The Greek embassy's press officer in Washington introduced her as "the unofficial cultural ambassador-at-large for Greece," but Actress Melina Mercouri, 41, just hooted at that. Her remarks at embassy reception in her honor learned on one subject, however.

"What makes a man attractive?" a reporter asked. "If he likes you," replied Melina. "What makes a woman sexy?" If she enjoys to make love." With that explained Melina and her husband, Director Jules Dassin, whom she married last spring after they had lived together for ten years, hurried back to Manhattan to get on with rehearsals for Illya Darling. Opening on Broadway next March, the play is of course directed by Jules, with Melina trolloping through her old Never on Sunday role.

In San Francisco as an apostle of Culture in behalf of the Container Corporation of America, Communications Prophet Marshall McLuhan, 55, whose sibylline pronouncements have so often been models of noncommunication, explained the McLuhan phenomenon. "People make a great mistake," he said at a press conference, by trying to read me as if I were saying something." Amen.

Scandalized, the London Daily Mirror was spluttering: "Tight satin corselettes, bunny scuts and furry ears, bulging breasts and thighs--the ultimate in American vulgarity." Summing up, the Mirror snipped: "Princesses and bunnies don't mix." Well, they really didn't have to mix much at the Dockland Settlements Society's charity ball in London's Savoy Hotel. The ball's organizers thought it would be cute to have some Playboy Club bunnies hopping around selling programs, and that's what the gals were doing when Britain's Princess Margaret, 36, swept in with Lord Snowdon. Meg probably didn't see the cracks in the Mirror next morning. She and Tony stayed up at the ball until 4 a.m.

He referred to old age in his memoirs as "ce naufrage--that shipwreck." Still steaming along, Charles de Gaulle celebrated his 76th birthday. Or rather, he did not celebrate it. Since he loathes being reminded of the passing years, De Gaulle observed the occasion simply with a hard day's work at the office. A few birthdays downstream, former U.S. Vice President John Nance Garner is well past worrying about getting old. He really did celebrate his 98th birthday as more than 100 friends and neighbors turned up to wish him well at his house in Uvalde, Texas. "When you get to be my age," smiled Cactus Jack, "you've got to be feeling real good or real bad. I'm feeling real good."

Although the platter has just been pressed, it promises to become what the deejays call a "Golden Oldy." The vocalist: Senator Everett Dirlcsen, 70, cutting his first record album, entitled Gallant Men, Stories of the American Adventure. Backed by orchestra and chorus, Ev recites the history of the Mayflower, The Revolution and other landmarks of U.S. history, including the Gettysburg Address, which he performs as a sort of husky Bach fugue.

The camel-hide hassock, the bouquet of used plastic flowers, and the two secondhand bedspreads were quickly snapped up. At week's end, only an exercise machine and a leather suitcase remained in the window of Jeanette Varoutsos' Memorial Shop for Blood

Research in Washington. The Varoutsos family was not anxious to part with the satchel. After all, they said, "it has his initials on it, and the tag says The Honorable Hubert H. Humphrey.'" When the Vice President and his wife moved into their new southwest Washington apartment in October, they agreed to let their electrician, Paul Varoutsos, and his wife Jeanette auction off some of the junk at the old Humphrey house in Chevy Chase, Md., donating the proceeds to the local Children's Hospital. So far, the Humphreys' white elephants have raised $100.

She wears nylons and smokes an occasional cigarette, but Soeur Sourire still feels the effects of the cloister even though she has left the Dominican convent outside Brussels to pursue a secular career as a pop singer. "I am not yet ready to face audiences," smiled Janine Deckers, 38, the singing nun who now goes by the name of Luc-Dominique. So when she embarks early next year on a tour of the U.S., Sister Smile will probably do most of her singing on taped TV shows.

The fashion industry billed it as the Party of the Year, and the outfits at the fancy-dress blast for 900 at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art were indeed grand. One lady in an especially fetching getup was Shirlee Mae Fonda, 34, Actor Henry's wife, who kept everybody wide awake by appearing in her pajamas. Shirlee Mae had a grand time at the ball, and assured anyone who asked that she had no intention of sleeping in her white silk nighty-nights designed by Chester Weinberg. She was going to put them away "to save to wear to something big, like a premiere."

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