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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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10: Stay Alive

Miles has been Spider-Man (in-universe) for less than 5 years. And he’s stayed alive. That’s cute, even though him staying alive owed a lot to Molecule Man.

Ultimate Peter Parker only ‘died’ (and he didn’t even die really) because he sacrificed his life. It wasn’t like he made a mistake, he actively chose to give up his life.

Meanwhile 616 Peter Parker managed to stay alive for like 10 years before his first death in Secret Wars which was due to a literal God so...is Miles remaining alive that impressive? Is it even something to put him over Peter?

Using the argument that Miles doesn’t die whilst fighting Ultimate Goblin instead of dying is again fucking ridiculous because Peter battled and survived Ultimate Goblin multiple times before his ‘death’ in Death of Spider-Man. In that instance it was again an act of sacrifice more than anything and he was carrying a major injury from saving Captain America and taking a bullet for him or something IIRC.

So it’s a false equivalency even if you ignore the fact that the Oz drug both Peter and Miles have make them effectively immortal.

Him surviving Secret Wars isn’t that impressive either. So he manages to stow away and avoid death. How...heroic? Not to mention PETER also avoids the final incursion on his own lifeboat.

Yes Molecule Man saves Miles and brings back his mother, but he literally saves everyone too. He just happens to shunt Miles into Earth 616 and resurrect his mother. That’s not something Miles can do that Peter can’t because it was based upon Miles having a random burger on his person. Had Peter had that same difference. Uncle Ben would probably be back if Peter had a burger.

It’s not that Miles has the magic power to bring back dead people via his actions he just got lucky.

Also doesn’t him never having his loved ones remain dead kind of make him a Marty Stu?

9) Alleged immortality

Again...Marty Stu.

But for the record Ultimate Peter, whom this video apparently wants to conflate with but also switch out for 616 Peter when convenient and not treat as a separate character. Also has that power and it’s not even alleged. Also gotta love CBR using a picture of 616 Norman Osborn who looks nothing like Ult Norman when discussing the Goblin killing Peter. Then following that up with Raimi Norman who like 616 Norman is definitely not a Hulk Goblin.

8) Regenerate

Miles is more durable huh?

So...when exactly did Miles survive being crushed beneath machinery weighing a locomotive...under water?

When did Miles survive being buried alive for 2 weeks?

When the fuck did Miles survive a beating from Juggernaut, or Morlun, or the Hulk, or Collossus empowered by both the Juggernaut’s powers AND 1/5 of the Phoenix Force?

More durable my ass.

The evidence for this is also laughable.

First of all it’s based upon being able to burst from his restraints and fight back after being drugged which...Peter has definitely done at least once or twice.

Second of all it literally comes from a comic based upon the USM CARTOON not even the canon Miles. It’s literally cherry picking anything from any version of Miles.

His durability is also being measured by being able to survive several thousand volts of electricity and like...does the author of this video not know who the fuck Electro is?

Being tortured by doom and then saving his Dad is also not something Peter couldn’t do. Peter wet through worse in the MP trilogy alone.

Same thing about being lit on fire. Shit one of those crappy #700.ONE issues showed Peter doing that!

7) Spider Sense

So Miles spider sense allows him to predict the future when he is dreaming.

Er...Peter’s spider sense has done that in the JMS run...

Not to mention this point is ‘Miles can do this and Peter can’t because it MIGHT develop into something more later maybe’

His Spider sense intensifying isn’t that unique either. Peter’s does that too, again especially in the JMS run.

Miles’ Spider sense going off faster than Peter’s also could just be artistic licence stanning him in his own title.

6) Speak Spanish

This is the first legitimate point in this article.

Too bad it ruins it by saying Peter had difficulty connection to certain residents because of language barriers.

First of all traditionally Peter as Spider-Man is a pariah.

Second of all how many times honestly has he been shown to be disconnected due to a language barrier within NYC. MOST PEOPLE speak English like him.

Being bilingual also doesn’t give a character ‘more depth’. It’s literally just a skill. By this logic Peter being able to drive gives him more depth than Miles.

Yeah it acknowledges his community which is nice but that’s not greater or lesser depth that’s just a unique feature. And one that he technically doesn’t even need to speak Spanish to acknowledge. I barely speak Greek but I still acknowledge my culture.

5) Learns Quickly

Yes Miles definitely learns quickly, unlike Peter Parker who

- didn’t have a mentor or video footage upon which to learn how to be a superhero from but still owned Doc Ock early in his career.

- Figured out a cure to the Lizard within hours of seeing his notes for the first time

- Invented webbing in his room.

What? Miles gets the win because he was able to learn how to fight from Peter’s video footage when he was 2 years younger?

The age gap is mitigated when you literally have basically an instruction video to follow whilst Peter despite beig slightly older still figured it out entirely on his own.

Miles studying Norman’s fighting style and using that to defeat him is also not that big of a deal. Peter can and kind of has done that. he just REMEMBERS his enemies fighting styles instead of going over video footage of them. If anything THAT makes him FASTER than Miles in the learning department.

4) Maintain a Relationship With Gwen Stacy

Oh....fuck....you....

First of all Miles and Peter’s relationships with Gwen are different given that Miles’ is mostly platonic and a colleague and Peter’s was romantic oh and you know THEY WERE DIFFERENT GWEN STACY’S

Yeah Miles being able to keep a relationship with a Gwen Stacy who doesn’t die is much fucking easier when he and Gwen have the benefit of hindsight from 616 Gwen’s death AND Spider-Gwen has fucking super powers.

If MILES was dating Gwen whilst lying to her about being Spider-Man and she had no powers and they didn’t know she could die like that how well would he have actually been able to keep her around?

Not much better if at all.

Bringin up Gwen’s clone is also fucking asinine. It wasn’t that Peter was UNABLE to maintain a relationship with Gwen’s clone so much as he didn’t want to. Or rather he was unable to keep a relationship with her clone because he’d moved on and was in love with Mary Jane which isn’t a matter of him lacking an ability Miles has at all.

Also Gwen doesn’t help Miles cope with his mother’s death. At all. Because they didn’t spend any quality time together until AFTER his mother returned to life. FFS CBR!

Saying Miles was able to save Gwen when Peter wasn’t is again bullshit because the circumstances were totally different. In particular Peter saved Gwen MULTIPLE times in the past before she eventually died due to a small but significant mistake.

3) Be a team player/more sociable

I will grant this article that TEENAGE Peter was less of a team player and less sociable, but that changed over time.

The article shoots itself though by

a) Implying Peter was an Avenger as a teen

b) Saying he was never truly a part of the Avengers team when he was on it. Er....yes he was. It was badly written but he was truly a member no doubt. His self doubts also rarely if ever came into play. Over all he lacked much personality whilst on the avengers

the article is also two-faced because it ignores how Ultimate Peter WAS a team player and WAS able to have friends and accept help as a teenager.

2) Communicate with his best friend.

Well Ultimate and 616 Peter’s best friend is Mary jane and he communicates with her just fine...especially with his body language If yA Know wat I mEaN ;D

Everything the article says aboiut Ganke pretty much applies to Ultimate and 616 MJ in regards to Peter.

More than anything this point is where you REALLY see the video cherrypicking between the Ultimate Peter or 616 Peter. Literally in the last point it was quoting Captain America saying Spider-Man wasn’t ready to join the team from the Ultimate universe yet when it comes time to analyse his friendships in high school suddenly we switch to 616.

1) Turn invisible

Not only should this have been one of two things on this entire list but this list is so bad it literally IGNORED the one other ability Miles literally has that Peter lacks, the Venom blast.

How do you fuck up that badly?

0) The ability to be falsely praised and put over undeservedly

Now THAT is an ability Miles truly has that Peter doesn’t.

#cbr #is trash #comic book resources #Spider-Man #Miles Morales #Peter Parker #Ultimate Spider-Man

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 6 years

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Okay! Here’s the last of the non-canon outtakes featuring Franziska and Phoenix’s arrest. This one follows that which I linked there. Phoenix and Franziska argued a little more, she stormed out, she and the rest of the family complained about Phoenix, which is where that bit with Diego came from, and then she has an idea. I like the part that gives some more insight into her relationship with Phoenix, as I discussed in the other outtakes post how close they used to be, and I most especially mourn the material of Franziska and Kristoph going head-to-head, but it just cannot fit with the overall arc I wanted.

But there’s actually not any rules, so if I want to post scrapped plot threads, who’s gonna stop me? Nobody that’s who.

She has never actually been to the office, despite it being one of Phoenix's frequent haunts; come to think of it, she cannot recall ever having gone to the Borscht, either. His physical presence faded from her life and a ghost tried to fill the hole caused by his absence. Traffic is heavy even at this time and she rehearses potential opening statements as she curses at the other cars and the slow crawl they are locked into. It is 4:52 when she pulls into the lot, scrambling from her car; on a Friday, he may have already left by now, leaving the work to the junior partners - though if he has, she is marching back to the detention center and telling his client that along with all of his other vices, he isn't even a dedicated attorney.

Gavin's office is like Grossberg's: much larger than Mia or Phoenix's holes-in-the-walls or even her father's office, hosting more than two attorneys, and the decor is as tacky and indulgent. Her feet sink into the plush carpet and she glances over the polished surface of the waiting room coffee table before she looks around for someone to speak to. There is a desk that looks like it is the reception area, but no one at it.

[This connecting segment never got written, but here she meets Apollo and asks him if Kristoph is still here because she needs to speak with him. Apollo asks for her name and she gives it as "Franziska Edgeworth" which ends up a brick joke with Apollo much later.]

Despite the fact that the boy - probably not a boy, he can't be that young if he works at a law office, at least 17 - said that Gavin was about to leave, he is sitting at his desk when Franziska enters his office, his hands folded in front of him like he has known to expect her for longer than he has. He can't have expected her. "Do shut the door behind you," he says, gesturing to it.

The office is well-decorated, fancy - more like many of the prosecutors' offices she has seen, nothing like any of the defense attorneys within her own family. She takes her time returning to the door which she left to swing ajar behind her, scanning the bookshelves and the coffee table. The latter holds a decorative paperweight, and the former, bookends, all heavy looking (injuries appear consistent with a strike from a blunt object and given the location of the wounding to the head the attacker appears to be shorter than the victim); on the desk there is a letter opener (stab wound to the throat, though shape of injury does not appear consistent with any kind of knife), but for that she would have to move toward him, away from the door. Better to run, for several reasons: the other attorneys are still in the office and would hear any skirmish taking place within the room, but Gavin would not risk his reputation chasing her down in front of them. She could claim self-defense - she would claim self-defense, she is not her father, she would not strike first - but she is the interloper in this office, and the only witnesses are people who have reason to be sympathetic to Gavin.

The door clicks closed. "What brings you here, Ms von Karma?" Gavin asks with a smile that could be pleasant if she did not know the true nature of the man. "Or - you didn't happen to change your name, did you?" He leans forward, his head tilting almost imperceptibly, but the light of his desk lamp catches on his glasses and for a moment the flash of the light hides his eyes behind them.

"No, I didn't," she replies. "However, I thought it best to be discrete, given that it is very much not customary for a prosecutor to show up unannounced at a defense attorney's office."

"And your reason for such is...?" One eyebrow arches. He nods at the chair in front of the desk. "Please, sit down."

"No thank you. I intend to keep this brief." She touches the back of the chair and gives one of the legs a nudge with her foot; solid, heavy, more likely to become a liability to her should she try to pick it up and use as a weapon. "Phoenix Wright."

Gavin's expression does not change from the tiny, closed-lipped smile he has been giving her. Cool under fire in the courtroom; why should he not be outside of it as well? "I do not make it a policy to discuss my cases with the prosecution, Ms von Karma."

"I am not prosecuting this case. What I am is a friend of the defendant’s, and concerned about him, and so have come to check in on how his case is progressing.”

Gavin does not respond right away. Instead he stares at her, as though through her. "Then ask him," he says. "It is not as if the police refuse a prosecutor come to speak with a detainee at any time of day or night. You have left your office early enough that even were you a defense attorney, you would be let in without trouble." The languid smile does not leave his face. "I think one of two things, Ms von Karma: either you have something you wish from me specifically, or you and the accused are not as close of friends as you thought."

Franziska blinks. "Pardon?" The part of her paranoid enough to assess Gavin as a threat is the part of her that keeps her mouth moving; she cannot allow him to know that she suspects him, but he has given her a different opening. "Phoenix and I are not - what, exactly?"

If she plays this right, she can make him hand her an alibi.

"You can hardly blame him, can you?" Gavin says. "How careful he has to be with his reputation since he was disbarred -- and for forging evidence, at that."

"He did not--"

Gavin holds up a hand. "You don't need to tell me that," he says. "I was, as you recall, the one person in the Bar Association--"

"--who voted in his favor. I am aware."

"But you understand where this places him. Whatever the truth, to the rest of the world, he forged evidence for the sake of personal victory. It hardly helps appearances for someone so accused to spend a great deal of time with a von Karma, now does it?"

For a moment she is struck silent. Phoenix pulled away from all of them, not just her. He closed himself off from everyone; he stopped confiding in Miles even though they live together, he drifted from Mia, Maya complained that he stopped texting. It wasn't just her--

-- Maya could coax him out to lunch when she came home from Kurain, Mia dragged him to get occasional haircuts, Ray saw him at Trucy's magic shows whenever Phoenix went -- Franziska went to Miles' apartment and only ever found him sleeping, she went to the office and saw his daughter more than him, she went weeks at a time without him answering her texts, she got her news of him from everyone in the Edgeworth-Fey grapevine but him, she stooped to texting Larry, she --

-- she wasn't abandoned by her oldest friend in the world because of what her goddamned father had done --

-- was she?

Gavin pushes his glasses up and his face curls in a smile that does not touch his cold eyes. "You never realized?" he asks. "I thought you more observant than that. We all have our blind spots, I suppose."

This morning in the detention center was the first time in years he was so open with her, and he wasn't open. Of everyone he locked his heart away from, it was her most of all. Her oldest friend in the world, who supported her every aspiration, who celebrated her getting her badge before him, who grinned at her for countless trials across the courtroom, setting her adrift as soon as her name became slightly inconvenient because of his own mistake.

She can't take this as an excuse for coming to see Gavin. She can't let this go. "He wouldn't," she says. "He believes in me -- not for a rumor -- nor for what my father did --"

"No? Then let me be frank with you -- I have looked into your court record, quite extensively. For a prosecutor, you have a very even ratio -- except in one particular instance. You have a perfect loss record against your own brother."

"Where are you going with this?" she snarls. She knows the bluffing sort and Gavin is not it -- he sees several moves ahead instead of just the backs of his opponent's cards.

[I unfortunately forget precisely how this line of dialogue would end. He basically implies she's corrupt and has been throwing trials to Miles, and turns it into a threat somehow -- I think he was going to threaten to bring an investigation down on her head. There was also going to be a jab somewhere obliquely referencing Klavier what with Kristoph remarking on Franziska's "remarkable loyalty" to her older brother, enough to hand him victory.

[She would then storm out and go back to the detention center to speak with Phoenix again. She tells him that she went and spoke with Kristoph, and that finally makes Phoenix crack. He has a speech that is something similar to what he says in Acing the Turnabout to Miles about being terrified that Kristoph is going to kill any one of them who investigates too closely.

[His fear gets to Franziska; we see her paranoid edge earlier with her looking for a weapon when going into Kristoph’s office (which by the way that paragraph is one of my absolute favorites I’ve written), and it returns here She doesn't want to go home alone for fear of walking into her death and she calls up Lana to accompany her home, because Lana knows what it's like to have someone making those threats toward her. She picks Lana up at the office where she works with Mia and Diego and two of them go back to Franziska's apartment, find it fine and empty, but Franziska packs a weekend bag and crashes with Miles for the weekend. She tells him it's to help him and Trucy; this is true, but it is also her being afraid to be on her own, and her afraid to leave then on her own. She doesn't know if Kristoph would target them.]

#bullshit defense au

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Food, It Turns Out, Has Little to Do With Why I Love to Travel

It’s the people that make a place — but these days, human interaction is hard to come by

I used to love to travel. I’d wander through new cities for days on end, eating and drinking (but mostly eating) in four-seat izakayas, farm-driven pizzerias, southern seafood halls, and boat noodle cafes, talking to locals and walking for miles. Restaurants have always been my joyous entry point to a place and its people. The food, I thought, was what made me love to explore the world.

That slowly fading memory — what it felt like to discover a new city, stomach first — is what excited me about going out on the road again, which I did a couple months ago, driving from Los Angeles to Corsicana, Texas and back, stopping to eat in places like Albuquerque, Amarillo, El Paso, and Phoenix.

Let me be clear: I absolutely would not and do not recommend frivolous travel. In my case, a looming publishing deadline on The Bludso Family Cookbook is what sent me on the long, not-so-winding road to Texas in the midst of a global pandemic, where I would be staying with my longtime friend, mentor, colleague, and big brother Kevin Bludso. Once there, we would be cooking, writing, recipe testing, interviewing, living together, and, in all likelihood, drinking a fair quantity of brown spirits at the end of each night (please, someone get that man a Hennessy sponsorship).

I’ve spent the better part of the last 15 years working in the food industry in one capacity or another. I’ve been a bartender, server, chef, culinary director, restaurant consultant, cookbook author, and food writer. My plan since last year had been to continue writing and consulting on the side, but also to finally open my own restaurant. Nothing extravagant. Something small and intimate. A humble, comforting place of my own — clean and well-lit, a true neighborhood restaurant where people can get to know each other, where the food and the service is unassuming and genuine, something with no desire for expansion or duplication. I consider myself unbelievably lucky that I didn’t open a restaurant right before the pandemic hit.

Instead, I’ve spent the last several months at home, making a quarantine cooking show with my wife called Don’t Panic Pantry. It’s been a good distraction, but I thought a work-related excuse to drive through the American Southwest and its expansive desert would be a cleansing, meditative, soul-resetting break from what I’d begun to think of as perpetual purgatory.

I took every precaution. A nasal-swab COVID test right before I departed. I also hopefully still had antibodies (my wife and I both had COVID-19 way back in March). It was, at the very least, the polite thing to do: Get tested before joining someone in their home for two weeks.

I had planned on driving straight through Arizona from LA, avoiding anything except gas stations until I made it to New Mexico, surviving on a sturdy mix of cold brew and air conditioning to keep me awake. I’d never been to New Mexico before. I’d pored over Instagram photos of chile-drenched Southwestern Mexican food, enchiladas oozing with melted cheese, their red and green chile sauces popping with Instagram photo-editing exposure. My usual pre-trip Google map was loaded with thoroughly researched restaurants along my route. In earlier times, I’d have peppered each map point with essential info like hours of operation and must-order dishes; now, I was looking up intel like outdoor seating, takeout quality, and, most crucially, whether or not a place had managed to stay open at all.

I had slowly but gradually heaped unreasonable expectations on a green chile cheeseburger.

I left with a bullish heart. But each stop to fuel up took away a notch of my optimism-fueled excitement and replaced it with caution. Each person in a mask made me a little more depressed; each person without, a little angrier.

Ten hours in and I had made it to New Laguna, New Mexico. I stopped at Laguna Burger, an iconic mini-chain inside of a gas station. It’s a fast-food place to be sure, but according to old photos online there used to be stools set up against the counter, and even a couple of tables and a few chairs. Those are, of course, gone now — pushed to the side of the room and leaving in their place a vacuous emptiness, even for a gas-station dining room. The staff was nice but appropriately wary. I did not partake in the self-serve Kool-Aid pickle jar. I got my food and then sat in my car, emotionally deflated and no longer very excited to eat my first-ever green chile burger — something I had wanted to try for years.

Ordering a burger at a place like this was supposed to be a tiny gateway into the culture and personality of the place, however small that sampling was going to be. There is an emotional atmosphere, a vibe, that’s specific to each and every restaurant, and I had perhaps never been so truly aware that such a thing existed until I noticed it had been zapped entirely from this one. In its place was a blanket of nervous, sad precaution — added to, I’m sure, by my own nervousness.

So I sat in my car with my sack of food, gloomily disappointed even before the first bite. They forgot to salt the fries and it felt oddly appropriate. In this moment, to no fault of the restaurant itself, the food didn’t matter. It couldn’t have. I had slowly but gradually heaped unreasonable expectations on a green chile cheeseburger, wanting it to justify a 12-hour drive and to somehow soothe an anxious mind. But the food, it occurred to me, wasn’t what I was after at all.

Later on, in Albuquerque, I picked up a four-pack of beer from Arrow Point Brewing and received the now familiar and appropriate treatment: measured, cautious polite gratitude. It was a transaction, appreciated by both sides, but with a higher degree of precondition from both sides as well. I followed it up with a takeout bag of enchiladas and a taco from the beloved and iconic Duran’s Pharmacy, taking them back to the motel room I checked myself into earlier. It was 5:30 p.m. The enchiladas had sloshed in the bag. I took a bite and understood: It was comforting, but not nearly enough. Like being single and reconnecting with an ex, only to both immediately discover that there’s nothing there anymore — two empty vessels with no connection beyond a memory.

I took a sip of beer and fell asleep for an hour. When I awoke the city had turned dark and I knew there was no point in going anywhere. The world felt dystopian and deflated. I’d left my redundant, loving, comfortable bubble to experience life alone on the road, and all I wished was that I was right back there with my wife and my dog.

When my wife and I had COVID-19, we lost our sense of smell and taste for a bit. It was, as my wife put it, “a joyless existence.” Now I had my taste back, but somehow the joy of eating was still gone.

The enchiladas, in a box, alone, on the floor of my motel, were just enchiladas. Because here’s a thing I’ve come to understand of late: context really does affect flavor. A place, its atmosphere, the people within it, their mood (and ours) genuinely change the way things taste. A restaurant lasagna has to be twice as good as your mother’s — or that one you had on that trip to Italy — for it to remind you of it even a little. A rack of smoked pork ribs will never taste as good on a ceramic plate atop a tablecloth as it does from within a styrofoam box on the hood of your car, downwind from a roadside smoker. I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

So as it turns out, when it comes to my lifelong love of food and travel, the food might not have mattered — not to the degree I thought it did, anyway. Not without everything that goes along with it. The surly bartender in the dark room who fries your chicken behind the bar at Reel M Inn in Portland while a guy two seats down makes fun of you for being from California is a huge part of why that might be my favorite fried chicken in the world. The friend of a friend who abandoned his family (thanks Marc!) to drive a stranger, me, around Toronto for two days and show off the city’s outstanding versions of goat roti (from Mona’s Roti) and bún riêu cua (from Bong Lua) makes me realize that yes, the food is outstanding, but that it’s the people — excited to show off their hometown, its restaurants, and their community — who make travel worthwhile.

Would Tokyo be my favorite eating city in the world if my now-wife and I hadn’t befriended two total strangers in a six-seat dive bar, knocking back cocktails until we both threw up, only to come through to the other side fully bonded over late-night grilled pork skewers with another stranger who gave me his business card and said that he had been eating in this stall for over a decade? What is a bar without a bartender? It’s just, well, being home.

The restaurant business can be both horrible and wonderful. It pays poorly, it requires incredibly long hours, and in many instances, you are going broke while making food for people who complain that it’s too expensive. But it is, as Anthony Bourdain often said, the Pleasure Business. It has always been a place for camaraderie, human connection, and community. Those were the things that made the nearly unbearable parts of our business worthwhile — and that connection, when you can have a genuine one between staff and customer, is what I think everyone really, truly wants out of the transaction. Those things still exist, I suppose, but all at arm’s length, or across an app.

I still eventually want to open my own restaurant. I think. But maybe I just want to open my memory of what it would have been in a different, earlier world. I don’t want to be a dinosaur, yearning for the good old days. But I also don’t want to live in a world where a third-party tech company stands between the restaurant and its customer. I don’t want someone to visit my city and think that a robot delivering them a sandwich is the best that we have to offer. I don’t want to have to download an app to order a cup of fucking coffee. Human connection, it turns out, is essential too, and we need to find a way to make it a part of our essential businesses again.

So what, in the midst of a health and humanitarian catastrophe, can we do? Well, we can decide where we spend our money. We support human connection and small businesses. We pick up takeout with our own hands from the places and the people that we love (safely, responsibly). We know that it is just gauze pressed against an open, oozing knife wound, but we try anyway.

So we travel because we have to, whether for work or as a needed break from monotony, and we reset our expectations, we open ourselves up to receiving that connection, we seek out the places that are adapting and we smile through our masks, and ask each other how we are doing, if only to show that somebody cares.

When I eventually made it to Corsicana, Texas, hoisting a large bag of dried red New Mexico chiles, I was greeted with an engulfing hug by Kevin Bludso; it was the first truly comforting thing that happened on the whole trip. I melted into the arms of my friend. I was back in a bubble, connected to something.

I spent two glorious weeks in that bubble, taking turns doing Peloton workouts and then drinking vegetable smoothies, before recipe-testing dishes like Fried Whole-Body Crappie and Ham Hock Pinto Beans; researching Kevin’s family history and then, true to form, sipping rye (me) and Hennessy (him) before I had to head home. Kevin’s food was outstanding, but it was made all the better by the time spent together cooking it. So when I readied myself to get out on the road again, my expectations had changed. I knew the food alone could only do so much.

This disease has been a reflection and amplifier of all of our weak points — and the restaurant business is certainly no different. This industry was already ripe with flaws. It has been teetering on the brink of a seismic shift for years — COVID-19 just accelerated it, and all the platitudes, Instagram stories, and false optimism won’t fix anything. But there have always been bad restaurants as well as good restaurants. I suppose it’s no different now. Yet it is maybe just a little bit harder to give and to be open to receiving the human connection that makes the whole experience worthwhile.

I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

I hit the road early, and after about 10 and a half hours, fueled by caffeine, Christopher Cross, and Bonnie Raitt — with one depressing pit stop in El Paso at the famed H&H Car Wash, where an old curmudgeon out front insisted I take off my mask before going inside — I arrived in Las Cruces, at La Nueva Casita Café. I called ahead, hoping not to have to wait so I could just grab my food and get back on the road. My guard was still up, but then the woman on the other end of the phone was so charming and kind that I was immediately disarmed. She graciously steered me toward the chile relleno burrito (“it’ll be the easiest one to eat in the car”). A few minutes later I came inside to pick up my food and the two women behind the counter were, frankly, a delight. I paid, and was promptly handed my food and thanked with genuine, casual appreciation for coming in. The burrito was excellent.

Bolstered by the kindness of strangers, I drove another five and a half hours into Phoenix. As a bit of an obsessive pizza maker (I had the tremendous fortune to train with Frank Pinello of Best Pizza in Williamsburg, and also had a hand in helping to open Prime Pizza in Los Angeles), I was here to try the new 18-inch New York-style fusion pie by the great Chris Bianco at their Pane Bianco outpost on Central.

Just as at La Nueva Casita Café, the staff was friendly, genuine, helpful, and kind. In retrospect, it took so little but it meant so much. When I expressed a need for caffeine, they sent me next door to Lux Central for a large iced coffee, where the barista talked to me from a responsible distance, wished me a safe drive, and gave me a free blueberry muffin. Even eaten in my car, Chris’s pizza was truly outstanding — crisp, thin, and pliable, successfully pulling off the New York-modern Neapolitan (ish) fusion that, in lesser hands, turns into an 18-inch bowl of soup.

I drove the last six hours home, finding myself encouraged by these final two restaurant experiences, excited by what the best in our industry are still somehow capable of in spite of everything. It was, frankly, inspirational to find genuine interaction, care, and kindness in this new reality.

It reminds me of my mother, actually. I remember when I was a kid, she would pick up the phone to call a restaurant, or Blockbuster Video, to ask them a question. I would always hear her say something like: “Hi Randy! How are you today?” and I would say, “Mom! Do you know him?” and she would shake her head no. Then she would say, “Oh that’s great to hear, Randy. Hey listen, what time do you close today?” My brother and I used to make fun of her for that — for forcing this connection with someone she had no real relationship with beyond an exchange of services. Now, I plan to do exactly that, whenever and wherever I can.

Noah Galuten is a chef, James Beard Award-nominated cookbook author, and the co-host of Don’t Panic Pantry. Nhung Le is a Vietnamese freelance illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34Oc66Q https://ift.tt/34RJ8TD

It’s the people that make a place — but these days, human interaction is hard to come by

I had slowly but gradually heaped unreasonable expectations on a green chile cheeseburger.

I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

Noah Galuten is a chef, James Beard Award-nominated cookbook author, and the co-host of Don’t Panic Pantry. Nhung Le is a Vietnamese freelance illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34Oc66Q via Blogger https://ift.tt/314xEef

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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junker-town · 4 years

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Monty Williams deserves Coach of the Year consideration for saving the Suns

Head coach Monty Williams is giving the Suns a leader they’ve always been missing.

The Suns finally found the type of coach they’ve always been missing.

The Phoenix Suns had a claim to being the most dysfunctional franchise in the NBA when they hired Monty Williams in May. Williams would be the Suns’ fourth head coach in three years, coming to a team that hadn’t won more than 25 games in five years and hadn’t made the playoffs in 10. This was the organization that put live goats in the general manager’s office, and couldn’t even pull off a grocery store autograph signing without controversy.

Paired with newly installed full-time GM James Jones, the Suns took on a noble goal: to no longer be one of the worst teams in the NBA. To do this, Phoenix signed sure-handed veterans like Ricky Rubio, beefed up the front court with Dario Saric and Aron Baynes, and used draft picks on experienced college players Cameron Johnson and Ty Jerome.

Phoenix didn’t need a head coach to make them great. They needed a coach to make them competent. That is exactly what Williams has been able to do. To watch him do it with this franchise might even make him Coach of the Year.

The Suns are 11-12 to start the season and are holding down the final playoff seed in the Western Conference. They’ve done it despite losing cornerstone center Deandre Ayton to a suspension for banned substances after only one game. They’ve done it despite a recent bite from the injury bug. They’ve done it with a roster that is still the youngest in the NBA, with an average age of 24 years old.

Throughout his career, Williams has always been a great teacher and an excellent communicator who demands the respect of everyone around him. Never has that been more apparent than what he’s doing in Phoenix this season.

Williams has overhauled the Suns’ scheme

The Suns finished with the NBA’s No. 28 offense and No. 29 defense last season. The year before that, Phoenix was dead last in both categories. Right now, the Suns are No. 6 in offense and No. 18 on defense. That type of improvement feels like it would require a miracle worker, but Phoenix has done it by simplifying their schemes and professionalizing all the places they were sloppy and ill-prepared before.

Williams is running what he calls the ‘0.5 Second Offense’. Essentially: every player that gets the ball has a mandate to shoot, pass, or drive from the moment they touch it. By eliminating long periods of isolation-based offense and ball watching, the Suns have overhauled their shot profile and modernized their approach.

The Suns lead the NBA in shot quality right now, per PBP Stats. Over 72 percent of their field goal attempts come at the rim or behind the three-point line. Last year, that number was 63 percent. The Suns are also leading the league in assist percentage and assist to turnover ratio by a mile a year after being No. 17 in the former and No. 28 in the latter. This is Williams’ system at work.

Devin Booker is shooting over 50 percent from the field and 40 percent from three for the first time in his career. Adding a veteran point guard like Rubio has been massively beneficial, but this is also an instance of a star buying into a coach’s scheme and seeing results like never before. It isn’t just Booker’s who’s benefitting from an offense based on making quick decisions. It’s the entire roster.

4. Is It Scheme? Again, another elbow action where Mikal knows he's part of the offense and has a read to make. The defender goes the wrong way & Mikal lets it fly. Yes, the wind up/hitch shows itself again. pic.twitter.com/ckQt4gOXuh

— Seven Seconds Or Less Podcast (@7SOLpod) December 7, 2019

The Suns’ defensive improvement is even more startling. Williams has preached packing the paint on defense and denying drives to the basket. The Suns are cranking up the ball pressure this year to try to wear teams down before they can get off a good look. While Phoenix is fouling — No. 27 in opposing free throw attempts — only six teams have allowed fewer three-point attempts.

Read Mike Prada on how Williams’ simple schemes are impacting Phoenix on both ends of the ball. For as impressive as Williams’ X’s and O’s acumen has been, it’s his leadership that has been Phoenix’s real catalyst.

Williams is giving the Suns the leader they’ve always missed

Williams has long had massive respect around the basketball world. He became the youngest head coach in the league at 38 years old when he was hired by the Hornets ahead of the 2010-2011 season and immediately took the team to the playoffs. Williams had to endure the Chris Paul trade the next season and a year of bottoming out for Anthony Davis, but those around the game continued to admire his work during New Orleans’ rebuild.

Williams was asked to be an assistant for USA Basketball during the team’s run to the 2016 Olympics, where he built relationships with the best players in the world. Kevin Durant, who Williams would later coach as an assistant on the Thunder, is one of his biggest fans:

“He knows how to talk to people, for one,” Durant said of Williams. “He knows how to communicate, and he’s honest. That’s lacking in our world in general. It’s just truth.”

Williams’ message is clearly resonating with the young Suns. Booker has had nothing but praise for his new coach from the very beginning the season. This is what he told Marc Spears of the Undefeated in early Nov.

“You can feel the vibe here. It’s different,” Booker said. “Our team is in a different state than we have been in the previous years. I don’t want to get ahead of myself. … But the culture around, you can feel it. You can feel it in the air. It started with Monty.

“His voice travels. I’ve been in situations before where things coaches say are kind of discussed amongst players. But with Monty, it’s not like that. We all believe in him. He believes in us at the same time. It’s really contagious.”

It isn’t just stars who respect Williams; his influence trickles down the bottom of the roster, too. When Williams replaced veteran Tyler Johnson in the rotation earlier this year, he pulled him aside before the game and let him know the change. While Johnson was disappointed, he told The Athletic that he valued his coach being up front about it.

“I appreciated just that moment,” Johnson told The Athletic. “Because even though we are all adults, sometimes when things come as a surprise like that, then you can get a little more frustrated. But there was good communication, and I can accept that.”

Suns players have noted all year how Williams is “real” — treating them like adults while expecting accountability. The vibe around the team has been a night and day change from the last few years. They believe in what Williams is preaching, because they’ve seen the results.

Williams has been one of the NBA’s best coaching hires

Williams spent time as an assistant in Oklahoma City and Philadelphia after being let go by New Orleans in 2015. He endured a horrific personal tragedy in that time, when his wife was killed in a car accident by a speeding driver who had meth in her system. That type of devastation could sink any man, but Williams handled it with as much grace as possible.

It’s hard to imagine another coach connecting with Suns players both on and off the court the way he has. Williams didn’t have superstars to lean on like Frank Vogel. He hasn’t had a championship organization to work with like Nick Nurse in Toronto or Erik Spoelstra in Miami. Instead, he’s taken one of the league’s most comically incompetent franchises and made them a team that demands to be taken seriously.

Perhaps the Suns will eventually fall short of their playoff dreams in a tight Western Conference race for the final two seeds, but the progress Williams has made will serve the Suns well for a long time. He has been the perfect coach at the perfect time. Wins are coming, but his influence extends so far beyond even that.

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imbearlyawake · 7 years

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The Anomaly

Explaining The Anomaly- April 2013

So there I was, sitting there, alone, in the dormitory lounge at three in the morning with the rain slapping against the dark windows. Rather than making a trip to the local drugstore for candy and energy drinks for the next day, I got online to sign up onto a dating website.

Naturally, I started with E-Harmony, then Match.com, but each well known site either cost a ridiculous subscription fee, or I was “rejected” and barred from the site. Most likely for all the right reasons, as I was barely 18 years old and seeking out romance with the wrong motivation. I went ahead and started looking at the lesser funded sites that most would definitely steer clear from. I signed up and I chatted away with many strangers, “winked” at those I found attractive, and clicked through many pictures. Really this site was based on sexual appeal more than anything else, but at the time I was looking for love.

I found a charming guy on this site, Chris. He loves to travel, cook, go on hikes, is of an athletic build, and loves dogs. So far, so good. I sent him a message:

“I would love to travel the world. Let's get to know each other and maybe we can be travel buddies :)”

Chris and I hit it off well, and for the first time in a few years, I had butterflies. I thought at the time that he was the one, that this was my miraculous love story, that it was love at first “site”. I barely knew him. Through texts with him and getting to know him, he was so charming to me, my crush on him only grew. I learned that he was working at the Long John Silver's in the Phoenix area, so I planned to surprise him by stopping in on my way from home back to my room on campus.

On the drive down, I got so terribly nervous. My parents didn't know that I met him online, I said that I met him through friends at school. I was about 10 miles out from the exit to the Long John Silver's when I had a panic attack. I was driving and suddenly I had tunnel vision getting worse, I was hyperventilating, I was so nervous to meet him, I don't know why. Maybe it was the idea that he was the one for me that set me off. I pulled off the road, got a drink from a convenience store and brought my nerves back down to earth. I then drove the rest of the way to park at the Long John Silver's/ I had to wait a while before he started his shift, but when I finally did meet him, my very first impression was that he was much, much less attractive than I imagined him to be, but I chose to look past his appearances.

I planned out our first date entirely by myself. A hike to the top of 'A' Mountain with my best friend and her boyfriend. For that date, I had to drive out thirty minutes to pick him up because he had no car or money. I did so and learned that he was drunk at the beginning of our date. He explained afterward that he was just so nervous that he just wanted to take the edge off. Only half way through the hike, and my best friend told me that she had a bad feeling about Chris, but that she was also very tired and had to go home early. Since that first date with Chris, we never went out on a real date again.

After what now seems like a complete disaster of a date, I was charmed by him and I continued to see Chris. After school and work I would drive out the distance to his apartment and I stayed the night, I practically lived there.

His apartment was pitiful. It crawled with ants in the bathroom, the carpet was stained with cigarette ashes and spit spots. His only furniture included a very lumpy couch that had to be covered by a blanket and a blow up mattress that was perforated to hell. He had a television, a Wii game system, and a strobe light all in a corner on the floor as his entertainment system. He had no cable, he only rented movies from Red-box’s over and over again. His favorite was Pulp Fiction.

After I would arrive at his apartment, usually in the evening, one of two things would happen: he would either be passed out on the couch and I would have to wait for over an hour for him to wake up to let me in, or he would let me in immediately and interrogate me as to why it took me 45 minutes to get to his house instead of my usual 30. I hated both outcomes, I hated the interrogation the most.

“Where the hell have you been? Did you have to stop by Tyrone's to give him his first?” he asked.

“I don't know any Tyrone. Where is this all coming from?”

“Oh don't pretend like you don't know, Tyrone is your big, black cock that you love to fuck around with before coming here to play me! How many other guys are there that you want to fuck behind my back? Why don't you just stay there with them? You never really loved me anyways.”

I never gave him any reason to believe that I had or would cheat on him. I did tell him I loved him, even though I knew deep down it wasn't real love, it was more like a childlike love. Every day that I said it, the more I believed it, the more I grew dependent on Chris to distract me from my every day worries such as my dropping grades.

At the beginning, Chris would only drink a 40oz of Mickey's, never got him drunk, so I never thought twice about it. I'm more of the hard liquor kind of gal, so I asked him to get Vodka so that I could make up some Bloody Mary's. He drank the rest of the fifth of vodka after the first two bloody marys were made and passed out on the couch for two hours, only to wake up to find me alone and bored. He then started to buy harder liquors everyday after work and drink entire fifths of vodka and whiskey by the hour. All of his worst traits were intensified by the end of each night.

He explained to me before that he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but I never really believed that, just an excuse that he's using to cover his depression and anxiety, maybe some other disorder.

He was jealous, extremely jealous, of men that don't exist except in his imagination. I never gave him a reason to be jealous. He also felt condescended by me because I was attending a university, whereas he is a high school dropout living on minimum wage with no driver's license. He blamed me for his being upset all the time. He threatened to leave me time and time again.

Keep in mind, I got into this relationship by the fear of being alone, he held that over me like the strings of a puppet. He hated my morals and values which contradicted his. For instance he had three tattoos. Two of brass knuckles on each of his shoulders, and one of the Insane Clown Posse Hatchet man. I didn't believe in the idea of tattoos, really they turned me off because I'd rather see untouched skin and believe that I was the first to admire it. He hated that I was Christian and he thought that I judged him more harshly than he deserved, though I never passed judgment on him, only support and encouragement.

He hated my family because he knew that my parents would never approve of him, to him that was the final straw. He was willing to fight my dad simply because he didn't feel like he should be judged by someone he's never met.

We argued every night, though it was really him yelling at me and me trying to apologize and explain my situation more clearly to calm him down. Instead, he was like a lawyer with his words and he knew how to twist them to make me into the one at fault. He would yell at me, threaten to leave me alone, tell me how ungrateful, useless, unworthy, slutty and overall undeserving of life I was. He would have me crying on the bathroom floor.

I couldn't breathe or stand or fight him off and away when he broke me down. He kept battering me with his words, making me feel guilty for upsetting him, until he passed out from intoxication. I would be so greatly distressed that I found myself clinging to his cigarette-stained toilet vomiting from the stress and anxiety alone, and when I had nothing left to give, my stomach was still churning and heaving painfully in my gut.

I could never sleep after something like that, especially when all that I wanted to do was have him forgive me again and love me as his princess again. I was truly believed that his love was the only love I would ever need. I would lie on the floor next to the couch where he lied on and I waited for him to wake up. When he did, he found me covered in tears and my face swollen from crying and wanted to know what he did to me because he “didn't remember anything” from just hours before. But he was so sweet after, he would hug me so tightly and hold me together again after tearing me apart. I was his princess again.

This repeated every night, just like this. He would drink till he was drunk, verbally abuse me until I was crying and begging him to stop talking to me and to forgive me for everything that was wrong in his life, then he would pass out and wake up to apologize and piece me together again.

Over and over again, and I still made the drive to see him. I loaned him cash when he was strapped, even though I knew he was only going to buy more alcohol and cigarettes with it. I drove him to work, I had sex with him. He took my virginity and he found ways to use that against me.

“You might as well go ahead and fuck every guy you know, shouldn't be too hard now that you're no longer saving yourself for anyone.”

That stung.

Soon the school year ended and I was to move back in with my parents a few hours away from Chris. Chris told me to move in with him, and to hell with what others think. If I didn't move in with him, then I clearly didn't love him enough to stand up to my parents. So I tried.

“I'm moving in with Chris,” I told my Dad.

“The hell you are, if you do that, your mother and I are not supporting you at all. No cell phone, no college support, no car, nothing from us.”

I was devastated, I loved my parents, but I didn't want to disappoint anyone. So I called Chris and begged him to reconsider. After seeing the stress it caused me, he called it off. That night was my last night to spend with Chris, it was also the most brutal night.

He pulled a knife on me, though he played it off like it was a joke. After he was fully saturated with his drink of choice, he went through the motions again of blaming me for his problems and why he was depressed. He expressed his disappointment with me and wanted me gone because I was worthless to him. He yelled for me to leave his apartment for good, I even took his apartment key off of my key ring to return to him because I was sure he was serious, but he only used that action as leverage.

“Why would you even think I was serious? Are you really so stupid to not know that was a test to see if you could so easily leave me? What college would even want you, stupid girl?

“You were ready to leave me! You took my key off of your key ring and returned it! You were going to leave, that just proves you never loved me!”

He yelled more at me and I crawled to the bathroom, like I've done so many times before. I closed the door and leaned against it with what little strength I had left in me. I locked it behind me so that he couldn't just push me out of the way, but he broke through the frame and picked me up off of his floor to drag me to his front door to kick me out, claiming that he had called the cops to have me removed. But I insisted on staying, told him I would never leave him by choice. I sat there crying on the floor where he dropped me and he watched, waiting, for an hour as I sobbed, waiting for the cops to arrive.

Finally he had enough of my crying, and with a hidden satisfied smile on his face, he knelt in front of me and started to pick up the tiny, tiny pieces of me again.

“I'm so sorry, my princess, I'll never do that again to you. I can't help myself, my PTSD turns me into a monster that I just can't control. I don't deserve you, please stop crying, I don't want you to leave. Don't worry, the cops aren't really coming. I would never want you to leave.”

How I got out of this cycle of emotional torture was only thanks to my parents. I did move back in with them after the school year, and they demanded that I ended all contact with Chris. Either it was over between Chris and I, or it was over between my family and I.

I hate ultimatums. I will walk out on those who set the line in front of me.

My parents raised me to walk from “this or that”. I hated that they had drawn the line in the sand- it felt so incredibly betraying to me.

But I thought of my siblings, Dylan, Charlotte, and Taylor.

Who would I be to walk out on them? Who would I be to become the “older sister that we don’t talk to anymore”. No siblings, no cousins, no grandparents or aunts and uncles. My family is my community, my identity.

The thought of leaving my family behind terrified me, only because I know the pain it would cause. That thought was the reason behind my decision to leave Chris.

The last time I ever saw him was when I went down to pick up my things. He called me that night, as we were still at the rocky end of our relationship. I broke up with him over the phone and that started his drunken abuse. I was so incredibly upset with him after his last barrage of curse words and hate over the phone that I made up my mind.

“Dad, I know it’s late, but I need to do this. Can you drive me to Phoenix to get my things?”

On the way, as I was sobbing quietly in my dad’s truck, he pulled into a gas station and brought back to me tissues and Reese’s cups. Not a word was spoken, but I felt his love and pain because his daughter was heartbroken.

After an hour long drive in the middle of the night, I walked up the stairs to his door alone and I walked in.

His entire apartment smelled like blood. I could see that he punched the walls and the doors over and over again until his bleeding knuckles touched everything, putting his blood everywhere. I gathered my things, trying my damnedest to not acknowledge his presence or his scathing words. My dad waited outside the apartment as I insisted that I went alone to get my things.

I was out within moments and left his key on the counter, even though Chris begged and begged for me to stay with him.

I was out. I was done.

#abusive relationship #emotional abuse #domestic abuse #trauma

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thoughtfulhunter-blog · 7 years

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Without hunting even coyotes attack

The innocuous little coyote is next on the list of animals we're program ming as predators. Weighing in at just thirty-five to forty pounds in the West, and growing somewhat larger in the eastern U.S., the coyote now lives from coast to coast; in fact, unless you live in a high-rise, coyotes are likely nearby (a few have been caught in Manhattan's Central Park). Coyotes are not indigenous to the East Coast-there were none east of the Mississippi when Columbus landed. Their progression from sea to shin ing sea during the last century is something of a wildlife riddle, but we know that coyotes are now in Canada and Mexico and all forty-eight states between. Over the last decade newspaper headlines have screamed: "Coyote Attacks Toddler"; "Father Saves Girl, 4, from Coyote"; "Coyotes, Humans in Territory Clash." Wildlife agencies from California to Maine have dealt with reports of parents pulling coyotes off their children and pets. Stunned skiers have found themselves in close-quarters battle with coy otes, using ski poles to fend them off. They're known as stock killers and even deer slayers, but man eaters? According to a recent study, there have been fifty-three verified coyote attacks on people in California alone since the mid-1990s. Massachusetts residents have been shocked by several bloody attacks on children, as were residents in New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wyoming, and New Mexico. And attacks aren't just happening out in the wilderness, where trailblazers realize the risk. With increasing frequency, most coy ote attacks are taking place in suburbia A skirmish typical of the clashes that have terrorized Californians occurred about five miles from Disneyland, in Fullerton, California, in 1995. "The coyote had been there for hours, [lying in some hedges] just feet from ten children playing in a sandbox-one of which was my daughter Jennifer," says Debbie Dimmick.16 "We had just moved to town and knew nothing about coyotes. Jennifer was enjoying a romp with her new playmates, and I was keeping an eye on her from across the street. "It was there, watching. You could see where it had lain in wait. You could even see [in the grass] where it had crawled closer." At 6:30, it was time to come in for dinner. Jennifer walked close to the hedge as she headed indoors. The lurking coyote sprang, knocking the three-year-old to the ground. "First, it goes for her throat, but she kicks and punches, so it bites her legs and chest," said her mother. "A neighborhood boy [stood] there in horror. But I couldn't see it. I just heard a blood-curdling scream-no, worse, it was just awful." Sprinting across the street with a neighbor, Dimmick found her daugh ter "dripping with blood." One bite came close to severing her femoral .artery. "She'd be dead," says Dimmick, "if the bite had been any closer. Her face is scarred for life, but she's alive." In fact, just days after the attack, Jennifer went house-to-house with her father, David, passing out flyers to warn the neighbors. Attacks in California range from chase scenes (a coyote pursued three kids out of a playground at the University of California-Riverside, caught the slowest of them, a seven-year-old, and bit him) to domestic scenes (a twenty-four-year-old woman in San Diego was attacked in her backyard while on her cellular phone) to scenes straight out of horror flicks (a coy ote sank its teeth into the face of a five-year-old girl while she was asleep in a sleeping bag next to her parents in the Reds Meadow Campground in Madera County). There have been recent suburban attacks in Arizona as well-two just outside Phoenix and one in a playground in Rancho Vistoso, a Tucsonsuburb. The latter was particularly vicious. A coyote "quietly attacked a twenty-two-month-old toddler" and threatened several other children, reported the Arizona Daily Star. The headline on the story quoted a wit ness's words: "the coyote was going for their throats." In New Mexico, one of the worst instances occurred in August 1995, when a coyote grabbed a sixteen-month-old boy from a yard and tried to drag him off. The child's mother came to the rescue. Don't wipe the sweat off your brows yet, East Coasters. In 1992, two hunters were attacked in separate incidents in Vermont, and a Massachu setts woman was bitten on the leg in 1994. But perhaps the most unnerving attack happened in 1998 on Cape Cod.17 A coyote pounced on three-year-old Daniel Neal on July 30 in the town of Sandwich while he was playing in his backyard. His mother heard screaming and charged outside to see a coyote mauling her son. Later, she told police she beat the coyote over the head with her bare hands and finally "pried it off'' her son, but to her horror the animal wouldn't leave. The coyote was so deter mined to get a meal that it was still there when police arrived. An officer shot the animal. It's common for a coyote to stick around after an attack, says Glyn Riley, a federal coyote trapper with the USDA's Wildlife Services who specializes in trapping problem coyotes in Texas. A coyote's attack strat egy is simple: it picks a target and locks on like a heat-seeking missile. It's relentless. If its target is big, it'll go for the throat and choke it to death. If it's small, the coyote may try to run off with it still alive in its mouth. If it's helpless and large (like a cow in labor), it'll just eat it alive. But in each case it'll stay locked on-one eye on its meal, the other looking for an opportunity.18 "It's genetic," says Professor Rex 0. Baker of California State Polytech nic University in Pomona, who investigated attack scenes for various wildlife agencies and is considered the nation's leading authority on coy ote attacks. "Coyotes have different modes, and when they're in 'attack mode,' they stay tuned-in to their prey, often staying at the scene. They may even return time and time again, just looking for an opportunity. "19 Such tenacity can be attested to by a family from Newport Beach, Cal ifornia, a fashionable bedroom community south of Los Angeles. "A father was working on his backyard deck when he spotted a coyote stalk ing his two-year-old son," says Baker. "Bolting across the lawn, he snatched up his son before the coyote got him, but the coyote stayed right there until another man hit it over the head with a big piece of lumber. Still, that coyote came back every day at the same time for four days look ing for the child ... until we trapped him." People too often treat coyotes like they're boisterous pets, says Baker. "They have Walt Disney mentalities. They see wildlife and they just want to cuddle them, and that's the impetus for the attacks." The textbook term for the coyote's recent shift in diet is "behavioral imprint change," and according to Baker, it works like this: people feed coyotes by leaving their garbage cans open or their dog's food dish out or even by leaving the dog itself out. After a while the coyotes begin to asso ciate humans with food. This association is a national problem; in fact, attacks on pets are so common that most states publish guides on coyote awareness. Many state game departments won't even respond to attacks on Rover or Muffy; they instead refer the resident to a private animal damage control specialist. Baker and Professor Robert M. Timm of the University of California-Hopland laid out the progression from urban phantom to urban fiend in a coauthored paper titled Management of Conflicts Between Urban Coyotes and Humans in Southern California.20 In it they trace the seem ingly mundane path leading to predictable violence. It starts with a few sightings, some knocked-over garbage cans or pet dishes that mysteriously empty at night. Next, pets start disappearing. But things don't get really serious until daytime activity escalates. When coyotes trot across the street at high noon, oblivious to people, it's time to be on the watch; soon they'll attack pets in front of their owners. This is actually becoming common, and not just in L.A., but also in Chicago, on the East Coast, and many places in between. When this happens, if people don't do something quick to rein stall coyotes' fear of people, a person (probably a child) will be attacked. One such behavioral progression cited by Timm and Baker that went unchecked culminated in Los Angeles in 1994 and 1995. "Reports of coy otes chasing cats in front of people became common" in Griffith Park, and soon after, "coyotes began begging for food." This shows that they began associating people with food. Then they began "chasing people away from their picnic lunches." And after all the signs went unchecked, a coy ote tried to run off with a small child, and several men were attacked while sleeping in the park.

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