April Winchell

I have a theory about why they love David Hasselhoff in Europe.

Every time I’ve been overseas, I’ve been bombarded with American television and music. Even their homegrown entertainment looks and sounds like something we might crap out over here. Or more accurately, something we might have crapped out 20 years ago.

I’ve sat slack-jawed in French hotel rooms, watching dubbed episodes of Love Boat. I’ve seen kids break dancing on cardboard along the Boulevard Saint Germain. I’ve heard French boy bands doing covers of Bee Gees tunes.

It’s like that movie Galaxy Quest, where the transmissions from America took 20 years to reach the aliens, and they thought it was news.

Clearly, that is the secret to David Hasselhoff’s success overseas, where anything that happened in the 80’s is cutting edge. In Europe, Hasselhoff is the aural equivalent of a Member’s Only jacket.

Still that doesn’t explain my growing affection for the Hoff, or as Regis referred to him on TV last week, “The Big Hasselhoff” (that’s a pretty clever nickname he worked up, and I think it was spontaneous).

It started when John turned me on to Hoff’s Hooked on a Feeling video, which I promptly slapped up on this site for all to see. It’s just indescribable, really. “Bad” is too small a word for it. It transcends bad. Everything he does is so misguided and wrong, it almost becomes a new art form.

I am of course, a huge fan of the ill-advised. A quick trip through my beloved multimedia section proves how dear the delusional are to me, from Telly Savalas’ Beatles covers, to the incomparable Wing. If, despite its best efforts, the world has not managed to beat you to a pulp and show you the error of your ways, then you are worthy of my adoration.

And slowly, it seems, the western world is starting to appreciate Hasselhoff’s bizarre appeal, or at least, we are becoming less self-conscious about openly mocking him and holding him up to ridicule.

Either way, it translates into the same thing for the Big Hasselhoff; a renaissance. It doesn’t matter why we watch him. The point is, we are watching him.

And we’ll probably continue to watch him, as he spirals ever closer toward rehab, a trial for beating the crap out of his ex-wife, some sort of inevitable sexual harassment lawsuit from some contortionist on “America, You’ve Got Talent”, a memoir, an energy drink, a duet with Paris Hilton remixed by Junior Vasquez and everything else this business has to offer.

In the meantime, we’ll have to content ourselves with his new music video, and for now, that seems plenty.

Keep your good eye open at around the 30 second mark, when he appears to have a small stroke.