Frivolity Break: VW Fastback Commercial with a Young Dustin Hoffman

Apropos of absolutely nothing, here's a Volkswagen Type 3 Fastback commercial starring a young Dustin Hoffman.

If you didn't know the Fastback was part of a brand expansion for VW in the 1960s, when they sensed the Beetle and the Bus were getting long in the tooth. They never got as popular as those cars, but they were fairly common, zipping around my 1970s childhood, along with the Karmann Ghia and the Squareback (wagon). The Golf (Rabbit) would come fairly soon, along with the Passat (Dasher) and Sirocco. But I think VW lost something when they lost their rear-engine cars. Sure, the original was started by Hitler, but that's just a accident of fate. There was an offbeat quirkiness to VWs in the 60s and early 70s. Kind of like Dustin Hoffman, when you think about it!

UPDATE: Oddly enough, as I type this, Dustin Hoffman is doing a cameo on The Colbert Report. Another of my weird useless psychic abilities/pop culture coincidence-filled life.

My Saturday Project: Turn 1-Car Garage into 2-Car

Actually, the joke is, we have a three-car garage. But last winter when The Ex-Roommate was staying with us, his stuff took up most of the third bay. No matter, it's just for storage anyway. But early this year, when we decided to swap our guest room for my office space, the first-bay was taken up by the overflow from all of that moving.

We've parked The Other Half's Volkswagen Golf in the driveway ever since. I got fed up today. Partly because Stupid Monkey Planet is coming over to help me work on my Jeep Wrangler, and I'm embarrassed that the garage looks so terrible. And the other reason is, in our neighborhood--which consists entirely of homes with three-car garages and three-car driveways--it is not uncommon to see sixteen to twenty cars parked outside, just in the four houses across from and adjacent to our house. It looks like a friggin' parking lot, and I don't like adding to it.

Still, it wasn't easy. We have a vanity that was removed from the guest room, and won't fit in the new room. We had tons of The Ex-Roomate's stuff that still populated the guest room. And we had 10 years worth of accumulated stuff in two closets to deal with. My first notion was to haul a bunch of stuff to Goodwill. Instead, SafeNest called, looking for donations. So, we boxed up a bunch of the clothing items and left them on the stoop.

Next, I piled a curbload of stuff out front with a "take me, I'm free!" sign, and had 99% of that stuff taken in about 10 minutes. More stuff in the garbage, and (unfortunately), the rest piled around the edges, and especially the now STUFFED third bay. But as the evidence shows, I now have both our cars in the garage. Whoopee!!!

Now, it is time for the real work to begin. . .fixing the Jeep. Ugh. At least I enjoy the Monkey's company, even if I detest working on cars!