Eating “dinosaur” at T’s As we sat, waiting for our alligator po’ boy with a side of baked beans, we imagined what the prehistoric beast was going to taste like and sipped on a hurricane

A quest to eat something dinosaur-ish leads to T’s Smokehouse » The flavor of alligator tastes surprisingly commonplace [ eat]

I was recently rereading Micheal Crichton’s classic novel, “Jurassic Park.” At the beginning of the book, a girl is attacked by a small dinosaur called procompsognathus, which the author describes as being about the size of and moving like a chicken. This got me to thinking: What would a dinosaur taste like?

Current evolutionary theory sug gests most dinosaurs died off entirely in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinc tion event – probably an asteroid impact – 66 million years ago. By that time, however, a group of smaller, carnivorous dinosaurs had branched off and started evolving into their descendants we still see around today: birds.

I wasn’t going to eat a bird in my quest to taste a dinosaur, though. I eat birds on a regular basis; it would be boring. Back to the drawing board. Pivoting, I decided to taste some thing vaguely dinosaur-ish instead. Tracing the evolutionary tree back wards, it turns out that dinosaurs belong to a group of animals called archosaurs. That group has a second, non-dinosaur/bird branch that ends in a number of species that exist today, in the form of crocodilia.

Crocodilians came to exist around the same time as dinosaurs and lived alongside them for as long as dinosaurs roamed the earth. They’re different in a bunch of ways – for in stance dinosaurs, like modern birds, were likely warm-blooded, whereas crocodilians are cold-blooded reptiles. Still ... look at an American alligator, the most local crocodilian to here, and tell me it’s not a dinosaur. (In reality, Alligators first appeared on this plan et during the Oligocene epoch, about 37 million years ago.)

I’ve seen alligator on a couple Du rango menus – Highway 3 Roadhouse and T’s Smokehouse come to mind, and I chose the latter.

As I sat, waiting for my alligator po’ boy with a side of baked beans, I imagined what the prehistoric beast was going to taste like and sipped on a hurricane. (Pro tip: The blended cock

Nick Gonzales/DGO » A small alligator po’ boy with baked beans and the half-drunk remains of a hurricane at T’s Smokehouse.

tails at T’s taste, and feel, a bit boozier than average. And occasionally, some body will drop by your table to top them off.)

When the food finally came, I lifted it to my mouth, bit in ... and was treat ed to one of the most anticlimactic revelations in my life as a meat-eater. It sounds like a joke, but alligator tastes like chicken and has a similar texture. Like, eerily so. Had you hand ed me the same sandwich and told me it was turkey, I would have corrected you, “No, this is chicken.” The alliga tor meat in the sandwich came in little chunks, breaded and fried, almost exactly like popcorn chicken.

As soon as I got over the fact that one of the scariest apex predators in North America is indistinguishable in my mouth from the meekest farm ani mal, I realized that it was still a pretty decent sandwich, especially with the brown mustard that complemented the chicken-esque gator. Paired with the smokehouse’s slightly spicy and not-too-sweet baked beans, it was a good meal — just not as exotic of one as I had thought it would be.

I later did some research and found out that while an alligator’s tail tastes like chicken, if you can get your teeth on an alligator leg, it tastes like and has the texture of pork or turtle. Based on the fact that chickens are descended from dinosaurs and alliga tors, which evolved from the ancestors of dinosaurs, taste like chicken, I’m concluding that if I ever got the chance to eat a Tyrannosaurus rex, it would taste like a 140-ton chicken. — Nick Gonzales

Durango Independent Film Festival heaping on the filmmakers in 2020 » Event is a good time to find out what goes on behind the scenes [ film]

Want to meet the people who work behind the scenes making movies in Hollywood and elsewhere, but you’re not willing to leave town? No problem. The Durango Independent Film Festi val is bringing a bunch of them to you. The festival, which runs March 5 through 8, typically features both filmmakers who work in front of the camera and those who work behind it, but this year’s festival will lean a bit more heavily than normal on the latter, DIFF Executive Director Joanie Leonard said.

There will be a variety of ways in which festival attendees can interact with the people making the movies. Each day Thursday through Sun day opens with a coffee talk, with filmmakers at R Space from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. There will be coffee, tea, and snacks at the events, but not much space. These are open to the public,

even if you don’t have a pass to the film festival.

The festival features five parties, two of which anyone can attend (the others are reserved for top-tier pass-purchasers) – both of which are great for hobnobbing with (indie) film industry insiders. The first is a Native Cinema Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on March 5 at Sorrel Sky Gallery. The other is a Meet the Filmmakers Party from 5 to 8 p.m. on March 6 at the Irish Embassy Pub Underground. Both will have hors d’oeuvres and experts to quiz about film-making.

The most structured places to interact with filmmakers are the fes tival’s panels and workshops, which are open to the public and located at the Irish Embassy Underground. One, at 11 a.m. on March 7, fea tures writer/producers Michael Jamin and Liz Tuccillo talking about the business and craft of writing for the screen. Jamin worked on Beavis & Butthead, king of the Hill, Just Shoot Me, and Wilfred among a bunch of other credits. Tuccillo wrote for Sex and the City, co-au thored the book “He’s Just Not That Into You,” and was the show-runner and executive producer of the HBO show Divorce.

Another, at 1 p.m. the same day, features talent agent Carissa Mitchell, casting director Marin McMaster, and actor and coach Vic Browder discuss ing what it takes to actually get cast in movies.

Finally, at 11 a.m. on March 8, Jamin and Tuccillo are conducting a hands-on workshop on turning ideas into screenplays.

“Since we (Durango Film) took over the Four Corners Film Office, I’ve been getting calls from people who say, ‘I’ve got this book and I don’t know how to turn it into a screen play,’” Leonard said. “So we decided it was a good time to focus on that.” There will also be Q&A sessions at many of the movie screenings throughout the festival, where you can ask questions of the people who made the movies right after you watch them. (For instance, “What did I just watch?” ... these are indie movies, after all, and they can get a bit arthouse-y.)

The festival will be showing over 110 films, including the short film “The Neighbors’ Win dow,” which just won an Academy Award. Leonard is also excited for local filmmaker Hunter Sykes’ documenta ry “The Hunter Legacy,” the adventure documentary “The Weight of Water” about blind athlete Erik Weihenmayer, and the German feature film “The Si lent Revolution.”

The free movie night, which at one point just applied to the films at the Gaslight Theatre, has been expanded to the Animas Theater as well on March 4. When he isn’t writing for DGO Magazine, Nick Gonzales also volunteers as a member of the staff of the Durango Independent Film Festival.

— Nick Gonzales Courtesy of Durango Independent Film Festival » » An audience watches the trailer for the 2019 Durango Independent Film Festival during a screening at Animas City Theatre. » » Jamin » » Tuccillo