Okay, I admit that I never watched Bret Michael’s reality show before this season (there were two seasons before this one, both held in a house rather than on a bus and called simply “Rock of Love”). I just saw no reason to watch a bunch of skanky women competing for the “love” of a celebrity. There are a lot of shows along those lines: “Flavor of Love”, “I Love New York”, “Real Chance of Love”, “For the Love of Ray J” …. the list goes on and on.
I find it very hard to believe that the celebrities with those shows have any respect whatsoever for the opposite sex. If they did, they wouldn’t pit members of the opposite sex against each other, pretending like they might fall in love with one of them, when in truth they’re just doing it for the money and attention. Then again, as I found out when I actually did watch some of those shows, the contestants are there for the same reasons. Overall, I guess I find the concept far less offensive than I would if the contestants actually were expecting to find true love.
I first discovered “Rock of Love” when “Rock of Love Charm School” was on, starring Sharon Osbourne (Ozzy’s wife). Those girls were wild, to say the very least, and I thought it was pretty funny. So I thought I’d check out the original show when the new season started. Though I have watched those other “love” reality shows on and off, and never liked any of them enough to watch it more than a few times when I was really bored, “Rock of Love Bus” is actually pretty funny.
Here’s the recipe. First, put a bunch of very trashy, incredibly catty women together in a small space, where they can’t get away from each other. Toss in a few relatively normal women who like rock music, as well as a few women who seem mentally unhinged (though some contestants can fit multiple categories). Throw in an unlimited amount of alcohol. Then, make them compete for the attention of a famous rockstar multimillionaire. Stir them up with various interpersonal dramas, both real and imagined, and all kinds of strange things happen. The end result is a veritable white trash debutante ball, LOL.
Bret Michaels, the man for whose “love” these women are competing, was the lead singer for Poison; their biggest hit was the rock ballad “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (the chorus, which might jog your memory if you don’t remember it, is “Every rose has its thorn, just like every night has its dawn, just like every cowboy sings a sad sad song, every rose has its thorn”). In the interest of full disclosure, since readers know I’m a huge fan of rock music, I have never been a Poison fan. I didn’t dislike them, mind you, but I didn’t buy their music either. In fact, unlike with most well-known rock bands, the sentence at the beginning of this paragraph is the sum total of what I know off the top of my head about Poison, LOL.
Bret Michaels seems to have a solo career now, and plays much smaller venues than back in his stadium days with Poison if his reality show is any indication, but still attracts a pretty big fan base. I’d guess he’s currently known mostly because he has a reality TV show, since Poison hasn’t had a hit in years and years, and the concert scenes show the same song over and over again. Or perhaps, they’re just pushing that song as his current single. Who knows. Like everything else from Poison/Bret, if the song came on the radio I’d listen to it, but I wouldn’t buy it for my own collection; and though I would be open to seeing a concert, I wouldn’t be willing to pay very much or travel very far.
So no, I’m not a fan, but I am not a detractor either. I just don’t really have an opinion about Poison and/or Bret Michaels one way or the other, which is unusual for me as regular readers are aware. I thought I should be clear about that up front, given that I do give my opinions about music on this blog from time to time.
It appears that most of the “contestants” on Rock of Love are either strippers, or otherwise in the porn industry. No surprise there, since you’re not going to get the typical woman to participate in a show of that nature, nor would they want the typical woman on the show, since that would be boring. Most of them don’t even seem to be fans of his music, and at least one of them openly admitted that she has no idea who Bret is, and had never even heard of him or his music before.
This year they also threw in a Penthouse Pet, and she was named “Pet of the Year” while she was on the show (and probably because she was on the show, since that means they can sell more magazines to those who wonder what she looks like naked, but missed her photo spread the first time around). For anyone who doesn’t know what “Penthouse Pet” means …. she posed nude for Penthouse Magazine, and Penthouse ain’t Playboy. It’s not art, and it’s not appreciation of the female form interspersed with mainstream articles. It is far more graphic, and definitely pornography.
They’re all physically attractive women though, I can say that for them (well, except for one who I don’t find very attractive at all, but I suspect she just isn’t very photogenic since I have noticed shadows on her face). The format of the show is that contestants engage in “challenges”, and as a result of those challenges the winner (which is completely subjective) gets a “date” with Bret Michaels; in other words, he can go on a date with whichever one he wants, since he makes that decision, and sometimes will make an excuse to bring other women on the “date” as well. In the meantime, the women drink to excess and act like idiots. At the end of each episode a contestant (sometimes two) is eliminated, until there is a winner.
This season, all kinds of hilarity ensued. On the very first episode, the girls were supposed to introduce themselves and pose so Bret could take their photos (apparently he enjoys photography as a hobby). One girl, who seemed to be stoned out of her mind on Xanax (or something similar), read him some poetry …. which she had very clearly written on the backs of flyers about sexually transmitted diseases, ROFLMAO. While taking photos of another girl during the initial episode, and saying she looked familiar, Bret suddenly realized he had indeed seen her before … in porno films he had on his tour bus.
One girl was eventually suspected by other contestants of secretly being a man. She actually did look like a transvestite from the beginning, to be honest, and she always, always wore – of all strange things to wear – tutus (which obviously could be used to cover a bulge). She had thin legs, but they were very muscular in a manlike way. She had a very deep voice for a female as well …. she could have been a transvestite, or she could have been a woman with masculine features. At one point Bret was going to ask her if she was a man, but then a bug flew into her and she reacted “like a girl”, so he used that as an excuse to chicken out about asking her. He did eliminate her that day, though, and used the reason that they had a friendship but no romantic chemistry. I still don’t know if that contestant was a man, or a woman. We may never know for sure, but I personally suspect she was a transvestite, knowingly cast on the show. I don’t recall Bret ever making out with her either, so he might have already known that.
Another girl on a later episode got angry and let it out of the bag that Bret Michael’s long blond hair is not his own. He handled it pretty well though, admitted it, and said that he gets “the finest hair Europe has to offer”, or something along those lines. I bet he was secretly pissed, though. Honestly, I had never thought about whether his hair was real, until she said that, and now it’s a piece of useless (but amusing) information I will probably always retain. So, Bret Michaels must be losing his hair. Hey, it happens, and he’s not a kid. He’s an aging rock star, desperately clinging to fame by whoring himself out to reality TV.
Of course, if not for his reality tv show, most women today wouldn’t even know who he is, and certainly his tour bus wouldn’t be surrounded by hundreds of hysterically screaming females, as I know for a fact happens because MOH rigged one of his shows and saw it for himself. So I think we all know the real reason why Bret Michaels has his “love” reality show, and it’s not because he’s dumb enough to think he’ll magically meet Ms. Right out of a group of strippers, porn stars, and general-purpose bimbos. It’s actually a smart career move for him, without which he’d have long ago faded into obscurity.
One person who really stands out to me on the show is “Big John”, who appears to be Bret Michaels’ bodyguard rather than a tour manager (or whatever it is they said is his job). Big John is indeed a very big guy, hence the nickname I guess, but he strikes me as a former bouncer hired for the show. Whenever there’s trouble, Big John is sent in to settle it; last week, an actual fight broke out between one of the girls and a former contestant Bret had brought into the show. Bret and Big John were watching a live feed when it happened. As soon as the real aggression started, Bret was telling him “You better get in there …. Go, go, go!” and Big John jumped up immediately and ran into the other room to get things under control. A main component of Big John’s job therefore seems to be to keep the contestants in line. Another component seems to be to act as a buffer between the contestants and Bret Michaels, since Bret does not just freely associate with the contestants, and none of them get to see Bret unscheduled, without going through Big John first. I therefore suspect his primary responsibility is to make sure no one harms Bret Michaels, because they are bringing some extremely questionable people onto that show, some of whom are violent, and all of whom are drinking constantly thus making them unpredictable. Again, if that’s the case, it’s a very smart move.
If you can look past the obvious, though, the show is interesting, and the challenges are amusing. Last week, Bret had a “challenge” wherein he brought in the ex-significant other of all the contestants. He said exes are like sex tapes: you never know where they’ll pop up, and you never know how much they will reveal. That’s true, I have to admit. He separated the women from their exes, and had two former contestants (Heather from Season One, and last year’s winner Ambre, who he apparently did date for about 10 months, but unlike almost all the girls on the show she is absolutely beautiful, very poised, and well spoken) talk to the exes to find out the truth about the contestants. Then, the judges talked to the contestants, one by one, with their exes. And while all this was going on, Bret was watching from via video feed.
(Spoiler Alert: Stop reading now if you watch the show and missed the episode about the exes)
The ex (Jaz) of the Penthouse Pet (Taya) acted like a total psycho. He bragged about all the women he’s dated, then said he’d like to slit the throat of every single one of them except Taya. He then got into a huge argument with the judges, when they pointed out (correctly, though he didn’t believe it) that Taya had looked down her nose at the strippers. He did say something I might say, though; when one of the judges gave him the finger with both hands, he said, “what, am I supposed to feel bad about myself now because you gave me the finger?” LOL Jaz is nowhere near as dangerous as he wants to appear, though. He might harm someone (though it’s just as likely that someone would kick his ass for running his mouth), and he probably has abused women physically (and has no doubt abused them verbally), but he’s not going to kill someone for sport despite that very strange comment about throat slitting. He’s mostly just an asshole.
Nevertheless, it turns out that Taya’s a stripper too, and has been hiding it all along. Honestly, though, I don’t know why she hid it, except that she seems to believe herself better than the other girls However, I view strippers in a much better light than a Penthouse Pet – again, it ain’t Playboy, and at least stripping is a job. In fact, in a prior episode, Taya had told Bret that her “supervisor” at work had said if she got herself eliminated sooner rather than later, they could finish a particular “project”; I specifically remember that because I wondered what kind of work she does and how they view her pornography career, since she had never said what she does beyond the Penthouse thing. At the same time, I had suspected all along that Taya was in the sex industry beyond just posing for Penthouse, because (1) women not already in the sex industry usually don’t just one day decide to pose in Penthouse due the graphic nature of the magazine; and (2) in a prior episode (”Truck Stop Games”) she proved that she can work a stripper pole like a pro, and was better at it than even most of the (known) strippers. Clearly, she was being intentionally deceptive when she led Bret to believe she worked in an office.
However, Taya still insists she’s not a stripper, instead calls herself a “featured dancer”, and points out that she is a professionally trained dancer who doesn’t perform “at the airport” (which, for those of you who live more secluded lives, is where many lowbrow strip joints are found). However a LOT of strippers are professionally trained dancers and work at classier strip clubs, so that’s irrelevant to proving anything. She also said that she has performed at “some of the top venues in the country”. Yet even the topmost venue for a “featured dancer” is still a strip club, so that doesn’t prove her point either. The bottom line is that, if you dance while taking off your clothes for a living, you are a stripper. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a stripper, if it’s what you choose to do, but still, it is what it is; and Taya can call herself anything she wants, but at the end of the day, she is still a stripper. She definitely has no reason to look down her nose at anyone else, given that she is not only a stripper, but has also posed in a pornographic magazine. Sheesh.
Another ex (James) was there for Ashley, one of the strippers who (as Bret noted) looks like the actress Juliette Lewis. In fact, she looks a lot like Juliette Lewis, if Juliette Lewis overbleached her hair, got lots of hair extensions and oversized breast implants, dressed like a stripper all the time, and wore entirely too much makeup. Her ex was muscular, dressed in a wife-beater t-shirt, had a shaved head, and was completely covered in tattoos, even on his neck (which wasn’t surprising in itself, since she also has a lot of tattoos, and in fact she has a nude tattoo of herself on her own arm – classy, eh?) That guy definitely struck me as a gang member based on his tattoos, and I’d guess he has been in prison based on the way he carries and comports himself. Frankly, though he tried to seem friendly and non-threatening, and smiled a lot, he was trying way too hard because I saw right through it. James is definitely dangerous, far more dangerous than Jaz even though Jaz openly talked about slitting women’s throats. The truth is, you wouldn’t see it coming with a guy like James. He isn’t going to run his mouth, and he isn’t going to argue with you. He would be smiling at you one minute, and the next would be a sudden, unexpected explosion of extreme violence. Be very, very careful around people like him.
At this point I have to ask, where the hell does Bret Michaels find women who would give men like Jaz and James the time of day, much less live with them, much less bear their children? Seriously, I want to know. Look, they have to be screening these women to find the trashiest ones imaginable. That is the only explanation, because most of Bret Michael’s fans – the women who would actually be most interested in dating him – are absolutely nothing like that, far from it. Most are middle-aged moms who liked Poison when they were young, and now work at the grocery store, or the local doctor’s office, or something completely uncontroversial; that doesn’t make good tv though, does it? And if they are screening the contestants to find the trashiest ones out there in order to make it interesting, that also means they are screening the contestants to put in a few girls who are acceptable for him to date (or be perceived as dating). They may even be predetermining the winner, and that wouldn’t surprise me at all. However, the truth is that I don’t care who wins, and I doubt anyone else does either. I watch it for the entertainment value, and not because I believe it is a legitimate contest of any type. It’s reality tv, after all, and the secret of reality tv is that it is far less “real” than it seems. But, I digress.
Ashley had a meltdown while waiting to go in to see the judges with James; she demanded to leave, declared herself a lesbian from that moment on, and actually laid down on the floor in a fetal position. The other girls told her she had nothing to worry about as long as she is honest, but it turns out she had something to be very worried about, because she still lives with James. Strangely, James just kept telling everyone, “Nobody can pull my p***y” as if it were his mantra, referencing his belief that no man could take his girlfriend/babymama away from him. According to him, she wasn’t going to leave him for Bret, but if she did, he would be “disgusted”; and James freely admitted he was there to take Ashley back home. Under questioning she admitted that they live together, said he’s a great father to their son (aye-yi-yi) and made the mistake of calling him her “bf”, only adding the additional “f” (for “best friend forever” rather than “boyfriend”) when she caught herself. See, she and her ex not only dated and have a child together, they are still a couple and still live together. She said that they sleep in separate rooms, but he says they still have sex “all the time”, and she didn’t dispute that statement. Obviously they are not just roommates, as she tried to claim. They’re still together, and that’s what she was really trying to hide. Once that deception was revealed, she was eliminated; though up until that time, she was Bret’s favorite of all the contestants.
I don’t think I need to tell anyone that Bret Michaels has lost his mind if he’d really date someone like Ashley, who is not only incredibly trashy, but whose babydaddy views her as his property and is clearly dangerous. However, it makes for good tv, and I suspect Bret knew all along that she was still with James (but he slept with her anyway, then bragged about it by showing them going behind closed doors and saying “James, I hate to tell you, but your girl’s been pulled”). They tracked James down to get him on the show, after all, so it was hardly a secret that they live together, and couldn’t have been a real surprise to Bret. Besides, the same thing happened last season as well, so he had to see that coming. Again, “reality” tv is nowhere near as real as it seems.
Brittanya’s ex was just a “booty call”, rather than a real relationship, and he said that she is a “freak” so if Bret gets to sleep with her, he’s a lucky guy. Other than that, he just said he can sleep with her anytime he wants, and he was upset only that Bret might take away his booty call. Brittanya – who is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, by the way, very exotic-looking – got into a fight with the female judges. And by that I mean a real fight, wherein she threw a punch at Heather (which was blocked), and then spit on her. Brittanya is not a little female, and she said she already didn’t like Heather because Heather attacked a smaller contestant on Season One (which they showed, and it was a real attack, not just a blocked punch). The whole time, Brittanya’s ex sat there encouraging her to fight. She had tried to start a fist fight with another contestant earlier in the season, too. I get the impression that this girl fights a lot, and that this guy had seen it more than once before and gets a big kick out of it. Needless to say, she was eliminated as well.
The unattractive girl’s ex wasn’t actually her ex either. Instead, it was the lead singer of a band she’d chased around the country. Yep, she’s a groupie, which should be a surprise to …. absolutely no one. She even moved to New York from the Midwest to be near that band (they never said the name of the band, but it doesn’t seem to have been one we’d have heard of anyway). How clever to make sure rock fans aren’t being diverted away from Bret’s rockstar status by mentioning another band, LOL. She claimed she is not a groupie, and is instead just a fan, but he said she went to “all” their shows and also said, without coming right out and saying it, that she had slept with most of the band. She also wasn’t eliminated, and Bret said “she might be a groupie, but groupies don’t suck”. However, I hear they do. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.
He also said “minor offenders” like her were lucky, because he had “bigger fish to fry” that elimination and already had to get rid of one girl for still living with her boyfriend, and another girl for physically attacking his friends.
Beverly – one of the few (at least at first) seemingly normal women on the show – had no one there to dish dirt on her. I’m not sure what she does for a living, since we’re keeping score on that count, so it must not be very controversial. Turns out they had tried to get her ex-husband on the show, but he declined. She and her ex had been married for nine years, had been together since they were kids (she first got pregnant at 17) and have children together (he has physical custody). It sounds like her ex probably has his head on at least fairly straight, because his children need him to be home with them, not appearing with their mother on some crazy reality TV show which makes her look like a slut just for being on it. Bret was fine with the ex not being there, said it’s no reflection on her, and that it just wasn’t where her ex felt he needed to be at that time.
Her reaction was strange, to say the least. While Bret was in the room with them, she seemed very upset and fighting tears, even biting her lip to control her emotions. However, once he left the room, she completely lost control. One should think she’d be happy her ex didn’t show up, given how much damage an ex can (and many times will) inflict, but instead she majorly freaked out – crying hysterically, yelling at people, the whole nine yards – and throughout the show she kept talking about him not being there, so she clearly still has strong feelings for him (which is understandable; it’s unknown how long they have been divorced, but since they were married for nine years “and were together longer”, it couldn’t have been that long because she isn’t that old). Bear in mind, though, that these women are drinking constantly, and as the season went on Beverly in particular was visibly more and more drunk, so that’s probably the root of a lot of her reaction since alcohol is a depressant. Bret said due to the teenage pregnancy she is likely going through a second childhood, explaining the drinking and other behaviors; and told her she has issues, but he can’t get to the bottom of them if she’s drunk and belligerent (as if he’s actually dumb enough to get involved with someone who has issues of that nature anyway, since he has undoubtedly dated more women than most men even know, so he definitely knows better).
Mindy, a cute woman from the Midwest, admitted that she cheated on her ex-boyfriend. She didn’t even try to hide it when asked, and her ex still had only great things to say about her even though he suspected she had cheated, because he felt the relationship was already over anyway when that happened, even though it wasn’t formally ended. She actually seems pretty normal, though obviously it doesn’t take much to seem normal in comparison to the other contestants, so that may not be saying much. I don’t know what Mindy does for a living either, so it must not make for good tv. The judges both liked her best, and both said they hope she wins. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t, because the whole thing seems like a setup to me.
Anyway, that’s an overview of the last episode, to give you an idea what the show is about; it’s now down to the final four contestants (Mindy, Beverly, Taya, and the groupie whose name I can’t remember for the life of me).
I personally find Rock of Love Bus very entertaining, in the same way that I sometimes find The Jerry Springer Show very entertaining. These girls may be a lot more physically attractive than the ones who show up on Jerry Springer, but other than that, there’s really no difference between them.