Praise Be To Hoff………..

As a man, I am pretty crap.

I lack all of the so called traits that men are supposed to have.

I have no skills to speak of whatsoever. I can’t put up shelves. I can’t wallpaper a wall. If you handed me a hammer, a saw, and a socket set, and then asked me to do something manly with it, more than likely I would just look back at you as if you had just handed me a new born baby and then asked me to raise it as my own, teaching it decent values and morals and how to be an upstanding member of society.

Then I would probably begin sweating.

I can’t drive and know nothing of cars, so I can’t gather in a circle of men and begin to debate  the merits of the new Ford Megabollox 5000, with its horse powered bastard fast engine, which also comes with shiny alloy wheel things and a pair of airbags, that when inflated, resemble two huge testicles being squashed into your face so you feel like you've fallen headfirst into Meatloaf’s lap.

I don’t go out and get shitfaced drunk with other men and then start to letch on women in that charmingly enduring way that only drunk morons can, where in their own heads they believe themselves to be the suave reincarnation of Dean Martin and Jack Nicholson, but in reality they actually resemble sad and lonely figures who are only going to go home alone, covered in speckles of their own vomit and chip grease, and masturbate furiously in dark and silent bedrooms. And with each bitter stroke, their eyes will moisten from the sheer emptiness of their lives as they face up to the fact that their best years are behind them, and they have absolutely nothing to show for it other than the dull ache that sits in the place where their heart used to be and the crumpled up jizz covered tissues that actually represent the only form of relationship that they have right now, one which happens to be with their own right hand.

I don’t do that obviously.

In fact the only allusion to manhood that I actually follow is the fact that I like football. But even then, when I go to a match, I probably stick out like a man who gets turned on by heights doing a bungee jump due to the disdain I normally feel for my fellow supporters as they bellow out the inane drivel that passes for support in these enlightened times.

Kick his fucking legs!

You’re shit Cole!

(Upon when pointed out that was actually Illunga that miss kicked the ball and not Cole)

Cole, Illunga, who fucking cares?

Sort it ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!

Sigh………

But saying that, if you replaced the whole crowd with exact replicas of me, rather than cheering as the team marched out on to the pitch, all you would have would be a slight air of disappointment and 36,000 people wondering if you could buy shoes for monkeys, so maybe its probably best if things stayed the way they were on that front?  

So, as you can probably tell, as a man I lack any sort of quality whatsoever.

I suck.

When I was growing up though, there was one person that epitomised manhood in all its glory and also gave me something to hope for as well, the hope that I too would grow up as hairy and virile as this God amongst men was.

That man was David Hasslehoff.

For about two years, The Hoff was a god to me. During my Knight Rider obsession at the age of about eight, I too wanted to wear leather trousers and walk around with my shirt undone, looking for all the world like I had a tranquilised possum stuffed down the front of it who was just starting to wake up and wonder where the hell it was. But sadly for me, my mum wouldn’t let me buy a pair of leather trousers, and at the age of eight, my chest hair was a little on the lax side.

But make no mistake; the man was a living legend to me. And Knight Rider was my church. I tried to copy the way The Hoff walked, how he got the ladies, and how he oozed effortless cool.

But most of all, I tried to copy the relationship he had with KITT.

The fact that The Hoff was so cool he actually had a talking car basically sealed the deal for me. I too wished I had a talking car, and on occasion, if left alone in my dad’s car, I would whisper to it “You can talk to me if you want?”

It never did though.

But this obsession with talking cars spread out into other household objects as well. I overheard my parents talking one time about if they should send me to a child psychologist after they had caught me having a one sided conversation with the washing machine in our kitchen. I tried to explain to them that if Michael Knight could have a talking car, why was it so silly if I had a talking washing machine? True, our crime fighting prowess would be a tad limited, but at least my leather trousers would always look clean as I did it.

Now though, The Hoff has been relegated to a clownish figure to be laughed at and ridiculed. The king of cheesy moments, drunken antics, and bizarre behaviour.

And then there is the music.

Upon preparing to write this love letter to all things Hasslehoff, I realised that in all honesty, I hadn’t really heard any of his music. Whether that was a good thing or not I am still to decide. I’d heard of it, but just not the actual music itself. So I popped over to Amazon to listen to a few snippets and found quite possibly the funniest selection of reviews I have ever read. 

Pop on over and have a look yourselves, but here are a few choice selections:

“Once in every generation you have gifted musical and literary geniuses who create bodies of work that can only be described as sublime transcendence. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy - this pantheon of greatness can only be complete with the addition of none other than Davis Humpinhorse. I was depressed, lonely and spiritually empty until one day, I listened to "The Best Is Yet To Come", and my eyes were opened - I was thus convinced that God not only exists, but we are all ensconced in his presence. If you truly love music and poetry, you must have this CD in your collection. For those who have grown world-weary and cynical, I challenge you to listen to gems like "Do the Limbo Dance", "Highway To Your Heart", "I Believe" and the particularly good song "Hot Shot City" (THE MASTERPIECE which exquisitely describes and defines the human condition) and tell me that life still has no meaning! In terms of his contemporaries, forget clowns like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits. The Hass-man blows them away. People will be studying and enjoying his poetry and music for generations.”

“I was a cynic, I'd done it all, seen it all, produced legends such as U2, Madonna, The Beetles, Tim Curry. As you would expect, I had grown weary of the wild world of the music industry. The constant parties, dealing with drugged up losers hawking what scrap of talent they had left in their war ravaged bodies to the highest bidder. So it would be no surprise to you folks that upon receiving Dumphil Hampersoft's "Very Best Of" album for Christmas from my great granddaughter Clarisse, I had almost chucked it out.
 
Almost.
 
But something about the man on the cover intrigued me. A quality I had seen before in others, John Lennon, Jimmy Hendrix, Elvis, Jesus. Overcome with, well, I can’t really describe it; I placed the compact disc tenderly in the tray of my 1993 original PanMax ghetto blaster and pressed Confabulate. The effect was instantaneous. As if caressed by the most serene of angels, my eardrums responded by rising in sweet symphony to the crests and troughs of His vocal sirens. Knees weak, I managed to make it to the couch where I slumped as I seen junkies do years before. Slowly my life force was being sapped, but not in a bad way, I was becoming...I was seeing for the first time, hearing for the first time. Then Hot Shot City started to play. As if sitting on my father’s lap for the first time, Dammerhingers voice tenderly trailed the length of my neck, raising each hair on my body in an organic ode to greatness. It was done. I had found what I was looking for. The chase for the white dragon was over and I have only one person, one being, to thank.
Thank you Drupil Handlestroff. You are truly great.”

"Magnanimous....serendipitous...cornucopias....none of these words have anything to do with this album....at least one of them probably doesn't exist...but they are big....VERY big...and big is exactly the size of Mr. Hasselhoff's talent, as displayed so proudly on this greatest hits CD. You will curse your parents for not playing this music while you were still in the womb, for you might have grown up to become a well adjusted individual instead of the worthless heathen you are."

And finally……

"If you're indeed looking for the best of David Hasselhoff, one could do no better than this nearly flawless collection. In "Looking for the Best", Hasselhoff selects 18 songs spanning a back catalogue of 1 previous album. Actually, I'm not sure how someone compiles a best-of album when you only have 1 album, but Hasselhoff is not concerned with semantics here; Hasselhoff is here to rock you.
 
LFTB starts of earnestly with "Looking for Freedom" in which Hasselhoff rages against western materialism. The synthesizer solo rails against your senses, reminding you what it's like to be young again.
 
Our second offering from this collection, "Wir Zwei Allein", Hasselhoff takes aim at the Jews, denying the holocaust as a "jüdische Bengellüge". From his pulpit, Hasselhoff rains down blazing synthesizer rage that will remind you why they call him the "Der Gasraum Kommandant" in Germany and "Meister von Auschwitz" in Poland, where he's feared as a devil.
 
On "Do you Limbo Dance", Hasselhoff raps --
"Who's afraid of my big bad weenie / Rub it and see if it's got a genie / Gonna make disappear this 10-inch zucchini / Just like
Houdini / Big Dave Hasselhoff rappin' / Wanna see yo' butt cheeks flappin' / Hoff want the honeys with the big back doors /
So drop them drawers, whores. Unh."
 
Like most albums that start off so strong, when Hoff takes it down a notch, the album sags in the middle. In "Save the World" Hoff rattles off about the Jews again, and in my opinion, it gets a little repetitive.
 
Fortunately the album picks up again with a rousing gorgeous "Je T'Aime Means I Love You", in which Hasselhoff softens his Arian manifest with clever French wordplay wrapped into a bilingual love-song. Hasselhoff sings "I love your hair and as the french say 'adorez mon pénis, vous putain de parasite'". I'm not sure what that means, but it bleeds with the romance that only Hasselhoff can conjure.
 
All in all, this is an extremely strong collection of songs from an underrated singer. Move over Bob Dylan, the torch has been passed."

I could spend hours reading those…….

So Hoff, even though your place in the annuls of entertainment history have been sullied somewhat by the fact that you a clearly a deranged mental bastard, in my heart, you will always be the coolest of cats, with your tousled hair, your leather trousers that reflect the sunlight so much that even your crutch seems illuminated, and the very fact that you had a talking motherfunking car!

To this eternal eight year olds heart, you were, and still are, the very best.