Rock The Cradle Of Love

For the longest time, I always considered VH1 to be the lesbian sister of the more successful MTV. Sure, VH1 has always shown more music videos, but it always stuck to a heavy rotation of Creed, Matchbox 20 and Nickelback. Maybe VH1 got a lot of angry letters in the mail about how watching those three bands in a row has caused countless hillbillies' heads to explode...

Whatever it was, VH1 has really stepped up their game over the last few years. Remember that episode of Seinfeld when George decided to do the exact opposite of what his instincts told him to? I think someone like that must have been working at VH1:

Head of VH1: "Gentlemen, our ratings are lower than they've ever been. What can we do?"

Dude #1: "Well maybe we should get back to showing music videos and putting quality television shows back on our station."

Dude #2: "I have an even better idea...let's do the exact opposite! Not only should we show completely trashy zero-IQ shows, but we should totally get rid of the music videos and show them over and over and over!"

Head of VH1: "That's just crazy enough to work..."

And just like that, The Surreal Life was born.

VH1 also seems to have picked up on the fact that showing an entire season of a crappy show all on a single Sunday may be the greatest idea in the history of television. Why would I watch an individual episode of America's Next Top Model Season 4 when I can just wait a few weeks and see the entire season AND get the laundry done at the same time?

And just when I didn't think VH1 could get any better...Rock of Love premiered last night.

From here on out, I'm going to try to keep it short, because I could write pages and pages about this if given the chance.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the show (and really, you have no excuse unless you live in Indiana), Rock of Love is about Brett Michaels, lead singer of Poison. It seems that Brett's rose is looking for its thorn (or maybe Brett's thorn is looking for a...never mind...), because Mr. Michaels is lonely and wants to find his soul mate...on reality television. So 30 slutty women are invited to his house in hopes of becoming his "girlfriend".

If this sounds EXACTLY like VH1's already existing "Flavor of Love" to you, just ignore it and move on.

Now I don't want to ruin it too much for anyone that is hoping to catch the rerun, so I'll just go through some of the highlights of the first episode:

• -Brett has the whole "face-lift face" going on, where he always looks mildly surprised and it seems like you could bounce a dime off of his face with the skin stretched so tight. Wearing guy-liner and cowboy hats doesn't help, Brett.
• -At the beginning of the show, Brett drives up his driveway on a motorcycle to greet the 30 or so girls for the first time. After he leaves, Big John, Brett's head of security, tells 5 girls to stay outside and lets the rest into the house. He then proceeds to tell those 5 girls that they have already been kicked off the show. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. IS THIS NOT THE FUNNIEST THING EVER??? They didn't even get a chance to open their mouths, and they're already off the show!
• -They had the perfect "first episode" formula: Take a bunch of hoochie ladies that are mostly strippers, get them all in a house, and just feed them massive amounts of alcohol. And then let them all try to vie for the attention of one guy.
• -One of the 5 girls that got sent home at the beginning of the show actually came back and talked her way into staying in the house. Of course, she was the one that got so obliterated that she couldn't talk, had no idea where she was or what she was doing, started dry-humping the star of the show while he was trying to talk to someone else, almost started a fight, and was crying hysterically for no reason as the evening wore on. And guess what? When Brett narrowed the field down to 15, she got to stay in the house, even though she's uglier than a goat's nutsack. No, that's not staged at all...
• -There was actually a 3 minute segment (which could have very well lasted for several hours in real life) where the girls in the house were comparing their breast implants. One girl even went so far as to explain to the camera that her breast implants were the best presents she ever got...for Christmas...from her parents.

Look, I could go on and on (I haven't even given Big John his credit as the unintentional comedy of the first episode yet), but I don't want to ruin the surprises. You know that VH1 is going to play it at least twice a day for the next week, so catch it if you missed it. As for the early favorites to "win" (that term is used loosely...loose like most of the girls'...nah, too easy...), I would say it boils down to the red haired rocker chick Lacey, and man-chick Rodeo. Rodeo told Brett that she has a son and that she used to be paralyzed and had to teach herself how to walk again. It'll be great when she makes the top 4 and is forced to tell him that it was all a lie 10 minutes before he meets the parents in the inevitable "visiting home" episode that you know is going to happen.

I love America...