Via Craigslist

Adventures in Craigslist is a whenever-we-find-something-interesting series in which we dive headfirst into the vast complexities of the Washington region’s Craigslist. Today: A legendary spokesman.

Decorating a new apartment can be a challenge. After all, you want to keep your old photos, posters and artwork, but maybe you want to inject something fresh. Well, how about a life-size homage to one of the great literary figures of our time?

An Arlington resident is willing to depart with his cardboard cutout of Jonathan Goldsmith, a globally admired 73-year-old actor. We know. Upon reading his name, you’re probably like, “Who the hell is Jonathan Goldsmith?”

He’s the Most Interesting Man in the World, of course. And Goldsmith, who plays a Hemingway-esque spokesman for Dos Equis beer, is actually pretty remarkable in real life. In the Talk of the Town section of a February 2011 issue of The New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten delved into Goldsmith’s non-beer-shilling life:

His mother was a Conover model, his father a track coach at James Monroe High School. Postcollegiate dissolution (and a session with the famed psychoanalyst Fredric Wertham) led him into an acting class at the Living Theatre and, eventually, into competition with the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall.

Pretty cool stuff. And, while Goldsmith’s career hasn’t been as high-flying as Hoffman’s or Duvall’s, he’s still been a fixture on scores of television series, including Bonanza, Charlie’s Angels, Magnum P.I. and MacGuyver, to name a few. As he put it to Paumgarten, Goldsmith usually played a bit character who died in the course of an episode.

But back to Goldsmith’s turn as Dos Equis’ pitchman and the cardboard representation this Craigslist vendor is offering. The seller is asking for $50, which, frankly seems a bit high, especially if you have to schlep all the way out to Virginia to pick it up. Perhaps he’d trade it for a half-consumed six-pack of Dos Equis?

Among the cutout’s many uses, the seller writes, are to “[be the] life of the party, scare the shit out of your roommates [or] pretend you are a 21 year old model who loves listening to a 70-year-old man talk about what he drinks.”

Then again, if you’re the kind of bro—and let’s face it, that’s who is probably going to end up buying this—who is willing to spend money on a cardboard cutout of the Dos Equis guy, you deserve the pay the full $50. Probably more.

Stay thirsty.