As I sit here waiting for the new episode of “Rock of Love” to air, I find myself feeling something I only feel for the rarest of reality shows: sickeningly gleeful anticipation.  What is “Rock of Love,” you ask?  Take it away VH1.com:

Since 1986 when MTV introduced the world to the blue-eyed lead singer of Poison, women around the world have worshiped Bret Michael’s as a veritable Rock God. Never out of the spotlight, Bret’s career is still rocking with Poison and as a successful solo artist and the women are still lining up in hopes of a lying down with the sexy star. But the demands of life-on-the-road for the ultimate rocker have taken a toll…on his love life.

Twenty lucky ladies will get their chance for an All-Access pass to Bret Michaels’ heart and to share in all his superstar lifestyle. Bret will invite twenty handpicked beautiful women to move into his rock and roll palace in the Hollywood Hills and compete for his heart. They must win over his mind and his body by proving their love for Bret, their passion for rock and their potential to be the perfect “Rock Star Girlfriend.”

The show is a crazy train(wreck) not seen on TV since…well, VH1’s “Flavor of Love.”  How, only two episodes in, do I already love the aw(ful)esomeness of this show?  Let me count the ways (spoiler alert: there are three ways):

1. Worst Bodyguard Ever:

Big John, who is evidently Bret’s head of security, is maybe the least effective bodyguard I’ve ever seen since…well, I’m blanking here.  I don’t know many famous bodyguards, other than Kevin Costner in “The Bodyguard,” and I haven’t actually seen that.

Aaaaaanyway, he sucks.  He’s not incredibly muscular; he’s “big” John like how Robin Hood’s “Little John” has an ironic name (if you catch my incredibly labored drift).  What I’m saying is, if you want to get backstage at a Poision concert, you’ve got a good shot at outrunning Big John if he chases you.

Also, after he’s kicked out five women for ... being a little less pretty and/or less skanky than the other twenty women, he goes and lets one of them beg her way back in.  Now, as it happens, I’m really happy he let Tiffany back in, but still, not a great security move there, ace.

Oh, and one more thing: he seems to not try to break up fights, which is, to me, one of the main things security people do.  It’s not like he’s not there; there are shots of him just watching as people get into it.  He just seems apathetic.

And an apathetic bodyguard is aw(ful)esome (damn, I miss doing the Lost top 5 of Awesomeness, but c’est la vie).

2. The Raging Libido of Bret Michaels:

Now even though this show is basically the same as “Flavor of Love,” Flav always seemed very concerned that the women with which he was surrounding himself liked him for him, and not because he was in Public Enemy (or the guy who played in Fargo, I think his name was Steve).  Even after two episodes, I can tell you, this is not at all a concern for Bret.

Bret likes the ladies.  Bret likes them all.  If the show had started with fifty women who wanted to sleep with him just so they could be on tv, I think that would be totally cool of him.  One of his challenges is to see how much blood will rush to his ... thorn when the women talk dirty to him (bam, two Poision references in one sentence!) over the phone.  That’s all he’s basing it on, no romance, just engorgement.

Then he takes the three winners (a term I, and they, use very loosely) to a recording studio and he makes out with one of them because she can sing well, he makes out with another because she moans well, and about the one who has never been in a recording studio before, he says, “It was a turn-on in the fact that she hadn’t done this (been in a studio) before and I was kind of devirginizing her in the studio experience.”

So, to sum up, one girl turns him on because she can sing, one girl turns him on because she can’t sing, and one girl turns him because she chose to moan into the microphone.  Bret Michaels has the Walt Whitman of libidos, it contains multitudes.  And, I would imagine, multitudes of antibiotics.  And that’s aw(ful)esome.

3.  Oh, Those Ladies:

True to any good reality dating show, these girls just want action tonight, satisfaction all night (and that exhausts my knowledge of Poison songs).  There’s a lot of alcohol, a lot of swearing, a lot of inappropriate behavior, and, because of that, a lot of great television.

How stripper-ish is the pool of contestants on this show?  There are two Brandi’s on the show, so they have to be labeled Brandi C. and Brandi M.  Want more?  Brandi C. criticizes Erin’s breast implants, not because she’s against the idea of them, but because her implants aren’t as real as Brandi C’s.  Oh, also, some of them are actually strippers and they have taught the other girls in the house how to use the handy-dandy stripper pole that seems to be right in the middle of the living room.

I do like Jes, though.  She’s actually attractive and fairly cool.  In fact, I think she might be the live action version of Jem (of “truly outrageous” fame).  That would make her a very good pairing with Bret, since both were famous rock stars twenty years ago.

But let me single out from the ladies one Miss Tiffany.  Tiffany is the aforementioned woman who was bounced from the show and begged her way in.  She is also the woman who decided that she was “behind” in the drinking and drank extra to “catch up” with the other ladies.  She then befuddled the subtitlers of the show with her slurred speech, gave Bret Michaels the worst lap dance in the history of laps, and used such catch phrases as, and I’ll try to write them how she says them, “Donthreatenmewidagoodtime” and “Ainnothinbutachickenwing.”

In a move where the show just throws up its hands and says, we can’t lose her yet, she is not eliminated from the first show because Bret says that she gets some sort of special dispensation.  It was basically just the show’s attempt to wring all the crazy talk it could from her.  Or maybe I’m just drinking the “haterade” that she was mumbling about.

Tiffany, you and your pals are, indeed, aw(ful)esome.

Okay, I’m going to go watch the new episode.  Be back in a second.

See how quick that was.  Okay, what I learned and loved in this episode:

• Don’t try to start fights in limos.  It doesn’t quite work.
• I have no idea why liquor companies don’t advertise on this show.  Are they embarrassed?  If so, why?
• Rodeo’s crazy laugh will haunt my nightmares.
• Huge fights continued, and Big John was ... nowhere in sight.  He’s good at handing notes to the women, though.  And that’s ... something.
• I’m scared of Lacey’s happy dance.

So thank you, Rock of Love, for giving summer tv the shot (of penicillin?) in the arm it needed. Aw(ful)esomeness all around.

Oh, and thanks a lot, CBS, for taking Pirate Master off the air and putting it online.  Now I’ve gotta watch the stupid thing on my computer.  Come on!