People: Apr. 2, 1984

The snow had barely melted from Olympic Gold Medalist Bill Johnson’s skis before the brash Californian was burning up yet another course last week. Johnson’s current speeding is not on the slopes of Canada’s Whistler Mountain, where he won the final race of the men’s World Cup downhill season earlier this month, but on the horizontal track at California’s Riverside International Raceway. Johnson, who was gearing up for the pro-celebrity during the Toyota Grand Prix to be held this week in Long Beach, Calif., is typically nonchalant about trading in his skis for fast wheels. Says he: “Like skiing, it was tough at first, but I learned quickly.” Adds his father Wally: “He could always drive fast. The only time the cops caught him was when he was asleep.” Sure, but what about racing in the big leagues? “I’ll win,” says Johnson, proving that even on asphalt his cocky confidence doesn’t change.

“A brilliant piece of work that reflects the way that we live.” At least that’s how former California Governor Jerry Brown saw his startlingly modern portrait. But some legislators failed to share Brown’s view of the painting by Santa Monica Artist Don Bachardy, which they said looked more like spilled soy sauce and ketchup than art. Cracked State Senator Newton Russell: “Do we have any room in the head?” Aesthetically conservative lawmakers balked at putting the work, with its multicolored brush strokes, next to the sober portraits of Brown’s 33 predecessors. More pragmatic pols argued that there was simply no more room in the capitol’s main corridor, where pictures are traditionally hung. Last week the joint rules committee settled the issue by voting for the muse: the painting was consigned to a prominent—and solitary—place on the third-floor landing.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … Supergirl?

That’s right, earthlings. In Supergirl, which is due out this summer, we learn that the Man of Steel has a cousin, Kara, who fled the doomed city of Argo, a floating chip off their old home planet, Krypton, and landed in Midvale, Ill., where she assumed the identity of a Midwestern teenager. Got that? Anyway, with her muscle-bound relative away on an intergalactic mission, Kara, played by Newcomer Helen Slater, 20, is kept busy battling megabaddies like the evil witch Selena, portrayed by Faye Dunaway, 43. To prepare for her flying scenes, Slater talked with Christopher Reeve, who starred as the airborne hero in Superman I to III. Says Slater: “Once you get past that feeling of being helplessly trapped in a harness and suspended by wires, you can enjoy swooshing around 180 feet above the ground.”

No Irishman worth his bonnet would think of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day without a shamrock. Least of all the 700 lads of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards, serving with the British Army of the Rhine in West Germany. Since 1965, the happy task of bringing a bit o’ the green to the boys of the brigade has gone to Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. This year was no exception. To the stirring strains of the regimental band’s bag pipes, fifes and drums, the Queen Mum presented her troops with fresh sprigs of three-leaf clover, which they stuck into the braiding of their caps. Then the commanding officer cried, “Three cheers for the Queen Mother!” whereupon there was a rousing “Hip, hip, hooray!” As the band struck up the chords of the St. Patrick’s Day march and the men filed past their royal chief, Irish eyes were brightly smiling.

—By Guy D. Garcia