David Hasselhoff’s music video “Jump in My Car” is perhaps the worst and funniest music video of all time— and therefore a contemporary YouTube classic. Released in the UK last September, the video is a parody of ye good ole days of Knight Rider and Baywatch fame. The thing baffles with its power to allure. You can’t watch it just once. It poses the essential Hasselhoff popculture questions: “Where does legitimate effort and self mockery begin and end? Is the man to be lauded for self-knowledge or disdained for utter cluelessness?” Gotta love the green-screen shots in front of the flag and the James Bond flames!

Poor Hoff, he might be one of the most recognizable faces of American popculture, but he still laments the way Americans dismiss his music as campy trashola. “Jump in My Car” ain’t gonna change that fact. Come to think of it, this past February I sat directly behind him at a Jamie Foxx concert at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The whole time Hasselhoff was being mooned by a woman so infatuated with Jamie that she didn’t realize her crack was blocking the Hoff’s view. Kind of says it all. —NM

Tags: hasselhoff, jump in my car