Various aspects of heavy flavor production in heavy ion collisions in the
context of elementary collisions are reviewed. The interplay between theory in
experiment in \epem and \pbarp data is been found to be non-trivial, even
with new NLO calculations. Quarkonium suppression in p+A and A+A show puzzling
features, apparently connected to features of inclusive particle production.
Open charm is found to scale as expected for a hard process, but strangeness is
also found to share these features. These features contribute to heavy flavor
as a interesting probe of strong interactions.Comment: 16 Pages, 17 figures, invited talk at Hot Quarks 2004, Taos, New
Mexico, July 18-24, 200