Columns

Chamber Music

Potty training doesn’t have to be the great bugaboo of raising children.

Danger: Low Voltage

The Electric Horseman got its wires crossed. Kramer vs. Kramer is an above-average film taken from a below-average novel.

The Foreign Legion

Dallas Civic Opera is a grand old lady who knows her European opera. But sometimes she gets a little senile.

Lord, Won’t You Buy Me Some Time on TV?

Preachers Robert Schuller and Rex Humbard have zeroed in on the modern way to reach a congregation: electronically.

Behind the Lines

Why Houston has the best schools in the state.

Ramblin’ Rose

Eminent art critic Barbara Rose has assembled an exhibit of paintings of the eighties. Oh, yeah? Where did she get them?

Life After SMU

When Stage #1 opened as a halfway house for theater graduates from SMU, the participants weren’t pitied but applauded.

Doing the Greenville Avenue Boogie

By reputation Dallas is a staid city. But there is one strip where Dallas is fevered, excessive, and lascivious, and where every night is party night.

Willie and the Power Boys

New records from Texas’ die-hard country, rock, and punk musicians.

Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven . . .

The Panhandle is home for the country’s only H-bomb assembly plant. Aren’t you glad we told you?

Love For Sale

The Midland Jazz Classic wasn’t cheap, but it was worth the price.

Catch a Riding Star

A boy and his horse reach great heights in The Black Stallion. The Rose, with Bette Midler, is no American beauty.

Terminal Case

Galveston has withstood tidal waves, hurricanes, gamblers, and tourists. Can it survive a superport?

The Trill of It All

Houston and Dallas opera companies could fudge on shoe sizes when it came to casting Cinderellas, but the voices had to fit just so.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen

A Dallas rabbi says Christmas is a form of persecution for Jews; a Disciples of Christ pastor discusses suffering with equanimity.

Behind the Lines

Two questions about school desegregation: Is busing the only way? Are integrated schools inferior?

Dr. Updike

John Updike’s problems are our pleasures. Mean Scrooge McDuck returns in a nostalgic comic-book collection.

Why the Alley?

For the sake of the audience, it’s a question that needs to be asked. College productions of A Doll’s House show why actors go to school. Fort Worth has good actors and good producers—but not, alas, in the same theater.

The Long Nights of Preston Jones

A remembrance of the late Texas playwright who spent his days and nights pondering imponderables.

Zandra and the Laughing Elk

Al Neiman’s Fortnight the attractions varied between eccentric Americans and somnambulant British.

Tune into the Eighties

New stars in sight are big and bright—deep in the heart of Texas.

The Vampire Killer

Werner Herzog reverently remade the classic 1921 version of Nosferatu. He should have left scary enough alone.

Looking on the Bright side

The Ultimate Croissant

With open arms—that is, mouths—Texas welcome a new breed of bakery.

The Big Loser

A young Russian defector blows his chance to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and goes on to find fame and fortune.

Go-Getters and Holders-On

The difference between jogging with the Lord and just walking along behind.

Behind the Lines

If the eighties are here, where did the seventies go.

Memoir of the Soil

A.C. Greene’s singular, exquisite vision of West Texas; a thriller that’s better than it should be; and a historical novel with too much history.

The Thin Man

Albert Giacometti’s sculptured figures, now at the Dallas Museum of Fine Art, are tall, emaciated, uncomprehending—and breathtaking.

Three’s Company

Some Texas funny people get serious about their jokes.

East Meets Wet

The Dalai Lama encounters Houston. He finds it good.

Big D, Big Red, and the Big Apple

The Recovery Room band is at home in Dallas and New York, too.

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Silence may be golden, but not to a stutterer.

Over There

Filmmakers flub: Schlesinger’s Yanks, Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal, and Jewison’s—And Justice for All.

Kindred Spirits

Don’t both with séances or clairvoyants. There is a much better way to contact the shades of the past.

Semiconductors

The leaders of Houston and Dallas symphony orchestras start off the season with two perplexing concert series.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Joining God’s army at Berachah Church in Houston; joining the fine families of Beaumont’s Trinity United Methodist.

Behind the Lines

A modest proposal for the eighties.

The Little Red Warehouse

Institutional green walls and stuffy classrooms are not a part of Houston architect Eugene Aubry’s Awty School design.

Mission Possible

The Spoils of War

ëTis the season for plays about the Viet Nam War. Louisiana’s Huey P. Long is captured (almost) by Texans.

Titles Texans

Beneath certain Stetsons lies a crown.

After the Fall

Nicaragua’s new junta may discover it’s easier to depose a dictator than to rebuild a ravaged country.

This Is The Way The Apocalypse Ends . . .

Coppola’s multimillion-dollar labor of love is finally finished. We think.

It’s a Lulu!

Even incomplete, Lulu was a great opera. Now it’s finished, and Santa Fe Opera got the stage the coveted U.S. premiere.

City Transit Gloria

Hymns and admonitions for the best and worse bus services in Texas.

A Joyful Noise

At St. Patrick’s in San Antonio they sing and dance—during mass. At Lakewood Assembly of God in Dallas they sing and sing and sing . . .

Behind the Lines

Give me land, lots of land . . .

The Right Wings

In his new book Tom Wolfe poses this question: were the Mercury astronauts men or monkeys? Thomas Thompson changes his journalistic setting from Houston to the far East to produce a book about an astonishing criminal.

The Beautiful and the Damned

Town and Country magazine came to Texas to record our sophistication, wealth, and savoir faire—and all hell broke loose.