Texas-Sized Birthday Boost

“That’s right, you’re not from Texas . . . but Texas wants you anyway,” sang Lyle Lovett in Austin.

Texas never admits it needs a shot in the arm, but the Lone Star State got one anyway last weekend with the birthday celebration for Gov. Ann Richards--an event that raised an astonishing $2 million for her coming reelection campaign.

Oh--so you thought the popular governor was a lead-pipe cinch to make a second term? Well, Richards doesn’t want to take any chances, since it looks as if George W. Bush--the son of the former President and First Lady--may well be her opponent.

Anyway, the icing on Richards’ 60th birthday cake came in the form of Julia Roberts. Roberts’ husband, the aforesaid Lovett, was one of the stars of the celebration, and everybody’s tongue was hanging out in hope of seeing Roberts. She was there, all right, sporting her famous long tresses, but Roberts didn’t talk to anybody, and her mere movie-star presence was, as the saying goes, “all she wrote.”

At least we know that Lovett and Roberts are still together, honeymooning on the road and very happy about it. He made that clear onstage, when he agreed with his co-host, actress Alfre Woodard, who introduced him as a man who “has it all.”

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Also showing up for Richards was another co-host, the writer Larry L. King, plus the great Willie Nelson, who must be the most generous performer in America, Nanci Griffith, Little Joe Hernandez, the formidable Don Henley, as well as three speakers--that grand “professional provincial,” Molly Ivins, former Dallas Cowboy Thomas Henderson and yours truly.

Kenneth Brown and the Resurrection Community Choir also did their stuff, closing the evening with Richards onstage in her own Navajo/Santa Fe-type Western duds, singing “Amazing Grace.”