"Fourth floor ... children's wear ... handbags ... maternity ... pianos ... Ginsberg in the tearoom." What's this? Howling Allen Ginsberg, aging (52) poet-priest of'50s beat and '60s yippiedom reading his work in a Brooklyn department store? "Why not?" replies Ginsberg, as he prepares to recite such poems as Dope Fiend Blues, Punk Rock and Plutonian Ode. His familiar curl-fringed bald pate and face set off by silver granny glasses, he explains: "I get a lot more older people now, especially little old Jewish ladies. But I like a varied audience--little old ladies, homosexuals, weirdos." What he got, along with the college crowd, were little old ladies in amber slacks and matching sweaters, younger mothers cradling sleeping infants, sipping coffee and munching Danish, missing not so much as a munch over occasional lines ("Murder me in the gutter with orgasms!") of Ginsbergian raunch.

Problems of state? Not at all, as Queen Elizabeth II, on the first leg of her three-week tour of Arab Gulf states, paused to chat with the Emir of Bahrain, Sheik Isa Bin Sulman al-Khalifa.

The sovereigns were discussing the races that the Emir, knowing the Queen's proclivity for horseflesh, had arranged for her to see at the Bahraini equivalent of Ascot.

Cher. Just Cher. No Bono, no Allman at the end. That is the way in which one-half of one of Hollywood's most successful husband and wife teams has legalized her name after two bad marriages. And that is the way she will be billed in a March 7 NBC special, Cher ... and Other Fantasies. The concept is weak, but her 31 costumes and 22 wigs are dizzying. She appears as a slithery snakess and in a bare-belly ensemble which makes Cher resemble Ms. Tutankhamun. But perhaps the best is one in which she lounges like a leopard, and sports 27 ft. of hair.

"I thought it was time for me to tell the truth." That's what we thought we were getting all along from Sophia Loren, of course, but now she has told all to Writer A.E. Hotchner in Sophia: Living and Loving (Morrow; $9.95). Or nearly all. In Manhattan last week, at the beginning of a six-city U.S. promotion tour, Sophia shrugged off reports that Peter Sellers, who had starred with her in The Millionairess, was upset about not being cited as one of her loves. "I only wrote about things that were important to me," she replied, scarcely batting one of those magnificent green eyes. "Cary Grant was important to me. But if Peter feels strongly, let him write his own book." What is she doing next? Well, maybe moving from Paris, where she lives now, to New York City. "I have two young sons," she said, "and there is so much more opportunity for children in the U.S. than there is in Europe. And I like New York."

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