I’m About To Go Hoff

Oooh. Tastes so good.

You know who I appreciate right now?  David Hasselhoff.  Back in the day we just called him Knight Rider.  I can hear the theme song in my head right now.  Sing it with me.  Dun dada dun.  Dun dada dun.  Dun dada dun dun dun.  I don’t know if it was the car that made him so cool or if it was just him.  Maybe it was his relationship with the car.  Who knows? I just thought he was cool.  But then he did Baywatch.  I don’t know how I felt about that, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt because of Knight Rider, but I still couldn’t get into the show.  I just didn’t want to watch Knight Rider running around in swim trunks and carrying that orange thing. Then he did Baywatch Nights with the black dude from Baywatch.  He was playing a detective. I didn’t even try to get into that show.  He may have done some other stuff, but I didn’t know anything about it.  Then one day, I saw this weird video on Youtube or something with him singing this song called  Jump In My Car (see below).  In the video, he was driving a KITT car with the steering wheel on the Euro side.  It was a really bizarre video.  He even wore his Baywatch gear and in one scene he turned into some weird devil dude when he decided to kick out of his car the very girl he begged to get into it. Ultimately he ejected her using the famous ejector seat feature.

When I first saw the video I was like, “What are you doing Knight Rider?  Stop.  Don’t destroy the 80s with this cheesy a** video. You are Michael Effin Knight!!!  Michael Effin Knight!!!”  Then it got worse.  I clicked on another video of his where he was singing that song Hooked On A Feeling. I am adding that video for your viewing pleasure as well.  What you will see is The Hoff flying through the air like The Greatest American Hero, sort of snowboarding down a mountain on a sled dressed like an Eskimo, as well as somehow riding a motorcycle by standing on the seat.  Another video to which I was like “What is happening?”  I would not have been surprised if Mr. T showed up in the video pitying fools who “hassled the Hoff”.

As you can probably tell, I was not particularly fond of The Hoff’s post Knight Rider career choices.  I mean imagine if you saw someone like Luke Skywalker–if you’re into Star Wars–singing I will Be Your Father Figure while battling Darth Vader. Wouldn’t you be slightly disturbed at first?  I think it’s that whole, “How the mighty have fallen” sort of thing that none of us wants to experience.  That’s how I felt at first and then something strange happened.  I started drinking iced coffee at my local Cumberland Farms and everything changed.  One day, I was surprised to see a huge poster of no one other than the Hoff himself rocking a gold chain with  a big 99¢ on it and his shirt wide open with the caption, “Enjoy an iced Hoffee”.  I laughed and said to Ryan, the super customer service dude, “that guy just doesn’t give up.”  Ryan agreed and then told me that actually the campaign was so popular that people kept stealing their posters and signs forcing them to keep ordering more. Apparently people were snatching them up and then taking pictures with the posters in various places like weddings and vacations.  The thought made me laugh and then it made me think.  What was it about the Hoff that made people want to steal his posters?  Was it their awesome cheesiness or was it the fact that deep down inside we love the Hoff because the The Hoff won’t quit.  He won’t go away.  He could have disappeared in the 80s.  He could have stayed in Germany where apparently he is a huge pop singer.  But no, he didn’t fade away like the stars of Airwolf and Riptide.  This man stuck around and threw the 80s back at us with some signature cheesy videos and exposed chest hair and made at least me laugh as he did the serious business of not taking himself too seriously.

As a person trying to create something original with my life, I look for inspiration where I can find it.  Today I find it in the Hoff.  He showed me that no matter what, you have to keep creating and be able to laugh at yourself.  When you fall down drunk on the floor and all you want is a cheeseburger (him not me), you get up and you keep going.  When people want to look at you as the person you once were, you can just recreate yourself.  There’s nothing to stop us but the limits of our imagination. Those are just some of the master keys to longevity and aliveness that I got from the Hoff that I think we all can benefit from.  That and drinking a whole lot of iced Hoffee.

Something’s Gotta Give

It’s getting close to two years since I heard another one of my classmates had been shot and killed.  Because of what I was studying in school at the time, it threw me off so much that I had to write my feelings out on my Roofless Church blog just to process them.  I wish I knew about this song at that time.  I honor E. “Big CEO Red” Taylor and all of the Team 220 artists and collaborators in this video for putting this project together. This is a real “master peace”. It is a song that I wish was sung when I was growing up in my various neighborhoods, because frequently I thought, “somethings gotta give”.   For those of you who visit this blog, you know that I am all about questioning the prevailing mentalities and encouraging us to reach toward our highest potential.  I think this song does the same thing and that’s why I’m posting it here.  It’s a brilliant example of creativity, passion, and using our art in the service of others.  For those of you who are not into rap, I challenge you to listen to this song in its entirety and try to feel what it is offering to the community of the artists featured.  We all need this right now. Something’s really gotta give because as long as we think that we are not all connected to each other we are part of the problem.  As Martin Luther King Jr. is known for saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I got so many chills up my spine listening to this song as I imagined so many youth playing it on repeat on their phones and music players.  There were a few songs that I listened to growing up that were like life preservers to consciousness and the awareness that no matter what was going on around me, I had a choice.  The biggest for me back in the day was “Man in the Mirror” because it held me responsible for the world I see.  If I was growing up these days, I’d put this on repeat along with.  I probably still will since I just bought it on Amazon (click to purchase). Unfortunately, this song has been out for like two years and I didn’t know about it until my cousin posted it in our facebook group–and I live in the Boston area.  To be fair, I don’t really listen to the radio anymore because I’m working on my vibes and a lot of the songs out there are going in the opposite direction that I intend to go.  But this one is up there.  There’s no reason why songs like this aren’t worldwide because it’s all about: