Soviet Poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko has turned to that most blatantly capitalistic of occupations, making movies. He stars in Take-Off, a film about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, celebrated by the Soviets as a pioneer of space travel. One Moscow critic called Yevgeni's performance patchy. Nevertheless, Yevtushenko gushed that playing the rocket man "left a tremendous imprint on my own destiny." It was tough, declared Moscow's Establishment poet, to play someone "far more interesting, better and more important than I am. I had to concentrate all my inner resources, find everything good in my soul, and try and get a little closer to the image of that remarkable man of genius." Yevtushenko does not want to act again. But he is eager to direct a film, preferably one with the same boyhood-in-Siberia theme as his first novel. He'll probably hold out for points.

You wake up one morning and realize that you're about to turn 40. What do you do? In Middle Age Crazy Bruce Dern attempts to bury his anxiety pangs by buying a Porsche and having a one-nighter with a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. Dern recovers his senses and goes home for an alcoholic reconciliation with Wife Ann-Margret in a 105DEG hot tub. That husband and wife keep their clothes on in the tub is understandable; they're probably worried about an R rating. But don't they know that too much booze in a hot tub can produce a profound lethargy? It might even cook up a script about a 40-year-old man with anxiety pangs who has an affair with a Dallas Cowgirl and so on and so on and so on.

Who is that cowboy in wrap-around sunglasses? Can it be the Lone Ranger? Clayton Moore, 64, who long played the daring rider of the plains, has been restrained by court order from using the trademark mask in nostalgia appearances. Wrather Corp., which owns the masked-man rights and plans to release a new Lone Ranger film, complained that Moore has grown too old to impersonate the fearless avenger of evil. Moore fought back by retaining his familiar white hat and, until the case is settled, wearing sunglasses. "I'm not happy with the sunglasses," admitted the western hero who had to wear shades. "I want the mask back. But the Lone Ranger code is fair play, law and order."

How do you say goodbye to John Mitchell, Rose Mary Woods, the California Angels and Bill Garcia? Richard and Pat Nixon, moving eastward into a Manhattan condominium, did it with two poolside margarita, taco, guacamole and fruit kebab parties at La Casa Pacifica. Former Attorney General Mitchell, marking his 66th birthday, was guest of honor at the first, a reunion to which 250 old hands of the Nixon Administration were invited. "John Mitchell has friends and he stands beside them," said the ex-President of the man who went to jail for obstructing justice in the Watergate investigations. The second party featured one of Nixon's favorite teams along with 300 other guests who had in various ways been helpful at La Casa. Not the least was Garcia of San Clemente, who was Nixon's plumber on the West Coast.

It looked like the Roaring Seventies in downtown Chicago: squealing tires, wailing police sirens, a battered sedan careening through crowds to wham, bang, crash its way through a shattering plate-glass window of the city's Richard J. Daley civic center. Then cried a voice: "That's a take!" Saturday Night Live Stars Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, for whom the car was crashed by stuntmen, are filming The Blues Brothers, a story about two off-key crooners out to save the mortgage on the orphanage in which they grew up. The movie calls for SWAT teams, National Guardsmen, police cars, helicopters, tanks. All that's missing, in fact, is the presence himself, Chicago's late Mayor Richard Daley. Just as well. In Daley's day no movie was made in the Windy City before the mayor checked the script. Crashing cars and smashing windows in his civic center? Not on Hizzoner.

Squads of mobsters and meanies never ruffled one tossed hair of Farrah Fawcett's head in all her years as one of Charlie's Angels. But Israeli shoppers are something else. Making a promo appearance in a Tel Aviv department store, Fawcett was mobbed so enthusiastically by fans who have followed her exploits by means of Hebrew subtitles that it took four bodyguards to whisk her to safety in an elevator, where she calmly blew bubbles with her bubble gum. But the jostling aggravated an ailing leg, and Fawcett was forced to hobble on crutches to watch a contest selecting her Israeli lookalike. About the only hosts unhappy over her tour were some members of the diamond exchange in Tel Aviv, where normally frantic trading halted while the golden girl oohed over a 17-carat diamond worth $1.5 million. "She cost us a lot of money," growled one trader on the exchange.

"It beats jogging," insists Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa, the tam-o'-shantered semanticist and college president turned junior Senator from California. That is why Hayakawa, 73, takes regular tap lessons, frequently practicing his steps before a mirror to make certain his buck-and-wings are smooth. Back home or in Washington, the Senator works out to the strains of such golden oldies as Sentimental Journey and A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly he is not. But, then, what do Fred and Gene know about marking up Senate bills or pursuing points of order?

Everyone should be as un-copable as Erma Bombeck, the frumpy suburban housewife who masquerades as a success ful syndicated columnist and morning-show television commentator about things frivolous and familiar. Two months before publication, Bombeck's latest volume, Aunt Erma's Cope Book, has one of the biggest advance runs in publishing history: 700,000 copies in two printings, of which 500,000 have been snapped up by bookstores. If the huge press run does not sell, Aunt Erma has a remedy. Says she: "Either we're going to have a lot of doorstops around the Bombeck house or we'll mail them out as Christmas cards."

In one of her best-known movie performances, Susan Sarandon scored as Brooke Shields' momma in Pretty Baby, a saga about a New Orleans house of you know what. Momma, who is 30, has pretty good gams herself. In her latest movie, Something Short of Paradise, Sarandon plays a feminist writer who wants love and security but not necessarily the marriage commitment that her partner, David Steinberg, insists on. Says Sarandon: "It's a pretty modern love story, which means everyone is fairly confused." In any case, the best shots of her are thigh in the sky.

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