By Guy D. Gacia

It was described by a publicist as a "very simple" wedding, but for the denizens of the Mexican town of Cabo San Lucas, the marriage last week of Rolling Stone Keith Richards and his longtime girlfriend, Model Patti Hansen, 27, was more flash than fiesta. Best Man Mick Jagger, 40, flew in from Barbados, where he has been under cover with Girlfriend Jerry Hall, 27. Richards' divorced parents were there: Doris, in from London, and Bert, in from New York. Also present were Patti's mother, sister, three brothers and a few fishermen. After the short ceremony, guests were treated to the mellow sounds of a mariachi band. Looks like this tuxedo-clad Stone, who turned 40 the same day, may finally be starting to slow down the beat.

The camera pans a busy Manhattan street, then zooms in on a pert brunette whose spunk and bright-eyed appeal tell us she is, well, That Girl. Still a role model for today's single woman, Marlo Thomas, 45, has grown up since her carefree days as the star of the popular 1960s television series. In The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck, a two-hour TV movie filmed in Chicago and Springfield, Ill., Thomas plays a divorced woman who is harassed by the police in their search for her fugitive lover, played by Kris Kristofferson, 47. Says Thomas of her latest television persona: "She's past That Girl but is not quite a feminist. She's like a lot of divorced women--somewhere in the middle."

It's the first day of 1984. Through bleary eyes, you tune into television, to be greeted by "Good morning, Mr. Orwell." Oh no, has the British author's dark and malevolent fable of total totalitarianism finally arrived? Not really. Simply a group of avant-gardists greeting the new year with a public television, cross-Atlantic extravaganza dedicated to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and "the first media prophet and philosopher." That's the view of the program's creator, Video Virtuoso Nam June Paik, 51, who intends to show television as a "liberating" force, not fraught with the "negative aspects" emphasized by Orwell. To this end, he has enlisted the talents of a curious assortment of the old-and new-wave garde, including Performance Artist Laurie Anderson, 36, Composers John Cage, 71, and Philip Glass, 46, Choreographer Merce Cunningham, 64, Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg, 57, Rock Singer Peter Gabriel, 33, and Cellist Charlotte Moorman, 44, once celebrated for her topless playing. Directed by Paik from the Pompidou Center in Paris and by George Plimpton, 56, acting as host at a studio in Manhattan, the one-hour live broadcast is described by Paik as a "celebration." Presumably, Big Brother will not be watching.

"It's best if you just do it," said a deadpan Prince Charles, 36, when confronted with pie-slinging Subject Kati Slater, 15, during a visit to a newly opened West Indian community center in Manchester, England. She did indeed do it. And Charles got it in the princely puss. Steve Starkie, who was standing near by, found it amusing--until Charles proved that he too can dish it out and left Steve foaming at the mouth. The Prince was, as one British newspaper put it, "His Royal Pieness."

--By Guy D.Garcia

On the Record

David Shire, 46, composer of the new Broadway musical about having children, Baby: "You can sort of be married, you can sort of be divorced, you can sort of be living together, but you can't sort of have a baby. It's a simple primary decision. Do you have it or do you not? And in answering that question, you have to define your relationship."

Isaac Bashevis Singer, 79, Nobel laureate, on his diet: "I did not become a vegetarian for my health. I did it for the health of the chickens."

Iris Murdoch, 64, British novelist: "The only people in the world I am envious of are those with pools, especially heated ones."