Star Chambers

Inside the house that thongs Built--all six bedrooms, 5 1/2 baths, 5,400 sq. ft. of it--MTV Cribs follows rapper Sisqo as he takes a container of takeout Chinese into the bathroom (offering a demo of the bidet), strolls through the walk-in closet full of Sean John outfits (price tags still attached) and stops in a surprisingly conservative front room dominated by a gigantic classical bust ("Chicks like the head. 'Cause it's big"). Most important, in the massive kitchen, comes the requisite money shot of any Cribs: the fridge. The Thong Song bard opens the door, revealing no food more solid than mustard, and offers an indispensable bit of entertaining advice: "You got to have the Cristal on chill at all times. I learned that from Jay-Z."

Sisqo is the kind of rich folk we like. This is our unspoken deal with the wealthy: we don't begrudge them their money too much as long as they blow some of it on the sort of ludicrous, solid-gold-birdbath fantasies that get us through our bitter little lives. (Why else would we put up with Donald Trump?) By this standard, music stars, who spend their fresh-minted cash like a drunk 12-year-old would, are the best rich folk of all, and Cribs (Thursdays, 10 p.m. E.T.), the music network's cult-hit home-tour show, is their perfect tribute. Invading the toy-filled pads of former stars who clearly invested well--like Sebastian Bach of Skid Row--chronicling the odd predilection of headbangers and thugz for cute lapdogs, Cribs has quickly become one of the channel's most popular shows, at 4 million viewers a week.

It's not alone. Around the cable dial, a bevy of B-, C- and sometimes A-list names are opening their immaculately crafted doors to a burgeoning group of celebrity home-tour shows, a new breed of house porn for weary nesters with neither time nor inclination even to pretend to want to Do It Themselves. On E!'s daytime-Emmy-nominated Celebrity Homes (daily, 7 p.m. E.T.), host Suzanne Sena guides us from Hugh Hefner's grotto at the Playboy Mansion to Ed McMahon's baby pictures in his kitchen to professional former star Danny Bonaduce's guitar collection in his rec room. HGTV has a raft of celeb-home specials and semiregular series like TV Moms at Home, where Estelle Harris (Seinfeld's Estelle Costanza), wearing about 10 lbs. of jewelry, reclines on the fainting couch in her cavernous living room: "It's the size of Lithu-ayn-ia!"

The remote-control fireplaces! The never-cooked-in kitchens! The shark tanks! HGTV president Burton Jablin admits it's all a bit far removed from the sawdusty realm of Bob Vila. But the shows have helped fast-growing HGTV expand beyond its swatch-wielding base. "It's informational voyeurism," Jablin says, maintaining that the average homesteader can still take away useful tips from Joy Philbin interviewing Ivana Trump in her "cozy," 10,000-sq.-ft. Palm Beach house on At Home with ... ("Set yourself a budget!" Ivana advises.) "Though," he adds, "certainly people also watch for the catty appeal of saying, 'Eh, she bought that?'" Ivana's Transylvanian-castle foyer, complete with an actual medieval crest, springs to mind.

For the stars, a house tour is a publicist's dream, simultaneously humanizing and idolizing, free from nasty questions. "They feel very safe," says Nancy Glass, executive producer and host of many of HGTV's celeb tours. "It's not a gossip show. We don't ask who they're sleeping with. We ask what they're sleeping on." (Stalker-conscious stars will often ask that some details be left out.) Arguably, nobody needs friendly attention more than Cribs subjects like Tommy Lee and Snoop Doggy Dogg. "You don't have to deal with the lawsuit and pending cases and flops," says executive producer Dave Sirulnick. "Cribs is all about the glamour. It's all about the bling-bling and the ego stroke and look what I have." Sirulnick contends that pop-star materialism is nothing new--"Look at Graceland"--but Cribs celebrates it lustily. (In a pointed self-referential comment from MTV's upcoming "hip-hopera" Carmen, a down-and-out character watches Cribs in a roach-ridden motel room.)

The shows often give their subjects enough floor space to hang themselves. "There's faith and spirit here," actor Gary Busey tells E! about his seaside Malibu home. "It's humble." Then he shows off his Oscar-nomination certificate and a plaque given him by Bill Clinton. Cribs can be sweet--it's somehow touching to see aging rocker Bach in his teenage-boy-like bedroom, plastered with Kiss posters. It can be sleazy. Or it can be both, as when OutKast rapper Big Boi tours his kids' bedrooms, then treks downstairs to the "boom-boom room," complete with stripper pole. And some revelations are just, well, uncategorizable. Larry King "has a gorgeous portrait of himself made entirely of jelly beans. It's a great design element," says HGTV's Glass, who has just filmed a segment on King.