Antioch Missionary Baptist Church

We got some notes about our The Rest of the Best: Houston's Top 10 Churches and Temples list last week. According to readers, we managed to leave off several important houses of worship. Last week we looked at large structures; this week we look at small, intimate structures. Hopefully the two lists together give a more complete picture of Houston's most beautiful churches and temples.

Last week the new co-cathedral downtown was notably missing from our list (it's ugly, sorry), but this week, Roman Catholic structures abound. Seems that, for a while anyway, the Catholic church did small very, very well.

See what made it to our list this week - and what didn't.

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Photo by ThinkStock

Houston is home to several of the country's leading mega-churches so we thought we'd look at the city's religious architecture. Does "great big congregation" automatically translate into "grand and glorious?" Ah, that would be a no.

Before we start our list of Top 10 Churches, let's take a quick look at what's not on the list. Lakewood Church is notably absent. Huge church, huge congregation but it's all housed inside a former basketball stadium that still looks remarkably like a basketball stadium. Yes, they added a stage, an altar, some jumbo screens and changed up the seating, but the basic structure of the building is still the same. It's a basketball stadium.

Also not on our list is the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. The inside's not so bad - if you like plain and severe, it's the outside that galls us. It's just plain ugly. (We hope Cardinal DiNardo gets our name right on the excommunication order.) It doesn't suit the space, the scale is all wrong and it's seriously uninviting. It looks like a McMansion with a tiny cross on the roof. We can't really blame Lakewood for looking unchurch-like, it took a standing structure and converted it. But Sacred Heart was designed from the ground up. And it's ugly.

Second Baptist is also missing from our Top 10. In the case of Second Baptist, there wasn't one particular building on any of its five campuses that stood out from the others. Second Baptist does big very well, it just doesn't do it spectacularly well architecturally.

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Our friends from other parts of the country (poor things) tell us about going away for the weekend to a nearby state. Well, except for a little bit of Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, the only place within three or four hours of Houston is still Texas. Here are our favorite weekend getaways. We took travel time, attractions and food into account as we made our choices. See if your favorite made our list.

10. Dallas (4 hours)
We start with Dallas. If it isn't football season, we don't usually have much to say about Dallas. It's too much like Houston (big city, no real tourist zone, lots of traffic) to warrant frequent trips, but we do make it up there once in a while. The big attractions for us are the museums (excellent) and steak houses (even more excellent). See, just like Houston.

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Photo by Cybertoad

Houston's been home to former presidents, movie stars, famous crooks and the lawyers that got them out of jail, sports legends and medical pioneers, and all sorts of colorful folks. Where do all of these people go when they die? To Houston cemeteries, of course. Here's our list of our favorites.

10. De Zavala Cemetery
Coming in at number 10 is De Zavala Cemetery. Heroes from the War of Texas Independence are buried in here. The cemetery is located inside San Jacinto Battleground Park (where the heroes fought and died). Burial dates range up to April, 1836.

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Courtesy of The Matchbox Art Gallery

The Matchbox Art Gallery at Rice University

Everything's actually not bigger in Texas, at least not when it comes to art galleries. Houston's the fourth largest city in the country (you know we have to say that every chance we get), and home to some of America's most acclaimed museum galleries (yes, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, we're talking about you). But small also has a home in the visual arts community. Did we say small? Sorry, we meant tiny. As in super minuscule. Here's our list of our top ten favorite tiny art galleries.

10. The Central Gallery, The Holocaust Museum Houston
Morgan Family Center, 5401 Caroline St.
713-942-8000, hmh.org

Every square inch of the Holocaust Museum Houston is used to get the anti-hate, "never forget" message out. Exhibits, archives, books, photos, art and more relevant to the Holocaust and its legacy fill the building. Even a slender hallway that's been dubbed The Central Gallery has been transformed into exhibition space. We had the pleasure of seeing "Displaced Persons: Photographs by Clemens Kalischer" there in 2011. The exhibit was made up of photographs of displaced persons and refugees fleeing the Nazis in Europe in the late 1940s. It documented the immigrants' first few moments in America, capturing their excitement, weariness, hope and exhaustion.

Regular gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

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Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the Unites States, and we can best prove that point by highlighting some of our more unmissable citizens. No matter where you are in Houston there are ten people that you're likely to run into and will instantly know who they are.

10: Booker T: Houston has had its fair number of wrestling superstars over the years, but none as accessible and community-minded as Booker T. Huffman. The 6'3" former champion cuts an imposing figure both at his own Reality of Wrestling shows, on the various golf courses, or having a meal at Mambos, but is always willing to stop and have a chat with a fan.

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Parents know that the best thing you can do with kids is find them someplace you can launch them like rocks from a trebuchet so they can ricochet off objects and other kids until inertia slows them to a stop.

I sincerely hope that everyone knows I meant that figuratively. Do not put small children in the trebuchet you for whatever reason own.

Here's the issue... it's hot. The average temperature of Houston in the summer is infinity degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is like being wrapped in towels straight from a pot of boiling hot dog water. The only solution is to find places indoors for your kids to run around. Here are the ten best in Houston.

10. McDonald's
Find locations with Play Places

Sadly, the fast food/jungle gym combination is in the decline. Only Chick-Fil-A seems
to still consider them standard add-ons, and that's a mixed bag at best. On the one hand
the company seasons their food with the tears of bullied gay children, but on the other
they give out cow hats and are apparently the only fast food restaurant that cleans their
playground equipment with any real stringency.

I still prefer McDonald's myself for a good play stop, especially now that they offer stuff
like apple slices for snacks. Their play places, especially the ones built in the last decade
or so, are generally cool and most of all free to use. Speaking of big corporate managed
play pens...

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Photo by Telwink

The University of Houston Downtown campus

Every year hundreds of parents and prospective students tour Houston's many college campuses. Along with football team stats, the average class size and the cost of tuition, the campus ambience is always a big topic during those tours. We took a look at the various campuses, including the University of Houston, Rice University, Houston Baptist University and Houston Community College facilities, searching for must-see college buildings. Here's our list.

10. The University of Houston/Downtown
One Main Street

The UHD building is an impressive landmark. Built in 1930 as the Merchants & Manufacturers Building by Giesecke & Harris, an Austin-based firm, the 11-story structure was designed in the modernistic Perpendicular style. Taken over by the UH system in 1974, the building has been remodeled and updated periodically since then in an effort to accommodate the school's growing student population. The M&M building made our list strictly on its exterior and adaptation to its site (a parking lot on the south side was converted to a large terrace with a great view of downtown and access to Buffalo Bayou below). Inside, however, the building is pretty vanilla.

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Jef With One F

David Kaelin at Game Over

Gamers of one form or another have long since become the majority of Americans. Some 60 percent of people play everything from Candy Crush on their iPhones to console adventures to puzzle games on the PC that may lead to the cure for AIDS. You have to get those games from somewhere, and today we look at the best places in Houston to get your personal game on.

10. Microplay
139 Gulf Fwy S

Microplay caters more to the crowd that still buys anime on VHS... not that there's anything wrong with that. They also sell and rent a fair amount of video games. This is more of a destination for people seeking Naruto DVDs and cosplay items who also happen to like games, but it's a killer little niche shop that is worth the ride to League City.

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Photo by Abby Koenig

Jeremy Bulloch, owner of 8th Dimension Comics

Houston is quickly becoming a hub of geek society. Sure, you can find all kinds of high art to explore, but some of us just want a safe place to play Friday Night Magic and find out what Deadpool is up to (Shenanigans with a chance of buffoonery in the evening). So if you've been looking for a place to call your pop-culture home, please try out these highly recommended comic shop stops.

10. R and R Comics
13449 Woodforest Blvd.

As a poor Galena Park lad myself, I can tell you that finding any place east of Montrose for geek culture is damn near impossible. R and R Comics is the only store I've ever seen out that way. It's a pretty standard setup with gaming, new issues, etc, but a boon to my people out that way who have no other option.

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