The San Antonio-born and -based author of the Percy Jackson series and the first installment in the 39 Clues series is my guest this week.

I’m impressed with Oklahoma’s offense, and with Sam Bradford in particular — I couldn’t bear to watch them play all season except against Texas, so for me this was a case of reality justifying hype. But their defense did give up 41 points, which is a lot, even against a ranked team. (They gave up fewer points to Texas and Tech, better teams without question.)

Anyway, Mack Brown had it right on ABC tonight:

“It will be hard to explain to our kids why Missouri and Oklahoma are playing, and we beat both of them.”

For all the talk of playoffs and style points, the fact is that head-to-head is the ultimate tiebreaker. And we know what happened in Dallas.

The magazine industry is in freefall, and companies are cutting not just muscle but fat and bone. And chauffered sedan usage. Keith Kelly of the New York Post reports that the Richie Riches of our business, the moneyed elites who publish Vanity Fair, Vogue, and other top glossies, are sacrificing in their own unique way. A little.

The winter months will be a lot chillier at Condé Nast.

The Condé Nasties are expected to get a memo from CEO Charles Townsend telling them that Town Car use is being cut way back.

On top of that, the hardworking assistants who used to be able to get the company to pay for working lunches at their desks will no longer have that luxury.

Further, the glitzy publisher that used to give virtually everyone carte blanche when it came to magazine and newspaper subscriptions is cutting that perk out, as well.

One source said the memo could arrive as soon as today.

Not to worry — if the tsuris we’re facing keeps up, there won’t be magazines and newspapers to subscribe to.

The charming, quirky New Yorker writer is my guest this week.

It’s hilarious. And we are honored to be worthy material for a story.

I approached Texas Monthly’s cover story on “The Top 50 BBQ Joints in Texas” this summer the way a regular reader of People might approach that magazine’s annual “Sexiest Man Alive” feature—with the expectation of seeing some familiar names. There was no reason to think that the list’s top tier—the five restaurants judged to be the best in the state—would look much different than it had the last time a survey was published, in 2003. In recent years, Hollywood may have seen some advances in physical training and cosmetic surgery, but barbecue restaurants still tend to retain their lustre much longer than male heartthrobs do. In fact, I’ve heard it argued that, absent some slippage in management, a barbecue restaurant can only get better over time: many Texas barbecue fanatics have a strong belief in the beneficial properties of accumulated grease.

In discussions of Texas barbecue, the equivalent of Matt Damon and George Clooney and Brad Pitt would be establishments like Kreuz Market and Smitty’s Market, in Lockhart; City Market, in Luling; and Louie Mueller Barbecue, in Taylor—places that reflect the barbecue tradition that developed during the nineteenth century out of German and Czech meat markets in the Hill Country of central Texas. (In fact, the title of Texas Monthly’s first article on barbecue—it was published in 1973, shortly after the magazine’s founding—was “The World’s Best Barbecue Is in Taylor, Texas. Or Is It Lockhart?”) Those restaurants, all of which had been in the top tier in 2003, were indeed there again in this summer’s survey. For the first time, though, a No. 1 had been named, and it was not one of the old familiars. “The best barbecue in Texas,” the article said, “is currently being served at Snow’s BBQ, in Lexington.”

I had never heard of Snow’s. That surprised me. Although I grew up in Kansas City, which has a completely different style of barbecue, I have always kept more or less au courant of Texas barbecue, like a sports fan who is almost monomaniacally obsessed with basketball but glances over at the N.H.L. standings now and then just to see how things are going. Reading that the best barbecue in Texas was at Snow’s, in Lexington, I felt like a People subscriber who had picked up the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue and discovered that the sexiest man alive was Sheldon Ludnick, an insurance adjuster from Terre Haute, Indiana, with Clooney as the runner-up.

The energy magnate, philanthropist, and walking, talking rags-to-riches narrative is my guest this week.

Gary Cartwright’s November column makes New York magazine’s hipper-than-thou Approval Matrix (see lower left).

The rightly venerated writer was in Austin several weeks ago to report a story for The New Yorker on our favorite barbecue joint. Paul Burka, Greg Curtis, Steve Harrigan, and I drove him down to Lexington at an ungodly hour to eat all manner of meat before the place ran out, as it’s apt to do these days; hilarity ensued. I’ve been wondering when the story would run, and now I know: A fact-checker called me on Friday to ask a few questions and to let me know that we’ll get to see the finished product next Monday, the 17th, in the magazine’s November 24 issue.

The incumbent U.S. Senator, who’s running for a second term against Democrat Rick Noriega, stopped by last week to tape an interview. It airs this week on your public television station, but you can watch it here.

Four tapings this weekend, all on location at the Capitol. We’ll be in room LCC-E2.002, in the Underground Annex on the north side of the building. If you’re interested in a seat in the audience, e-mail Staci Mellman at KLRU (smellman@klru.org). The schedule:

Saturday, November 1

Rick Riordan, 9:30 a.m.
Roy Blount Jr., 10:30 a.m.

Sunday, November 2

Susan Orlean, 1 p.m.
Boone Pickens, 2 p.m.

… and are making calls are Allan Ritter, Craig Eiland, Pete Gallego, Richard Raymond, Senfronia Thompson, and Sylvester Turner. This is according to my super-duper well-placed Lege source (not Burka). And there’s one additional name who’s not making calls — and could be the one, I’m told, if the Ds regain a majority next Tuesday, which they think they will: Scott Hochberg. I’ll believe any and all of it when I see it.

Three of the state’s most insider-y political insiders are taping a special post-election episode of TMT at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 5, before the usual live audience at the ACL Studios in Austin. The show will air the following night in its usual time slot on KLRU — check your local listings in other markets — and can be viewed online beginning early that evening. If you’d like a seat (or seats) at the taping, rsvp here.

And, for that matter, where’s Eddie Reese? Both coaches — basketball and swimming, respectively — were off recruiting when we shot our November cover and could not be persuaded to return to Austin to sit for the photo with their Athletic Department peeps. So now you know. And you can stop emailing me to ask.