Even for the city of stars, it was a cosmic event at the Hollywood Bowl. On the program of "Music from Outer Space--a Star Wars Concert," was the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under Zubin Mehta, playing excerpts from Gustav Hoist's The Planets and Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra, better known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. For special effects, each instrument stand in the orchestra had been hooked up to a microphone controlled by sound engineers, and stabbing rays of laser light began crisscrossing the bowl. As the music changed in intensity, the laser beams changed in shape. Said an exuberant Zubin: "This was an adventure. I wouldn't do a Beethoven symphony this way, but surely other music could be enhanced with electronics." The appreciative audience of 17,500 gave the maestro a nine-minute ovation, and all agreed that the galactic goings-on were indeed out of this world.

"Big girls need big diamonds," says Supermodel Margaux Hemingway, who boasts of being 5-ft. 12-in. tall. Nevertheless, a 105.54-carat diamond rocked her. "It was so big, it looked fake," she says. The brobdingnagian bauble called the soleil d'or (golden sun), owned by a private American collector, was shown to Margaux during the taping of a French talk show. As a ring of security guards looked on nervously, Margaux tossed the stone up in the air and caught it in her well-photographed white teeth. "I'm good at peanuts too," she said modestly. Are diamonds Margaux's best friends? "I think they are beautiful," she admits. "I'd like to collect them as a hobby."

With a single stroke of the pun, Clive Barnes once had the power to make or break a Broadway show. But the mighty dance-and-drama critic of the New York Times was stripped of his theater post last March. Enter Australian Press Baron Rupert Murdoch, who hired Barnes for his afternoon paper, the New York Post. Says the Oxford-educated Barnes: "Anyone attached to the New York Times has a kind of instant credibility and instant glamour. One wonders how much that is a cloak bestowed by the paper and how much it is one's own. I felt it was more challenging to be without the Times rather than with the Times." Better yet, Barnes gets back on the aisle.

Ex-Las Vegas Showgirl Valerie Perrine is dusting off some old tricks for her role in NBC's spring special Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women. Perrine plays Lillian Lorraine, one of Ziegfeld's girlfriends, who wants to be a star in the famous follies. So Ziggie obligingly surrounds her with lavish sets. In one inflated scene, she descends a 36-ft. staircase amid 6,000 balloons--pure Pop corn.

On the Record

Melina Mercouri, upon winning a seat in the Greek parliament: "A close link has been established with the people. They treat me as if I am the Madonna of Paris who is going to perform miracles for them."

Art Buchwald, after listening to readings of works by political prisoners: "In this country, when you attack the Establishment, they don't put you in jail or a mental institution. They do something worse. They make you a member of the Establishment."

Margaret Mead, anthropologist, ruminating on matrimony: "Throughout history, females have picked providers for mates. Males pick anything."

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