With Houston landing at number seven on the New York Times list of places to visit in 2013 last week, I decided to give you seven things not to look at when you visit on Monday. Today, I go for the opposite approach.

Houston is not exactly a beauty queen. I've heard that there is a formula for potential mates that goes something like looks + brains + sanity = constant. So, if you have a really hot chick who is super smart, she's likely batshit crazy. The goal for long-term relationships is the partner who balances out along the scale. That's Houston. Parts of it are beautiful and others butt ugly. We have some ingenious innovators and plenty of rednecks. We have no zoning laws to keep things organized, but that chaos leads to some really handy conveniences.

The bottom line in Houston is that you can't take a standard city tour and expect to get to the heart of what we are all about. And while guides like Fodor's might give you a good sampling of great places to see and things to do while you're here, we bet they don't crackle with excitement about these gems of the Bayou City.

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Last week, many were surprised -- some even perplexed -- to see our beloved city on the annual New York Times list of places to visit in 2013. Houston was number seven on a list of 46 that included Rio, Amsterdam, Singapore, Hawaii's Big Island, Oslo, Bangkok and Paris. Yes, we were on a "must visit" list with Paris, the one in France, not the one in northeast Texas.

In the story's description, Houston was praised for our theater district and thriving food scene. It's not the first story in the last year that has heaped praise on us, and for good reason. Let's be honest, we're pretty freaking awesome.

But just as you tilt your head a certain way when you take a photo to avoid the appearance of that fourth chin, Houston has some warts we'd rather no one saw.

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All photos by Abrahán Garza

Welcome to the fifth installment of vintage photos mashed with its present-day locations. This time we leave our comfortable city of Houston, cross the Fred Hartman Bridge and venture into Baytown, Texas. Baytown was originally three separate towns: Goose Creek, Pelly and East Baytown. The three towns were consolidated in 1947 and officially became the city of Baytown on January 24, 1948. Three little towns equals a lot of worshiping. Many of the structures still stand today and all of the churches are still in operation, several of them just blocks from each other.

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Photo by Groovehouse

JJ Watt

Lately, you've probably noticed a lot of people posting what they are thankful for. If you are anything like me, you were wondering, "What's with all these weirdos?" Then, someone tells you it's Thanksgiving and you are all, "They have that ever year?" It would be funny if it weren't so very very sad.

Anyway, it is a good time of year to count your blessings. Nothing says, "Thank you" like gorging yourself on turkey and pie before camping out in front of Target to fight some other crazy person for the right to own a crappy TV. It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Because we at the Press love our city, we thought we'd come up with 50 things you can be thankful about in Houston. Each of our blogs is doing similar posts, so keep your eyes out over at Eating Our Words for food, Rocks Off for music and Art Attack for all things art and pop culture. Here at Hair Balls, we'll stick with the cool stuff like football, crazy politicians and buildings. We have lots of them here.

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Houston Babylon, the feature coming out this week, dissects a few of the creepiest and most chilling events in Houston history. In coming up with four of those tales, we stumbled over many more -- too many to fit the print edition.

All this week we'll bring you some extra, online-only stories. Without further ado, here is the first...

Glenwood Cemetery, the final resting place for Howard Hughes and many other exemplars of Houston's high and mighty, is full of marble angels. All wear melancholy countenances, or tender half-smiles, all except for the one standing guard over the grave of William Dunovant.

EagleLakeDepot.com

William T. Eldridge: Not even an Avenging Angel could bring him down.

A South Carolina-bred rice and sugar planter and would-be railroad magnate, Dunovant and business partner William T. Eldridge founded the Cane Belt Railroad in 1898. At first, the Cane Belt was used to transport sugarcane from Dunovant's plantation near the town of Bonus ten miles north to Lakeside, which was near Eagle Lake, but eventually the line was extended from Sealy all the way to the Gulf.

Perhaps that was an overambitious plan, because by 1902, the Cane Belt was floundering, and Dunovant's shares had been bought out and he had been removed from his position as president. Eldridge, also a sugar planter, stayed on the board as vice-president. Dunovant was none too pleased with that arrangement.

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A common scene in the Houston of 1910, apparently.

Drug busts on the Mexican border are nothing new. At the El Paso / Juarez crossing in 1910, the feds seized a huge shipment of Texas-bound opium, at least some of which was believed to be headed to Houston.

That was the theory of George McCann, at any rate, one he expounded on at length in an April 29, 1910 Houston Chronicle story headlined "Opium Smoked in this City: Government Agent Finds Traces of Slaves to the Black Pipe." (Since there was neither an FBI or a DEA in those days, McCann was described only as a "secret agent.")

"There is opium in Houston in large quantities and lovers of the seductive pipe are not a few," opened the article, before quoting McCann to the effect that one of the men snagged in the El Paso bust had once lived here before his fateful trip to the border and then to the federal pen at Fort Leavenworth.

McCann told the paper that though they had seized a large amount of the celestial drug, much more had slipped through their dragnet and made its way here, where, the Chronicle intoned, there are many "reckless and degenerate who delight in a pull at the pipe." (What is it about opium that turns all reporters into pseudo-Coleridges? We succumbed ourselves to this weird tic not two months ago.)

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It's come to this.

In the wake of the shooting in Colorado and the countless other shootings in offices and public places, the City of Houston, in conjunction with the Mayor's Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security, released "RUN. HIDE. FIGHT. Surviving an Active Shooter Event" on YouTube.

The six-minute clip describes how "occasionally life feels more like an action movie than reality" and depicts a buff and well-armed Terminator-style shooter entering a glossy office and blowing away bystanders with a pump-action shotgun with a mounted tactical flashlight. Was he their boss? Someone's ex-husband? An angry Yelp user?

The "RUN" segment details how to flee from the shooter or shooters, and the "HIDE" goes about the ways you can stealthily hide from their view.

It's the "FIGHT" scenario that is the best part.

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Old, meet new.

Check out the first and second installments of old Houston photos mashed up with modern-day Houston.

Here we go with our third installment of vintage Houston photos mashed with their present-day locations.

This round we show you several different locations surrounding downtown and Montrose. Also, we go back to 1992 and revisit a British invasion (that happened 20 years ago this Sunday) that even made the boys weep.

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Photo by Nicholas La via Wikipedia

Put away that Knicks uni, JLin, you're coming to Hou-LIN-ston?

When being interviewed over the last week, newly acquired Rockets guard Jeremy Lin admitted that the use of his last name for Lin-based puns got a little old in New York. In fact, he banned the use of them among friends, but he did admit that of all the ones he had seen, his favorite was probably Super LINtendo. Fair enough.

With his signing by the Rockets complete and anticipation of his full-time arrival as a new Houstonian still creating buzz for basketball fans, it seemed only logical that a few well-known Houston landmarks could be converted, if only briefly, to Linsanity. Maybe, when he realizes just how awesome Houston is, he won't want to roll his eyes out of the back of his head when he reads them.

We'll see.

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The other day I saw a greeting card that said something like "I am so grateful for your undying love. You are beautiful." Disgusting. Luckily we have Someecards to bring us back to reality.

We've looked at them before on Hair Balls, but it's been awhile. They've been covering typical greeting card occasions since 2007, but got really popular after expanding into snarky comments about basically anything in life: break-ups, current events, boring jobs.

They're all free, which is why we can display them here without setting off a copyright legal battle. Also, most of the content is user-generated, so should inspiration strike, you can log on here, find the right card to go with your caption and hit upload. Power to the people!

Here are 15 of the latest and best (including the one at the top).

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