My Favorite Music, Movies, DVDs & Books of '11!

Movies
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Moneyball
Win Win
Notes: Of the 29 movies I watched this year, 12 of which were 2011 releases, but just these three I deemed list-worthy.

DVDs
The Rolling Stones: Some Girls Live in Texas '78
Louie: Season 1
Breaking Bad: Season 3
In Treatment: Season 3
The People vs. George Lucas
Eastbound & Down: Season 2
Lemmy
Don Cherry's Rock'em Sock'em Hockey 23
Notes: This doesn't include stuff from the "Movies" list above; it's mostly either TV shows or films from previous years first released on DVD this year.

Songs
Apex Manor - "Teenage Blood"
The Baseball Project - "Ichiro Goes to the Moon"
Beastie Boys - "Make Some Noise"
Black Keys - "Lonely Boy"
Black Lips - "Noc-a-Homa"
The Dirtbombs - "Cosmic Cars"
HeadCat - "Let it Rock"
JEFF the Brotherhood - "Ripper"
R.E.M. - "We All Go Back to Where We Belong"
Wild Flag - "Something Came Over Me"
Yuck - "Get Away"
Notes: Like last year, I listed songs instead of albums, since really the only new 2011 album that I've found start-to-finish killer is Only in Dreams by Dum Dum Girls (also good: their He Gets Me High EP). Otherwise, my favorite '11 albums are either new reissues of old faves (Some Girls by the Stones), or sorta new-to-me favorites from years past (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!), neither of which apply... I became obsessed with Devo this year, and saw them in concert in September. Other bands I saw this year were the Black Lips, the Butthole Surfers, and the Baseball Project, where I shot this video.

Books
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training by Josh Wilker
Evel by Leigh Montville
I Want My MTV by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum
Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper by Geoffrey Gray
Notes: The other 21 books I read this year were either published in previous years, or comics...

Comics
Batman #1
Green River Killer by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case
Huntington, West Virginia “On the Fly” by Harvey Pekar
Old-Timey Hockey Tales by Robert Ullman and Jeffrey Brown
Paying for It by Chester Brown
21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago
Notes: None.

For those keeping score, here are my favorites from 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006 (movies and music).
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Cool D.B. Cooper Shit

Northwest folk antihero D.B. Cooper is back in the news. The FBI announced last week they had a "promising new suspect," prompting a woman to come forward claiming that Cooper is her late uncle. She's writing a book about it, while another D.B. Cooper book comes out tomorrow. However, like fellow Northwest legend Bigfoot, D.B. Cooper interests me far more as a pop-culture phenomenon than as an unsolved mystery. Thankfully, there's the awesome Wikipedia page D.B. Cooper in popular culture, which lists lots of the stuff below...

Like the 1981 movie The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, with Treat Williams in the title role. It's never been released on DVD, but I watched the tape a few years ago. It's pretty bad, as its opening demonstrates...



D.B.'s been referenced to a lesser degree in several other movies, as well as on TV -- David Lynch named his Twin Peaks protagonist Agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper. Elsewhere, D.B. (or characters inspired by him) have been the basis of episodes of Barnaby Jones, Quincy, Charlie's Angels, The Fall Guy, Renegade, NewsRadio, Prison Break, Numb3rs and Journeyman.

Many musical shout-outs too, by far the most popular being Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba" -- among the "Gs with the 40s and the chicks with beepers" is "D.B. Cooper and the money he took." Also on the audio tip, kickass talk-radio satirist Phil Hendrie included Cooper in a couple comedy bits -- in March 2000, former commercial airline pilot Art Griego told the story of D.B. Cooper and the Three Bears, and in January 2008, Dr. Jim Sadler suggested that D.B. Cooper is presidential candidate Ron Paul.

A bunch of D.B. Cooper books have been published, both fiction and non-, speculating on Cooper's post-skyjack whereabouts. I haven't read any of 'em, but Roland Smith's 1998 teen novel Sasquatch sounds the most promising, as D.B. and 'squatch meet up to witness the eruption of Mount St. Helens. I've placed a hold on it at the library.

While D.B. inspired all this pop-culture stuff, he himself might've been inspired by pop culture. Specifically, the French comic book Dan Cooper, popular in the '60s and '70s. D.B.'s real name was Dan Cooper -- at least that's the name he gave when buying his plane ticket; "D.B." was the name the media erroneously stuck him with. Around the time of D.B.'s the skyjacking, an issue of the comic was released with a skydiving Dan on its cover. Read more about this on the FBI site... In other comics, D.B.'s been referenced in The Far Side, Dilbert, and here.

Moving on to business establishments, there's D.B. Cooper's Bar & Grill in Madison Heights, Michigan (they lifted their artwork from The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper's poster), D.B. Cooper's bar in Kansas City, and D.B. Cooper's Mansion, a Houston gentleman's club tit bar. Former D.B. restaurants operated in San Jose and Nashua, New Hampshire. However, only the Ariel Store & Tavern in Southwest Washington, in the area where Cooper is believed to have touched down, hosts an annual D.B. Cooper party every Thanksgiving eve...

The most indelible image of D.B. Cooper is his iconic police sketch, as familiar in these parts as frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. With his wraparound shades, skinny tie and no-nonsense expression, Cooper comes across as one cool customer. The sketch inspired this black stencil, and this green one...

His mug has also appeared on T-shirts, patches, and, well, mugs.

That's it for now. D.B. previously appeared on my blog here and here, and I also wrote about him on Seattlest.com...

Oh, and the FBI needs your help!
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Cool Map Alert

Above is a bit of detail from Ray Troll's "Washington State Fossils" map, which includes four of my favorite topics -- Bigfoot, D.B. Cooper, Mount St. Helens and the Portland Beavers (sort of). See the whole thing here; order a print here.
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Bigfoot is Everywhere

Particularly in Portland, where Eliza and I spent the weekend.

Ground Kontrol has the White Water pinball (featuring Bigfoot's furry spinning head), while over at PGE Park (where the Beavs beat the Grizzlies), I spied Bigfoot's hot dog stand.


Elmer's has the "Big Foot Breakfast" and "Big Foot Burger" on their kids' menu (unfortunately, they were all out of these)... At the Candy Basket, home of the creepy chocolate waterfall, I scored a milk chocolate Bigfoot foot (not so big, really -- it's only eight inches long)... I picked up a Bigfoot postcard promoting Crafty Wonderland, and saw in Willamette Week that the Portland Ikea will be handing out Bigfoot air fresheners this week in honor of Earth Day.

In other unsolved Northwest mysteries: on our drive home we stopped by the Ariel Store and Tavern, near where D.B. Cooper supposedly touched down (I previously wrote about him here). Sadly, the place was closed for the evening (and, from the looks of things, might have been closed for some time). All I got was this lousy photo.

My theory: Bigfoot abducted Cooper, then ate him.
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