Friday, March 19, 2010

Don't Hassel the Hoff by David Hasselhoff


The sex thing was still bothering me. In church, I became aroused every time I kneeled down prior to taking communion. - Hasselhoff on puberty

'Well, Wiener, it's you and me against the world.' - Hasselhoff on being newly divorced

Maybe Looking for Freedom did have some influence on the Wall coming down. - Hasselhoff on personally ending the Cold War

As you can tell, Don't Hassel the Hoff was rife with unintentional comedy. Hasselhoff has quite the high opinion of himself, to be sure, though how can you blame him when people yell, "Thank you for existing!" at him and when he restores peoples' faith in God on a regular basis (ok, just once or twice, but still). There are a number of anecdotes about how his presence made ridiculous impacts in people's lives. While I agree with Jim that this reflects poorly on the people who made the ridiculous statements (like the girl who promised not to kill herself just because she saw him in an elevator), I also think the fact that he includes them as stories about how cool he is demonstrates pretty clearly how big an ego he has. But then again, I've never had a 22-some with Tom Jones and 20 dancers, so what do I know?

Another amusing part of this book was that every once in awhile Hasselhoff would use the British spelling of a word, despite the fact that he grew up in Baltimore. Like "faeces" and "programme." Who spells it "faeces"? Seriously. I don't know how drunk the ghostwriter/editor must have been when they went over this book for a final time, because there are definitely a few errors and incorrectly used words. For example, when Hasselhoff was in South Africa one time a bunch of kids mobbed him and gave him stuffed giraffes, one of whom was Charlize Theron (spelled Charleze in the book). I didn't mind, though; it just added to the charm/hilariousness of the book.

Another thing, Hasselhoff loves to name drop. Doesn't matter how pointless it is to the story he's telling, if he can shoehorn in a celebrity recognizing/talking to/praising him, he'll do it.

I will say this about Hasselhoff, though: (according to him) he does a lot of great work with charity, especially those that help sick children.

A few more things: I have no idea how Baywatch stayed on the air for as long as it did (thirteen seasons!); shortly before the Berlin Wall fell, Hasselhoff did a concert in Germany in which he drove a car (named Freedom) through a styrofoam wall on stage. He also was pissed that there was no mention of his performance (linked above; how bout that light up jacket?) of Looking for Freedom at a museum dedicated to the fall of the Wall (he acknowledges that people gave him a lot of shit for saying that, but never denies feeling it); Hasselhoff spent a couple of years during high school in the Atlanta area and attended Marist (my school's biggest rival. bitches); David is also really pissed that his singing career never took off in America. It clearly continues to bug him.

That's about all. If you're ever looking for a light, funny read, I guess maybe read this book. It's at least entertaining.

2 comments:

Genie Ko said...

so this is what a law student does on a friday night...

Christopher said...

My Christmas gift ftw