By Scott Buckner
Let’s say you’re the programming think tank at VH1 and you want to resurrect an ’80s hair band singer, The Bachelor and Flavor of Love all in one breath because, well, actually showing music videos is just so booooooring and you can beat the lifeless carcass of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to death only so many times. So what do you do?
You create Rock of Love with former Poison singer Bret Michaels, that’s what.
I saw the rerun of the premiere episode Sunday morning. I’ve been entertained by Flavor Flav on Flavor and The Surreal Life>, and Bret’s no Flav. He doesn’t have big gold teeth to flash in a pimp smile like Richard Kiel’s titanium-mouthed villain Jaws The Spy Who Loved Me. He doesn’t wear a way-cool Viking helmet. He doesn’t wear a clock around his neck the size of Big Ben on a chain big enough to anchor an aircraft carrier. He’s never schtupped Brigitte Nielsen – at least not admittedly.
Nope. Bret’s just a long-haired dude in a doo-rag “looking for that special someone” to settle down with.
Not having a tour bus for outrageous sex with supple young babettes and MILFY moms will do that to a guy, y’know? But since he’s still pretty famous, he gets spared the indignity of dealing with the freaks and social misfits in the Craigslist personals by getting his own incarnation of Bachelor/Flavor.
Like Bachelor/Flavor, Bret gets to hang out in a house stocked with a stable of assorted women and whittle the whole lot down to one to have a relationship with. If The Bachelor is any indication, the relationship will likely expire in less time than it takes a potato to sprout eyes.
Or maybe not. Bret’s pretty serious about the whole business: “Basically, what I’m trying to say is rock ‘n’ roll is an insatiable bitch goddess, but I love her. And I’m just looking for that one woman in my life to participate in that threesome.” If that isn’t commitment enough to make any fair maiden get all swoony, there’s this: “And I know, deep in my heart, deep in my soul and deep in my loins that one of these girls will be the one for me.”
Sure. As long as she’s woman enough to master that stripper pole in the Rock house.
In Sunday’s rerun, the initial Rock stable of 25 women was chosen by a big beefy dude known as Big John – Bret’s “head of security” – who would probably look vaguely familiar to anyone who’s been bashed in the face with a blackjack or cattle-prodded for feeling up the help at any of our nation’s seedier strip joints. Big John wasn’t too forthcoming about his selection criteria, but judging by some of the women making the cut out of the teeming mass of volunteers who showed up for the chance to date Bret, I’m sure rock ‘n’ roll’s most common currency, the blow job, was likely involved. How else do you explain an assortment of girls next door, wallflowers, a woman who could easily be mistaken for a transvestite, some walking breast implants, a poster girl for the lobotomized trying to converse after apparently eating enough Valium to stun a horse, and ditzy helium-voiced blondes who whistle when the wind blows in one ear and out the other?
Forget what I mentioned earlier about Craigslist personals. They showed up at Bret’s door.
Anyway, in the first episode, the whole gaggle of women spent an evening trying to impress Bret enough to be among the 15 chosen to make the cut to Sunday night’s episode, which I wasn’t home to see. The main attraction of the show was Tiffany, who’s either twice the age of the other contestants or has more bad-road mileage on her than than a Greyhound bus. She spent her gettoknowya time annoying the piss out of everyone enough to be called a crack whore and trying to dry-hump Bret’s lap after transforming herself into Loud Sloppy Incoherent Drunk Broad. She is to Rock what Ripsi was to Bad Girls Club, except infinitely more incoherent. “Get it over you cinch you wadda,” she tells one of the fairly un-drunk contestants, who was clearly not up on her Crack Whore Drunkspeak translation skills.
After an incredible amount of painful soul-searching, Bret chose his 15 semi-finalists, asking each one, “Would you stay and rock my world?” as he hands them their own personal All Access backstage pass to the Rock house. First chosen was Rodeo, a somewhat manly-looking, cowboy hat-wearing woman who melted Bret’s heart by identifying with his diabetes by saying she was once paralyzed and had cancer. Yeesh. Besides doo rags, Bret’s pretty partial to cowboy hats, so that worked in her favor.
And in a surprise move – or maybe not such a surprise – Bret made a special addition to the 15 semi-finalists by inviting Wasted Tiffany to stay on: “I think somewhere in there is a nice girl. She was just wasted. I’ve been there, you’ve been there. Plus, she was entertaining.” Yeah, the morbidly drunk are pretty entertaining. Up until they take a shit in your bathroom wastebasket.
I was ready to write Rock off as insipidly dull as The Bachelor (and maybe even the painfully Hey Paula) until I saw the previews for upcoming episodes at the end of the show. Seems the women have to participate in a whole slew of contests to win time with Bret and try to win his heart and whatever other body parts go along with it. In episodes ahead, we’ll be seeing mud football, chicks crashing motocross motorcycles, chicks Dumpster-diving into smelly goo for guitar picks, chicks doing phone sex, and – best of all – chicks drinking copious amounts of alcohol, projectile vomiting, swapping spit, and beating each others’ faces in.
Nope, this is no Flavor of Love. Good thing.
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Posted on July 23, 2007