Champagne corks popped, glasses of ouzo were hoisted, and a chocolate cake was trundled out bearing the whipped-cream legend: "To Alexander, the Pride of the Family." The family had gathered at Aristotle's seaside villa south of Athens to celebrate the 21st birthday of Alexander Onassis, heir apparent to his father's fortunes. Earlier, the soft Aegean wind had carried rumors that Alexander would commemorate his coming of age by defying his father and announce plans to marry New Zealand-born Fiona Thyssen, 36, his frequent companion and 16 years his senior. But Ari is a tough man to defy. When the birthday party moved on to a local bouzouki nightclub, Alexander asked his father, "May I take some whisky?" Aristotle reportedly replied: "Take anything you want--except Fiona."

She looked more like a reject from the cast of Oliver! than the star of Sweet Charity, but Shirley MacLaine insisted that "there is more to life than worrying about clothes." In London briefly to promote Charity, Shirley offered a few more upbeat views that roundly belied her traditional image as Hollywood's wispy, well-meaning waif. On politics: "Politics is not relevant to me any more. What matters is social revolution in the West." On pot: "I smoke pot, but I'm not addicted to it. I'm not addicted to anything except being alive. I can get high on a sunset." On marriage: "Monogamy is not one of the inherent natural forces."

Supported by an aide and two nurses, former Portuguese Premier Antonio Salazar appeared on the balcony of his palatial Lisbon house to greet the crowd that had gathered to honor his 80th birthday and the 41st anniversary of his rise to power. It was the venerable strongman's first public appearance since he suffered a massive stroke seven months ago, and for a moment he looked like his old imposing self, raising his right hand in a characteristic gesture. Later he appeared on television, and in a pathetically feeble voice thanked the nation for its concern for his welfare. No one has yet told him that he is no longer Premier; he was replaced last September by Marcello Caetano, and he rejects even the gentler suggestion that he should think about retiring. "I cannot go," he recently told his housekeeper. "There is no one else."

His name-calling days are probably not over, but in future Poet Allen Ginsberg may be more selective about his targets. In Tucson to give a poetry reading at the University of Arizona, Ginsberg held a typically empurpled news conference; then he began berating Arizona Republic Correspondent Bob Thomas about a story that had appeared in the Tucson Daily Citizen criticizing the poet for his self-proclaimed sexual aberrations. When Thomas finally walked away, the guru followed and shouted a string of obscenities at him. Mother, whose day is celebrated this week, seemed to have a prominent place in the epithets. Whereupon Thomas wheeled and clouted Ginsberg twice on his shrub-bordered mouth. "Ah, those were only words I was speaking!" cried Ginsberg. Replied Thomas in a hard, code-of-the-West drawl: "They may have been only words to you, Mr. Ginsberg, but out here they are fighting words."

Admitting that their campaign slogan would undoubtedly produce a "blip-blip" on TV, Author Norman Mailer and Writer Jimmy Breslin formally announced their respective candidacies for New York City mayor and city council president. What's more, they were serious about it. "We are sentimental about the past," said Mailer. "We want New York to thrive again, to be a city famous for the charm, ferocity, elegance, strength, calm and racy character of its separate neighborhoods." The Mailer-Breslin plan is to detach the city from New York State and make it a city-state of its own, organized on the basis of homogeneous neighborhoods that would run their own schools, garbage collection, police and fire departments. The proposal, argued Mailer, should appeal equally to radicals and to conservatives fed up with overweening government control. "I am asking that the Left and Right blow, each separately, one-half of their minds." The campaign slogan? "No more bull ."

As if he did not have troubles enough grappling with President Nixon's belt-tightening budget, U.S. Budget Director Robert Mayo must endure a new nickname around Washington. Recently he briefed newsmen and legislators on the President's fiscal policies. A local television station carried the report, but in a fit of homonymous confusion a TV technician flashed a picture of Red China's Mao Tse-tung. Now the Budget Director's unofficial title is "Mr. Chairman" Mayo.

Waterford is a spruce seaside town in southern Ireland known for its cut glass and warm hospitality. But even Gaelic graciousness has its bounds. In Chicago for St. Patrick's Day, Waterford's Mayor William Jones invited his counterpart, Richard Daley, to Ireland this summer and planned to offer him the keys to the city. All very nice, except that the Irish are not entirely sure that they want King Richard on the ould sod. Waterford's Labor Party termed the invitation "a shameful action," declaring: "We are not satisfied that Mayor Daley has cleared himself of the charge of being responsible for the police brutality that took place in Chicago during the Democratic Convention." Fumed a columnist in the Irish Times: "Waterford might just as well consider it a cause for celebration if it discovered that Adolf Eichmann's and Ian Paisley's grandmothers were Waterford women."

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