Houston News Blog

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The Best Cemetary: Glenwood

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​America, your long national nightmare is over. The new Best of Houston issue is out, and once again you will be able to enjoy the Bayou City to the fullest extent.

Maybe you want to know what the best animal hospital is -- now you know. It's Westbury Animal Hospital, where the staff "truly and cheerfully provide 24-hour nursing care."

Your best criminal-defense attorney is Brian Wice, but if you're smart and been convicted of a crime, you probably already knew that because you've hired him for the appeal.

Best pizzaria? It's in Sugar Land, for crissakes. But Grimaldi's is worth the ride.

Click away, or pick up a hard copy, which includes our regular issue, featuring a cover story on an East Texas guy who steals planes, tractors and cattle but never seems to spend much time behind bars.

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In conjunction with our annual Best of Houston issue (coming soon!!), we asked readers to send in shots of their tattoos.

Plenty responded, and we turned to the experts on our staff to pick the best.

What better way to contemplate Labor Day and all it means than by looking at body art?

Click here for the slideshow.

​It is almost too late, folks.

You have only until the close of business today -- we're talking 6 p.m. -- to file your online ballot in the 2009 Best of Houston survey.

Tens of thousands of voters have weighed in, but you, you've put it off until the last second. Kinda like a high-school kid announcing the Sunday before school that he has to hit three art museums today, dammit, for a project he had all summer to work on.

That's all right; we won't judge. But now you have only mere hours to scout out the Best Martini, the Best Coffeehouse, the Best Place to People-Watch and the Best Auto Repair. We're not saying it can't work -- you could get drunk, sober up on coffee, get so caught up in people-watching that you get into a fender-bender and need repairs -- we're just saying it's going to take some doing.

So get on it.

​Have you been moping around, bereft of not only vim but vigor too, all because you're desperately hoping someone would ask you for your opinion on what's the best parade in Houston?

Today's your day.

Actually, it's been your day for a while. Untold numbers of your fellow Houstonians have been voting online, dispensing their wisdom for the masses, in the 2009 Best of Houston vote.

Best Republican? Best Democrat? Best Twitterer? It's all there. We'll be picking our favorites, so you might as well pick yours.

Best martini? Best enchiladas? Best vintage clothing store? It's time to give some help to your peeps. Yeah, the secret will be out, and the whole world will descend on your heretofore unknown little gem, but you'll be doing a favor for the people who've been doing you a service.

We'll be printing the winners September 24. You've still got time, so vote away.

​Dudes and dudettes, time is running out to cast your ballot for this year's Best of Houston categories.

You only have until August 28 to click away here and tell us everything from where to find the best mac-and-cheese to what was the city's best sports moment of the past year. (We're thinking the latter just might involve the Rockets, but what do we know?)

You can also weigh in on Best Movie Theater -- do you go for the quiet ambience of the Angelika, the teen frenzy of the Edwards Cinemas, or the endless options at the Dunvale 30? If you're having beer or wine with your flick, do you like to do it with a classy foreign film at the River Oaks or a popcorn blow-`em-up at one of the eat-and-watch places?

It's all up to you. There's even a chance to tell us your winner in Best Category We Forgot to Ask About.

So do your civic duty. We're all desperate for your advice.

It's that time of year again: The 2009 Best of Houston edition is right around the corner, and you should be busily casting your votes for Houston's best restaurants, services, public personas and even Houston's best tattoo parlor.

But in the meantime, we'll be busy judging you too. We want to see photos of your body art and tattoos, which will be judged by our very own Monica Fuentes, art director, and Craig Hlavaty, music listings editor and walking work of art. The ten finest works of (body) art will be selected by our judges and presented in a slideshow on September 1 to celebrate the 2009 Best of Houston issue.

Submit photos of your tattoo (or tattoos) to our Flickr pool: HP Body Art. Please make sure to include your name (which won't be published, if you so request), description of the art and studio where you had the work done. Photos should be received no later than August 28.

Let's see that flesh and ink, Houston. Get those photos rolling in...

​You're reading this, so you must dig blogs.

But what's the best blog in Houston? Now's your chance to be heard.

Is it the real-estate-obsessed (in a good way) Swamplot? The ornery commentary of Slampo's Place? Those crusty right-wingers at blogHouston?

Or maybe you've got ideas on Best Sports Bar, or Best Adult Video Store, or Best Republican. Now's the time to speak.

It's up to you. Let your voice be heard by voting in the 2009 Best of Houston ballot.

It's the right thing to do.

​The time has come to put away childish things and vote in the Best of Houston contest, as the Bible almost says.

This is your chance to give some love to your favorite auto mechanic, sushi restaurant, martini, dog park, politician, or countless other aspects of life in the Bayou City.

Our theme this year is "Barely Legal," since we've been doing this for 21 years now. So if you have any thoughts on barely-legal activities in Houston, use them when casting your vote.

The categories are Goods and Services, City Life, Arts and Entertainment, Sports and Recreation, Restaurants, and Dishes and Drinks.

Click here to get yourself to the online ballot. Deadline for voting is September 4.

Hair Balls introduces a new regular feature: Blog on Blog. Each week we'll interview other area e-writers and explore what they're writing about, why they write about it and why you should read what they write about. Starting things off is Off the Kuff's Charles Kuffner, who we gave Best Blog in our Best of Houston 2007 issue. Texas Monthly also recognized him as one of the 35 People Who Will Shape Our Future. Reader's can't help but notice the sheer volume of Kuffner's blog posts - impressive considering it's a one-man-show. Kuffner covers local news with an emphasis on politics, but doesn't hesitate to add occasional notes about the Astros or his two girls.

Name: Charles Kuffner
Blog: www.offthekuff.com
Started: 2002
Typical Topics: Local news and politics
Day Job: My secret identity? I'm an IT consultant, I do Blackberry-related stuff.

Hair Balls: How did Off the Kuff enter the blogosphere?
Charles Kuffner: The short story is that I happened to stumble across a blog written by a friend of mine and it looked really cool and the next time I saw her I asked "how do I do that?" My deeper motivation was that I had done some writing in college - I wrote a sports column for my college paper that was called, oddly enough, Off the Kuff - and I missed having a forum for writing. It was kind of combination of this is something I'd wanted to for awhile and the medium had come along.