Are you ready to rock (again)?

The perfect balm to my "American Idol" blues: the second season of "Rock Star: The Series," on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 10pm at Star World. It's not as hot as the first show, which brought back oh, just this little band called INXS and gave it a new front man in the person of JD Fortune. But lest you dismiss "Rock Star: Supernova," check out the future band's members: Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted and former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clark. The show is, in fact, subtitled "The Tommy Lee Project."

Incidentally, this isn't Tommy Lee's only, er, project. He's got another reality-based show, "Tommy Lee Goes to College." I'm thinking it's the anti-"The Simple Life" patterned after, well, "The Simple Life."

As for "Rock Star: Supernova," its season opener didn't rate as high as expected (Simon Cowell's "America's Got Talent," where David Hasselhoff is one of the judges, is the current hit). Nevertheless, I found it explosive enough, as it boasts of yet another crop of new talents, including one rocker from a band that's already popular in his home country, Iceland.

I pointed this out to my brother. "That guy Magni's a big star in Iceland," I said.

"Big deal," he replied. "That's just like Bamboo here."

Now, we love Bamboo, but I guess he just meant that what draws amazingly talented yet undiscovered rockers to this show, despite the usual aversion to reality shows that you'd expect from rocker-types, is the promise of international stardom. I mean, where else can you leap from being a nobody to fronting a world tour?

Unfortunately for the proud Pinoys in all of us, the current line-up of rockers doesn't include one we can call our own, like last year's MiG Ayesa. Nevertheless, I've already got my early favorites: Dilana, who impressed me (and scared me a little) with her rendition of Lithium; Storm, who seems both naughty and nice and already seems like a rock star; and Ryan, who's really good-looking and enigmatic (whom I like only for the drama that they surrounded him with; he hasn't proven his mettle as a rocker yet).

The obvious early leader is Lukas with the heavy eyeliner, who says that what you see is what you get, that rock n' roll is a way of life for him, yada, yada. He blew everyone away-Dave, Tommy, Jason, Gilby, and the producer of the Supernova album. I bet that if Brooke Burke were given to veer away from the script from time to time, it would have been apparent she was blown away too.

My sister, with whom I followed the first "Rock Star" religiously, still believes that female contestants are automatically at a disadvantage. I tend to agree, although Supernova being a new band instead of a revived one, and having no history to follow through on, I think the girls have a better chance this season. Besides, when the buzz about "Rock Star: Supernova" first came out, Tommy Lee stressed that he loves breaking the rules.

One other reason I think that girls have a better chance is that Supernova doesn't seem to have any long-terms goals for the moment. I remember writing a couple of months ago that the name Supernova itself strikes me as peculiar, being that it pertains to, and I quote the American Heritage Dictionary, "a rare celestial phenomenon involving the explosion of most of the material in a star, resulting in an extremely bright, short-lived object that emits vast amounts of energy."

In any case, I believe, that still means that we're going to have a blast.

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