which require no sentencing. "They're calling me 'Minimum John,' " joked the jurist. Although his new status of senior judge is a form of retirement, Sirica can keep his staff if he needs them. Apparently he will: he already has 130 civil suits on his new docket.

That giant cheeseburger behind Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees is not the latest McDonald's special. It is actually a mustardburger and a symbol of evil in "Heartland U.S.A.," the MGM backlot town where Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is now being filmed. Frampton's first movie is based on the 1967 Beatles album, and, says Sgt. Peter, "I don't think the lads will be displeased with what we're doing to their music." As for life under the lights, Frampton reports that film making is a different cut from life on the concert stage. "Last night I was asleep at 10. I'm getting up when I usually go to bed, and I go to bed when I usually begin working."

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