Sex, Stupidity, and Rock and Roll

VH1 has a gift for exploiting down-and-out or has-been celebrities (as in The Surreal Life, Celebrity Fit Club, My Fair Brady, and recently, Celebrity Rehab).

With the introduction of last year's Rock of Love, the network began blowing through Bret Michaels' waning fame like a stiff Kleenex. He's since become a national joke. Too bad the poor bastard's not swift enough to figure it out.

Maybe I was dreaming when I heard Bret tell Chelsea Handler last week that he'd slept with all but "two girls" on last season's Rock of Love -- as if that was a good thing. Like the jerk you went to high school with who bragged that he knew "all the words to 'Stairway to Heaven' by Lynyrd Skynyrd," Bret isn't quite as cool as he thinks he is. People aren't laughing with you, Dude.

Now Bret's back for Rock of Love 2, and I have to wonder if producers aren't prodding at least one of the smarter "girls" on this season's show on how to get Bret's attention. You can almost hear them whispering, "He's insecure about his height, so make him feel big," and "He's insecure about his age, so make him feel like he's 20 again."

Reviewing the season premiere, which ran for the umpteenth time last night, I picked up a tragic comment from one of the "girls," who I will henceforth refer to as the Women of Low Self-Esteem, or LSEs. The poor wretch said she joined the show because, "My father wasn't around very much, and I just want to find someone to love me."

Oh!

I truly believe that a the quality of a woman's romantic relationships usually depends on the relationship she had with her father (the same goes for a boys and their mothers). But sliding up and down a pole for a skeeve like Bret Michaels is hardly the way to remedy the situation.

The way to remedy the situation is this: Love yourself like your father never loved you. Make it a daily practice. Treat yourself as the most loving man in the world would treat a beloved child. Speak to yourself kindly. Put on some clothes. Use your brain to make money.

Speaking of fathers, Bret reminds us frequently that he is the father of two females, ages seven and two. I guess he thinks it makes him even more of a turn-on, but you have to wonder what these little girls will think when they watch Superdad's tongue bobbling around a series of strange mouths in a single 60-minute episode.

I just hope their mother (or, since we're talking about Bret, their mothers), has replaced the sleazebag with a better man.

In last night's episode, our hero serenaded the ladies with a song he recorded 20 years ago. Then he eliminated a contestant whose self-esteem ranked too high for his liking. Unlike some of the others, she had better things to do than sit by the door in her skivvies, waiting to greet the old dog when he came home.

Photo credit: Nancy Mazzei, VH1