THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 20, 1996 TAG: 9605180038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
IN ANOTHER TIME and place Dennis Rodman would be the most admired person on the planet.
But the planet would have to be Xenon in the year 3002.
Rodman, as nearly everyone knows, is a forward for the Chicago Bulls - the team with the best regular-season record in the National Basketball Association.
And now the tattooed Toscanini of the temper tantrum has written a book. The title of Rodman's book is ``Bad As I Wanna Be.'' And it's about as bad as you wanna read. It's a bit like reading ``The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,'' with Dr. Jekyll missing.
The Chicago Bulls' leading rebounder is - to quote one of my colleagues, a mother who just glanced at the book jacket showing Rodman naked atop a motorcycle - ``a child who needs lots of attention.''
And his book has been getting it. You probably saw Rodman - whose hair is a care farm for colors that failed the Clairol test - wearing a red dress and earrings at his televised autograph parties.
Rodman has been so outrageous lately that I have begun to question my earlier statement that he is a good role model for children.
I said that he was a role model for children because so many of them don't take care of their feet.
Rodman does. He never misses an opportunity to remove his basketball shoes and socks and massage every little pig that went to market when he comes off the basket ball court. As my daddy used to say, take care of your feet and your feet will take care of you.
So, in many ways, he has seemed a role model. At least to me.
But I have begun to wonder about Rodman as a role model for kids since reading the book. It contains too many s-words. And too many f-words. The book is a hefty 256 pages as it sits on my desk. But if you snipped out those words and someone opened a window, it would blow away like one of Rodman's skimpy Frederick's of Hollywood undergarments.
I'm concerned that Rodman would use so many of those words, because children might read his book. Then they will begin using them over and over in their conversation the way he does. Next thing you know, they'll be concentrating on their obscenities so hard they'll forget about their f-word feet. Pity.
Rodman's view of life has been largely shaped, he says, by a sewer tunnel that extended 5 miles from the Dallas ghetto where he was raised into the Texas State Fair grounds. He and his friends were so poor they crawled through the tunnel sewage to see the fair.
``Five miles through a sewage tunnel?'' he asks. ``What kind of crazy mess was that?'' It was an extraordinary event. And an even more exceptional sentence, since it is one of only a few in which he fails to use his beloved s-word!
But no matter. There is much to like about Dennis Rodman. He's sensitive in so many ways.
Notice, for example, how he wears large tattoos. So even the poorest fans in the most distant seat in the arena may share his pride and enjoyment of the fine arts.
Rodman feels unloved and unwanted despite the standing ovations he gets from Bulls fans in Chicago's United Center for being the league's best rebounder. Or the compliments from teammates when he shows up at practices wearing a favorite T-shirt, which reads: ``It's okay to be straight so long as you act gay in public!''
Yet, as my friend said, he's a child who needs lots of attention. And he also needs a soulmate who understands him.
In short, someone like . . . I can't believe Rodman hasn't already thought of this . . . Tiny Tim!
Tiny Tim is also sensitive and misunderstood. And a hair freak. Exactly the right person to share Rodman's life and probe, with understanding, the deepest longings of his troubled heart.
And someone who could be there for Rodman at his last basketball game. He tells us about that last game in the book:
``Here's what I plan to do,'' Rodman says. ``I'll walk off the court and take off one piece of clothing with every step. First it'll be my shirt . . . then I'll lose my shoes . . . then my socks . . . then my jockstrap. Then I'll be at about midcourt, and I'll walk the rest of the way into the locker room nude.''
Riiiggght. Now there's something we can all look forward too. Hey, maybe Tim could join Rodman at midcourt and play ``Tiptoe Through the Tulips'' on his ukelele. ILLUSTRATION: Rodman's book is so filled with s-words and f-words that it
would blow away if they were removed.
by CNB