Bus of Love

Reality television emerged in the late nineties under the guise of culturally self-aware programming, albeit by its nature exploitative, with series like Road Rules and Big Brother. These programs typically included a homogenous cast with a few outliers thrown in, a homosexual here, a devout Christian there, and the infrequent appearance of participants above the age of 23. By the late 2000s a wave of reality tv emerged that distilled the occasionally monotonous stream of content into its most entertaining components: sex, drugs, and violence. The VH1 television network was the champion of this movement, scrapping the token mundane, introverted and relatable characters, the tropes that outnumbered the protagonist wild cards who suffered from drug abuse and sexual promiscuity, for casts that were instead entirely comprised of larger than life personalities - rappers, porn stars, and actors.

Having been too young to remember the infancy of iconic reality television series like The Real World and Survivor, I experienced them only through the pop culture exposes of I Love the ‘90s and E! True Hollywood Story, and with the blasé guise of the reality 2.0 viewer, found them to be habitually quaint.

My generation’s reality tv played as if the networks had taken the blotter paper of The Bachelor and Big Brother and soaked it in LSD, the resulting product a substance fueled binge of debauchery and immorality. My drug of choice was the elimination style romance competition, and there were ample variations to choose from on my favorite channel, VH1, including Flavor of Love, I Love New York, and Rock of Love. I thoroughly enjoyed Flavor of Love, and the antics of the foul mouthed contestants, but I found a few women on the show whom I could relate to or even envision befriending, especially the runner up from the first season, Hoopz. I would much rather watch the adventures of characters that I couldn’t identify with, whom I could laugh at, make fun of, and generally reprieve in a mean spirited way. That’s the reason why people watch reality television, right?, so that they can ridicule the freak show on the screen in order to feel better about their own lives?

The show that most captured my appetite for humiliation was the derivative Rock of Love (2007), starring ‘80s hair band superstar Bret Michaels. Rock of Love mimicked the same formula as Flavor of Love, complete with the mansion setting, the intramural sports, and the group dates, but now with even more booze and tits. I devoured the first season and it’s successor when they aired, but then I graduated from high school and moved into my own apartment with, sigh, no cable.

It wasn’t until a few years later when I was browsing Hulu with a friend that we stumbled upon the final season of Rock of Love, titled Rock of Love Bus, or as I fondly refer to it, Bus of Love. From the moment I watched the roas trip themed intro, complete with brain numbingly awful Bret Michaels’ original music, it was love at first sight. As I had grown up and moved on, my favorite reality show had too, gaining wheels and hitting the road.

This show was like the pure cocaine rock of reality tv. Porn stars, check, heavily medicated drunken women, check, washed up rocker, check, alcohol fueled confrontations, check. The premise itself was logical in the way that only television can frame reality, naturally, Bret couldn’t find his soulmate on the first two seasons, duh!, they were stuck playing house in a mansion! The only way he could discover true love would be to choose a woman who could handle life on the road alongside a bonafide rock god, never mind that he had already tramped through forty five girls during the first two seasons! Imagine if The Bachelor starred the same man season after season, in some kind of depraved reality time loop.

Every Spice Girl personality was represented on Bus of Love, with a high abundance of Baby and Ginger types. Most of the girls came from a modeling or porn background, the most educated among them boasting a Master’s degree in Storytelling (what?!). The icing on the cake was that Hulu offered the explicit version of the show, fake boobs and all. From the moment the introductory photo challenge commenced the female contestants began to bare their asses and expose their breasts, each one upping the hyper sexualized anti, to the delight of Bret. And the response to those who remained fully clothed?, “Some of these girls act like they don’t even have to try” Bret balked. On day two of the show timeline the girls hopped on two buses stocked full of alcohol and were transported to a Sheridan hotel, where they were herded into connecting hotel rooms. Confined to their zoo like enclosures they quickly formed packs. There was the “Blondetourage,” a group of bleach blonde haired women with big personalities and even bigger breasts, who began to pound shots while casting shame at the “boring” brunettes who’d holed up like anxious meerkats in the adjacent room, there was Brittanya, the rebellious one with tattoos and cheek piercings who admitted “I’m a little bit not too smart, but that’s ok!” and Nikki, who once drooled during a confessional and read Bret an original rap that she had penned on the back of a Gonorrhea informational pamphlet. Safe within the hotel’s controlled environment the girls gorged themselves on junk food, liquor, champagne and energy drinks, the accouterments that proliferated every set. The girls became inebriated and sometimes violent, with Bret more visibly absent then not. Marcia, a Brazilian with a penchant for assault, vomited tequila into the toilet. Not more than thirty seconds reality time later, she wrapped her arms around Bret, Dorito in hand, and gave him a big, barfy kiss, before choking another contestant later in the episode.

I could continue my disquisition of the series, and trust me, I’ve watched it all, however, with each episode I found it essential to match the liquor consumption of the contestants, and therefore, things get a little blurry towards the end of episode two.

And two episodes is plenty.

My fascination with the show reveals as much about me as the people it portrays. Am I judgmental, yes? Trashy? Totally. Ready to pounce on the insecurities and shortcomings of women who I consider to be competition? In a heart beat. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disparage these women for partaking in Bus of Love, on the contrary. Given the chance I would seize the opportunity to win Bret Michael’s heart, only to gleefully eviscerate it along with his phony hair extensions during my show’s “Tell All” reunion. In fact, I’ve fantasized about it over an ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon at my local redneck bar, Indian Creek Tavern, in rural Ohio, playfully eyeing their event calendar that boasts a Bret Michaels’ headlined show, nestled between their midget mud wrestling extravaganza and karaoke night. Maybe I could casually bump into him backstage, breasts first, climb aboard his bus and become his rock of love…4.