She made her first big splash ten years ago, as a body-painted bikini girl on the old Laugh-In show. Now Goldie Hawn has switched to basketball scrimmages with the Harlem Globetrotters. "Playing with these guys, you've got to keep a stiff elbow and a stiff upper lip," explained the 5-ft. 6-in. Hawn, who taped the meeting for her March 1 TV special on CBS. More elbow and less lip might have worked better. Against the Globetrotters, Goldie came up short. sb During a vacation trip to Argentina last summer, Albuquerque Mayor David Rusk (son of former Secretary of State Dean Rusk) learned that a group of Buenos Aires rugby players were planning a U.S. visit. Rusk, an old rugger from his days at the University of California, naturally invited the boys home to New Mexico for a match against the locals. And that might explain what the mayor, at 37 years of age and a stocky 215 Ibs., was doing in an Albuquerque Aardvarks B team uniform, facing the Cardinal Newman Old Boys Rugby Club of Buenos Aires. Panting, mostly. Final score: Old Boys 11, Aardvarks 0. "I know the game; I played it for 14 years," gasped his honor at half time. "But I haven't played for the last six." Ah, the perfect host.

His Senate appearances last summer drew millions of TV viewers, but these days Bert Lance is settling for smaller audiences as a commentator for WXIA-TV in Atlanta. "No man in the country has had wider experience in the techniques of investigative reporting," joked Carter Countrymen Jody Powell and Ham Jordan in a good-luck telegram from the White House. Or a better sense of his public. In his first l 1/2-minute spiel, Lance called for a permanent tax cut "for the working people of America," then later reflected on the chances of his minishow going national. "That would be the easiest way," he conceded, "to get back to Washington." sb

It all seemed "beautiful but a little scaring" to Italian Tenor Luciano Pavarotti. No, not New York's newest layer of flaky white; rather, he was describing the Metropolitan Opera's first solo recital, which he was about to give at Lincoln Center. His audience: some 4,000 Met patrons plus 12 million public-television viewers. "When opera went to TV," reflected Pavarotti, "people could see it's not so stupid as they thought if it's well done. It's like antique furniture." Come again, Luciano? "You either like it or you don't." sb

It was a heady victory to be elected the first black mayor of New Orleans, but Ernest ("Dutch") Morial's first task was to find a job. He had left his state judgeship to run for city hall, and there was no paycheck in sight until his inauguration in May. "This is no joke," grumbled the politician after the election. "I'm looking through the classified ads." Morial is looking no more. Since his plight got some national press, the mayor-to-be has landed a fellowship at Harvard's Institute of Politics, a once-a-week teaching assignment at the University of New Orleans, and an urban affairs consultant's post with a local TV station. "Being mayor will require that I work 20 hours a day," said Morial, when asked about his temporary three-job schedule. "It's good training."

On the Record

Bruno Kreisky, Austrian Chancellor, describing his visits to Moscow and Warsaw: "I insist on a working schedule only. After 30 years in politics, I know what steelworks look like and how china is made."

Walter Matthau, on being 57: "It's too old for a man to be an actor. I'd like to be in an office, picking up the phone, buying and selling bushels of wheat."

Karl Wallenda, on why he still walks the circus high wire at age 73: "I like to do things that other people cannot do. I can still do it, so I do it."

Michael Crichton, physician, author (The Andromeda Strain) and director (Coma): "I think we can all agree that American medicine, the way it is now, is not successful. But there's no evidence that the Government can run anything. If you like the Post Office, you'll like socialized medicine."

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