Five dollars plus expenses bought a prank phone call from Martha Mitchell to the victim of your choice. ("Did you know the CIA is investigating you?" she asked one startled Montana resident.) Ms. Editor Gloria Steinem turned taxi-dancer for one $65 song; off to the side, Washington Post Watergate Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward sold phony spy disguises. In the kissing booth, Veteran Socialite Barbara Howar demonstrated her wares to Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee. The occasion: the second annual Counter Gridiron dinner, held to raise money for a journalists' legal-defense fund and the hackles of Washington's venerable, mostly male Gridiron Club. While Treasury Secretary William Simon and Economic Adviser Alan Greenspan dueled with water guns, dart throwers popped balloons attached to the pictures of Presidential Hopefuls Ronald Reagan, Mo Udall, Scoop Jackson and others. ("That's for people who are doing the primaries," said Candidate Gene McCarthy loftily.) One of the evening's biggest attractions proved to be the door prize -- a cassette tape recording of ex-President Nixon's last speeches.

"Ironically, I never use a baton," mused Maestro Jose Serebrier, who had gone to Mexico City as guest conductor for an Easter music festival. "I decided to use one for this performance because I thought it would help achieve greater musical control." Alas, it was manual control that was lacking when Serebrier stabbed himself through the hand in the midst of his appassionato performance. While blood splattered his white shirt, the wounded conductor went right on directing the 150-member chorus and brass-percussion ensemble in Mexican Composer Rodolfo Halffter's Proclamation for a Poor Easter. "I managed to get a handkerchief out of my pocket during a brief pause in the music," said Serebrier. "I stuffed it into my hand and made a fist and continued that way for another 20 minutes until the finale." After tetanus shots and a night's rest, he promised to fulfill the rest of his engagements, "but without a baton."

"I want my kids to be athletic," explained Rock Promoter Bill Graham. "I want to give an introverted kid the chance to play the tuba or be in the debating club or be a tackle." So to keep an impoverished San Francisco school system from canceling this year's athletic program for lack of money, Graham staged one of the biggest rock concerts since the glory years of Haight-Ashbury. Along with Varsity Stars Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Grateful Dead, Neil Young and Santana, even Marlon Brando showed up at Kezar Stadium to plead for contributions. Last week, just before the musicale got under way, however, Bay Area newspapers disclosed that the board of education had suddenly uncovered $2.1 million in extra funds. Graham called the concert his "finest hour," temporarily placed $300,000 in proceeds into a nonprofit corporation bank account, and demanded an explanation by the educators. Groused Graham: "Obviously there is a lack of administrative ability with the school district personnel."

Elliot Richardson's carriage ride to Buckingham Palace to present his credentials to Queen Elizabeth was nothing compared to the landslide reception the new Ambassador to Britain received a few days later. On a brief skiing holiday in Austria with his wife Anne and his two teen-age children, Richardson, 54, was leading his family down a steep slope near St. Anton when he "felt a powerful blow in my back, as if another skier had hit me." No skier, but a small avalanche swept Richardson some 50 ft. downhill, ripping loose his goggles, cap and ski poles. His family, who had avoided the full impact of the slide, looked on in relief as the familiar face soon emerged from beneath the snow. Was this an omen of hard times ahead in his new post? "Not at all," scoffed the ambassador later. "Just the other way around--we were very lucky."

"I am not going to allow a degenerate who could powerfully influence the young and weak-minded to enter 'this country and stage this sort of exhibition here," declared Australian Labor and Immigration Minister Clyde Cameron after banning a tour Down Under by eye-shadowed Vaude-Rocker Alice Cooper. "Isn't that crazy?" said Alice. "People still think I kill chickens onstage." Now on a 65-city tour through the U.S., Europe and Japan with his new act, Welcome to My Nightmare, Cooper vows to press on to Australia in September. His show, which will be shown as a 90-minute TV special later this month, features dancing skeletons, 7-ft. fake spiders and a 20-ft. spider web. Alice's defense of his props is somewhat cobwebbed too: "I have never done anything nearly as bloody as King Lear or Macbeth, and that's considered required reading in every high school in America."

"It solves the problem of having to rent a locker on the beach," boasts Designer Rudi Gernreich of his latest creation, the "self-cabana." The new outfit was demonstrated in Los Angeles by Model Peggy Moffitt, who introduced Gernreich's eye-opening topless bathing suit eleven years ago. Unlike the topless, the self-cabana will be a boon to the timid. It consists of a detachable canvas shower curtain suspended from a ring around a coolie hat, and can be closed while the wearer peels down to the essentials. "It was a light-hearted idea, but at the same time it makes sense," says the designer of his $90 portable pagoda. One further advantage: one size fits all.

Even Guru Ma ha raj Ji, 17, Perfect Master of the Divine Light Mission and well-known lover of sports cars, cabin cruisers and good living, may soon face some economic problems. At least he will if a British Columbia court believes Michael Garson, 35, the guru's former financial analyst. Garson claims that the mission has been more than $240,000 in debt for over a year and its donations declining. He testified as a witness in a case seeking to prevent U.S. Heiress Darby McNeal, 31, now a British Columbia resident, from signing over an estimated $400,000 inheritance to the Divine Light Mission. Each week about $35,000 in donations and income flow into the mission's Denver headquarters, said Garson, and "approximately 60% of the gross receipts are directed to maintain the life-style of the Maharaj Ji and those close to him. So far as I could see, the whole function of the organization was to provide an opulent existence for the Maharaj Ji."

Hollywood nostalgia continues to flourish, this time in a movie about the real-life love affair between the glamour king and queen of the '30s: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Last week Universal Pictures announced the signing of Actor James Brolin (of TV's Marcus Welby, M.D.) and Actress Jill Clayburgh (of Broadway's Pippin) for the title roles in Lombard and Gable. Director Sidney Furie spent five months interviewing 108 actors and actresses and watching over 100 film clips of would-be contenders before settling on his cast. "They dyed my hair blonde and cleaned my teeth, and now I'm ready to be a great and glamorous star," laughs Clayburgh. Brolin faces different problems. "Gable was a happy guy, worked strongly from his teeth, which were false, by the way. I'll work through my own teeth," he promised, "but they are going to put some plaster behind my ears to make them stick out a bit."

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