Will Poison’s Michaels again be Mr. Yuk?
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Although Poison frontman Bret Michaels didn’t find love from the first go-round of his hit VH1 reality series, “Rock of Love,” he’s not giving up.
Season Two, premiering tonight at 9, will feature 20 more women vying for Michaels’ affections via an assortment of challenges involving greased pigs and a roller derby with baby strollers, to name but two.
“Isn’t all true love born from a greased-pig challenge?” Michaels quips.
Despite things not turning out exactly the way he’d hoped they would during last season’s reunion episode (he was rejected by his No. 1 choice), the rocker says he hasn’t altered the qualities he’s looking for in a woman.
“Here’s where I’m an idiot,” the 44-year-old father of two says matter-of-factly. “I didn’t change anything.
“I just went in and said, ‘It didn’t work out for me so good, so let’s try again.’ You think I would’ve learned. I learned very little.”
But this time, he says, he was more relaxed and in tune with the women’s motivations.
“I start to figure them out pretty quickly,” he says.
The inspiration for the show came from his experiences with women over the years.
“Since I’ve been young, I’ve either been in what we’ll call long relationships or ‘tour-bus love,’ ” he says. “If it didn’t work out and it went awful, you simply pulled the bus out of town and you never had to face anything.
“So this is the reason for the show: They’re forcing me to face my decisions. (I’ve) always been great at hello, but I’ve never had to say goodbye.”
Michaels says he was just as shocked as the rest of America when the first season’s winner, 23-year-old Jes Rickleff, told him she thought he’d made a mistake in choosing her.
“I was like, ‘Wow, that’s really cold,’ ” he says. “Maybe in some ways that’s not the girl I fell in love with.”
Then again, Michaels acknowledges that having to stay away from Rickleff for months after filming finished, to keep the ending a surprise, took its toll.
“She’s back in Chicago, and I’m back in L.A.,” Michaels says. “She moved on with her life, and I moved on with mine.”
He admits to second thoughts about not choosing runner-up Heather Chadwell, instead, although he had concerns about her partying.
“Having two daughters … I wasn’t sure if she was ready for all that just yet,” he says.
Michaels was hesitant to do a reality dating show in the first place.
“I said, ‘I just don’t know if I can date where the cameras are on you 24/7,’ ” he recalls.
” ‘I need to be who I am and what I am. I don’t want you to make me something that happened in 1988. I don’t want to be a novelty.’ “
The birthday bunch
Comedian Rip Taylor is 74. Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus is 47. Country singer Trace Adkins is 46. Actress Penelope Ann Miller is 44. Actor Patrick Dempsey is 42. Actress Traci Bingham (“Baywatch”) is 40. Actress Nicole Eggert (“Baywatch”) is 36. Actor Orlando Bloom is 31.