Mister Dirk...Free At Last !!!

Our own mat fanatic and in-house marketing guru, Dirk Brandts (or "D.B. Cooper," as he once claimed) has apparently been spared any further hardship resulting from a youthful misadventure that, ultimately, became a part of American folklore.

It seems the FBI has finally given up on tracking down D.B. Cooper, the man who hijacked a jet high above the Pacific Northwest and absconded with $200,000 in ransom via a parachute jump from 10,000 feet.

"Allegedly hijacked," Dirk was quick to point out as we stood in line at Starbucks. "And it was more like 25,000 feet."

With an uncanny likeness to the FBI sketch of "D.B. Cooper," as well as the matching initials, it's hard to image why someone hasn't dropped a dime on Dirk by now...

But Dirk has been fiendishly clever during his decades on the run!

He's done most of his surfing in the shadows of dawn or dusk...

'

He's deftly blended in with beach goers who are, for lack of a better phrase, mildly eccentric...

Perhaps his cleverest ruse was the 19 years he posed as a ex-pat British surf cameraman. His highly affected, working class cockney accent was so awesome, he was tapped to lecture in acting classes all over West Los Angeles!

"I wish I could say that the whole 'F.B.I. is throwing-in-the-towel ' thing is a relief to me," Dirk commented as he paid for our lattes with an old, smelly, heavily soiled $20 bill. "But the accusations were all just an overstuffed couch filled with speculation in the first place, eh?"