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A Surfeit of Bimbos

In The Desert Rose Larry McMurtry’s heroines never blossom into believable women. The Franchise is a tough tale about graft and the gridiron.

The Roadside Eye

Robert Frank took casual but expressive snapshots that captured dramas of American life and altered the course of modern photography.

Texas Primer: The Open Container

Texans are sometimes driven to drink.

Mayor of the Unfinished City

To become more than a perpetual boom town, Dallas needs a foresighted leader and astute politician. Is Starke Taylor the man?

Taking Over

It’s a bank-eat-bank world out there.

Touts

Bench warmers and good lookers.

In the Boredom of the Storm

Hurricane Alicia roared through Houston, but somehow it seemed much more real on TV than it did outside my hotel room window.

State Secrets

The National Weather Service blows Hurricane Alicia; how the storm will blow insurance rates; Texas congressmen vie for a plum committee seal; a suggestion for spending the spare $2 million.

Roar of the Crowd

Texas Monthly Reporter

Texas becomes a disaster zone; a magazine empire enters the twilight zone; the district attorney’s office in San Antonio is a war zone; problems crop up in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport flight zone.

Daniel’s Lot

In Daniel the hero has to bear the burn of his parents’ treason, while the audience must endure a lot of misery. The Moon in the Gutter is a film in search of eclipse. Education Rita is an enjoyable elective.

Medicine To Go

Minor emergency centers are fine for those who don’t need much more than a Band-Aid, a throat culture, or a summer-camp physical.

Rose-Colored Ivories

Is Claudio Arrau the last great Romantic pianist?

Wal-Marts Across Texas

An Arkansas chain has refused to discount small-town buying power. Now it’s ousting local mom-and-pop operations throughout Texas and even giving K Mart a run for its money.

Behind the Lines

Playing by the rules.

Books Only A Mother Could Love

You too can be an author-if you’re willing to publish the book yourself. All you have to have is a stack of paper, a tale to tell, and a couple of thousand bucks.

Passing the Bucks

Football recruiting makes the NCAA see red, but SMU sees orange.

Johnson & Johnson

In a glass-and-steel world of Houston skyscrapers, there was nothing like an art deco obelisk or a pink Gothic cathedral until architect Philip Johnson.

Texas, a Long, Long, Long, Long, Time Ago

When armadillos weighed three tons and the long horns were on dinosaurs.

Pros at Cons

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the scams.

Touts

This one’s a real sleeper.

State Secrets

It’s Post time in the race to take over Houston’s morning newspaper, and here are the odds; Doctor Death takes a holiday in Dallas; a bank merger causes frowns at Fulbright & Jaworski; does Jim Mattox have a future?

Roar of the Crowd

Texas Monthly Reporter

Texas highways show their age; Houston punks show their colors; foster parents show they care; A&M shows its macaws; cattle ranchers show their breeding.

Puzzle

Texas Primer: Caprock

Across the Panhandle stretches a thin red line that divides doughty plains dwellers from Texas’ lesser changed.

Blues at His Fingertips

Bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan showcases his powerhouse guitar on a nationally released record. Also on new LPs are fellow Texans, from country king George Jones to Austin cutups the Big Boys.

Squeaky Wheels

Independent oilmen are still for free enterprise, but these days they also expect a little favoritism from Uncle Sam.

History’s Nebbish

The tale of schlemiels schlemiel, Zelig is as funny, endearing, and slight as Woody Allen himself. Staying Alive is suicidal. The quick Grey Fox jumps nimbly the pitfalls of making a western.

Panorama Camera

With their 350-degree camera, photographers recorded Houston in the early 1900’s. Half a century later two young photographers found the camera the same but Houston vastly changed.

The Big Con

From his early days in Big Spring, Eugene Anderson wasn’t what he seemed; neither was the mysterious element he later claimed turned water into fuel.

Love in the Slammer

Sometimes women fall in love with men behind bars, but once the bars disappear, the love itself may become the prison.

A Chamber of Music

Jim Cartwright has a classic case of obsession-he owns thousands of records. Under Sung Kwak the Austin Symphony has gone from mediocre to memorable.

Behind the Lines

The burning cactus.

Catcher of the Awry

Frederick Barthelme’s Moon Deluxe is a collection of cockeyed tales about stucco camels, supermarket sec and other modern curiosities. In Short Circuit Michael Mewshaw finds fault with the nasty world of professional tennis. The urban vignettes of Laura Furman’s Watch Time Fly range from skillful to so-so.

Secret Places

In the hidden corners of Texas’ outback—in foresty swamp and shimmering desert—there are a few places that are still primeval.

Hi! I’m Jimmy Dean and I’d Like You to Try My Pure Pork Sausage

The meat products business is no bed of top hogs.

Touts

Have map, will travel; will dance, please ask me.

State Secrets

James Watt’s plan to thin the Big Thicket; the worst bridges in Texas; Republicans try to turn Clintgate into another Sharpstown; the Texas Supreme Court socks home buyers on the chin.

Roar of the Crowd

Beach, beach, beach.

Texas Monthly Reporter

A tale of tree cities in the Panhandle; upscale fitness at the new Dallas Y; a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear with Riders in the Sky; another new plan to unclog Houston’s arteries.

Puzzle

Letter perfect.

Texas Primer: Conjunto

Tex plus Mex plus electric guitar plus accordion equals... art.

Slower Than a Speeding Bullet

The third time is not always the charm. In Superman III our hero finds himself in a blue funk, and his melancholia is the liveliest part of the show. The Survivors doesn’t make it. Escape your little gray cells and enjoy The Man With Two Brains. Trading Places exchanges wit

The Death Shift

The three-to-eleven evening shift, Bexar County Hospital, San Antonio: nurse Genene Jones was on duty in the pediatric intensive care unit, and for months babies kept having mysterious—sometimes fatal—emergencies. Why?

Something for Everyone

The ambitious San Antonio Festival went all out, with 73 acts-everything from Dallas ballet to Berlin opera, from Robert Merrill to Sarah Vaughan. Houston Grand Opera and Leonard Bernstein both made mistakes in A Quiet Place.

Anyplace But Texas

Texans may secretly yearn to live east of the Mississippi or across the Atlantic, but the next best thing is a subdivision named Yorktown, Nottingham County, or village Green West.

Behind the Lines

The revelation of the geese.

Personal Space

Houston’s brash “alternative spaces” are doing more than the city’s mainstream galleries to keep Texas art fresh, rich and diverse.

Chilly Scenes of Dinner

The old tin tray, it ain’t what it used to be. Today’s TV dinners have become “frozen cuisine.”