Bret Michaels

Let's face it, New Year's is a crap holiday. You're obliged to have such a mind-blowing great time that anything less feels like a failure—you will have no need of anything except a good time, as the song goes. Nothing fits better for a mandatory night on the hedonic treadmill than the adolescent undeath of hair metal embodied in the VH1-enabled career of Poison chanteur Brett Michaels. I shouldn't be such a grinch: At this point he's a comforting rebuke to the punk ideal of perpetual revolt—nothing ever goes away. It's almost midnight! Talk dirty to me! I want action! If not, there's always next year.
Mon., Dec. 31, 9 p.m., 2007