How about this: Houston isn't hard to talk smack about... frankly, they're beneath it. They're a fat, flat, polluted commuter town that obliterates or ignores what little history it has... they're Washington without the government, football achievements, and civic charm. Everything that's half-decent about Houston-- zoo, space museum, Vietnamese-American culture, etc.-- can be found in bigger, better, or far-more-contextually-interesting iterations elsewhere. Houston's not a city... it's an atherosclerotic mall. I kinda liked it (: