By Claudia Wallis

"I yam what I yam," shrugs Popeye the Sailor, which may be easy for him to say. But just try being Popeye for a while, as Robin Williams did while making a Robert Altman film about the old gob, set for release in December. Not only did the actor have to master a vocabulary of malapropisms far more complex than the nano-nanos of Mork from Ork. He had to cavort under the fierce Malta sun, wearing thick rubber arm pads to simulate the cartoon sailor's anvil forearms. He had to squint perpetually out of his left eye, speak in what he describes as a Liquid Wrench voice and consume untold quantities of canned spinach. Shelley Duvall's role as Olive Oyl was not much easier. "I had shin splints for weeks from those size-14, quintuple-A boots," she groans. Not to mention anvil forearms from toting Swee' Pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt) around and neck strain from craning to Oylesque proportions. Toughest of all was stifling the giggles. Says Duvall: "Once we were in costume, we just laughed at each other."

Boston may be 350 years old, but it celebrates its birthday like a little kid. No Tea Party, it was ice cream and cake for 12,000 who gathered in Boston Common for the conclusion of the city's five-month Jubilee 350 celebration. Naturally the goodies were scaled to suit the town's venerability: a 2,000-lb. creamy fudge sundae and a 14-ft. by 6-ft. field of butter-creamed pound cake adorned with a 5-ft. marzipan replica of historic Faneuil Hall. The cake, a six-month construction project for Entenmann's Bakery and a local architectural firm, was surrounded, of course, by 350 candles. Kevin White, 51, mayor of Boston for what seems like most of its history, lit the first candle and then was mercifully brief in his remarks to the drooling crowd: "This may be the only time that the phrase 'Let them eat cake' can be said both compassionately and joyously." Some four hours later, all 1,800 lbs. had been eaten, joyously and, one would hope, compassionately.

"Detroit has a world-class orchestra that is supported in a provincial way," huffed Detroit Symphony Orchestra Conductor Antal Dorati in an open letter to Orchestra Chairman Robert B. Semple. Therefore, said the maestro with characteristic bravado, I quit. Under Dorati, who arrived three years ago, the D.S.O. has become one of the crown jewels of the struggling "Detroit renaissance." So Semple acted fast. In a six-way conference call with Dorati at his home in Switzerland, board members urged the maestro to come back, at least for this season. Pleased with the furor he had created, Dorati agreed: "The city had to wake up and I sounded the alarm clock." He plans to do more than that. Next April 9, his 75th birthday, Dorati will donate $50,000 to the orchestra. Says he: "There are quite a few people in Detroit who, if they gave in the same proportion to their own wealth, would have to come up with $5 million each."

The hearing's leadoff witness was intoxicatingly lovely, but she had some sobering words for the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. Cathy Lee Crosby, hostess of TV's That's Incredible and former tennis pro, lashed out at the Government's heavyhanded antidrug campaigns which, she says, overemphasize marijuana control and use "scare tactics, overwhelming statistics and lies." Describing herself as a onetime social "dabbler" in drugs, Crosby called for a more honest approach in high school narcotics education. She also produced a list of 181 athletes and stars willing to join in the battle. Among them: Carol Burnett, Fran Tarkenton and Andy Gibb. Says Crosby: "One of the best ways to help students with peer pressure is to fight it with celebrity pressure." -- By Claudia Wallis

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