The World Needs An Antihero: Why Dennis Rodman Still Matters

Some days I think about me at 16 years old. Some days it still hurts to consider how painfully awkward and shy I was. I knew that I didn't fit in at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX. I didn't make friends easily mainly because I saw a lot of people who simply followed whatever trend was put in front of them.

I wasn't that kid that followed the hottest gossip or listened to most popular bands. I proudly listened to Styx, possibly the most uncool band in the world. I was listening to John Coltrane's Blue Train album, countered with Pantera's Far Beyond Driven, and would swear up and down that Appetite For Destruction was the greatest hard rock album ever recorded much to the chagrin of every Nirvana fan I knew. (And it is too. This realization still makes every Cobain Fan Boy crazy, no matter how much they try to fight it.)

I paid attention in English class and I could recite full sonnets and poems by Shakespeare and Longfellow, respectively, off the top of my head.

Looking back on it, I recognize I wasn't like most people, and have come to accept the fact that I've always been a little different. Just rereading the above sentences makes me realize, yeah, that's definitely a tad abnormal.

As an adult, I moved to Albuquerque. Then to Hartford. Lots of people graduate college and dream of moving to New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco in the pursuit of the big city and bigger careers.

I felt strangely guilty that I had no desire to do this. Hell, I liked New Mexico and Connecticut. I didn't understand at the time why no else did.

I've grown older now, and I've grown into my acceptance that I've always been a little different, and will continue to be a little different. But accepting this fact is far different when you're 32 than it is when you're 16. If you're a little different when you're 16, you don't really have a voice or a way to communicate how you feel yet. That voice hasn't truly matured, and that voice doesn't even really know how to eloquently state the confusion of what you're feeling.

So when you're 16, you need a voice to speak for you.

While everyone else at Clear Lake High School rooted for Michael Jordan or the home team hero, Hakeem Olajuwon, I found the voice I needed. He dyed his hair crazy colors, said wildly inappropriate things during interviews, rarely, if ever, scored during the game, and won rebounding title after rebounding title, championship after championship

He was the best defender on the greatest team of all-time, and now Dennis Rodman is just like Jordan, Olajuwon and every other guy that so many other people rooted for.

He's a Hall of Famer.


He won seven consecutive rebounding titles, the most in NBA history. He is perhaps the greatest defensive power forward ever, notoriously shutting down a young Shaq in the 1996 Eastern Conference Finals, tangling with Karl Malone in the 1997 and 1998 Finals and slowing down Olajuwon in his prime when David Robinson couldn't.

He won five rings in his career. Two with Detroit and three more with Chicago.

That's why Dennis Rodman was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday. But that's not why Dennis Rodman was famous. And that's certainly not why so many people rallied around him during his career.

Rodman was wildly successful, but completely on his own terms, and in his own way. Everyone wants to be the scorer in basketball. Everyone wants to root for the guy who scores. Rodman rarely scored, averaging just 7.3 points per game for his entire career. Rodman once remarked, "I can score 20 points if I want to, but that's not my desire."

He also shot less than 60 percent from the free throw line during his career. "I can't begin to describe the amount of crap I've taken for being a lousy free-throw shooter," Rodman lamented.
That said, Rodman focused his efforts primarily on rebounding and defense, and was inducted into Springfield as a result of approaching the game a little bit differently.

Michael Jordan wore suits after every game, regardless of the game's outcome. He was not only the world's greatest player, but commercially branded himself as a corporate icon, something every right-leaning suburbanite would appreciate.


Rodman famously cross-dressed to promote books and generally wore whatever the hell he damned well wanted to wear regardless of the game's outcome. "If I want to wear a dress, I'll wear a dress," Rodman boasted. And he did. Repeatedly.



He still sports multiple piercings, outrageous hair colors, an absurd amount of tattoos and a fashion style that make Liberace look downright reserved.


While others discreetly fooled around, Rodman had famous dalliances with Madonna and Carmen Electra. "With me," Rodman said. "Everything's right on the table."

Rodman was, in every sense of the word, unique. He was different than his peers, and in many ways, better than them as his now-Hall of Fame resume proves. Much like some kid huddled in his bedroom, playing bass and listening to uncool bands, Rodman approached everything differently and just didn't give a damn about what others thought. He rarely scored, he looked funny and he was hardly quiet about anything from his love life to his criticisms of NBA commissioner David Stern.

"The NBA's chosen ones think I'm setting a bad example?" Rodman once rhetorically asked. "I think they need to look around and stop taking themselves so seriously...The NBA believes if you play for a team and get paid by a team, you're the property of that team for 24 hours a day."

Dennis Rodman didn't just go the other way regarding so many different things. Dennis Rodman was the other way. He lived it. He personified it. And because of this, he gave every person who was a little different, looked a little different, behaved a little different, Dennis Rodman gave them hope. Perhaps more importantly, he gave them courage and acceptance to embrace who they were, and to live their life on their terms.

Not on Michael Jordan's terms. Not on David Stern's either. Nor the cool kids in the class or on the basketball court who were really just following along with what everyone else was doing. Dennis Rodman made it to Springfield by no other way but his own, and The Worm's enshrinement couldn't have come at a more prophetic time for me personally.

Recently at work, there have been some major philosophical shifts within our department. Amongst those shifts is a concerted effort for everyone to continue their formal education. Since I already have a Bachelors degree, the next step would be for me to gain my MBA.

Most people would probably pursue their MBA if their employer advised them to do so. Maybe I will someday, but I recently told my boss that probably isn't a wise idea for me right now. Frankly, I don't like the idea of sinking further into debt without the promise of gaining a better job from the MBA. Furthermore, I told them that I wanted to spend my free time working on a new website tentatively titled sportsbeerandrock.com.

The idea originally began as a documentary series that I dreamed up while I was working for ESPN. This website would allow me to write, and potentially, employ others as it relates to the subject of sports, beer and rock music. I have begun work, in earnest, on a business plan for this website.

It ain't easy, and maybe I will need my MBA just to figure out what the hell I'm going to do in certain aspects. If that's the case, I will do it because I want to do it, not because I'm property of my team for 24 hours a day.

I'm sure most people would have a hard time looking their boss in the eye and telling him that they were going to go a different way, but still somehow remain productive in the workplace. It wasn't easy, I can tell you that.

But Dennis Rodman reminded me at his Hall of Fame speech that those of us who are a little different, we are the Ones less traveled by.

I have to try.

Perhaps that will make all the difference.

Ed Wade is a Mouth-Breathing Piece of Crap...and Other Observations

We get it, Ed.

No really. Seriously. We honestly get it. The Houston Astros need to rebuild. That much has been patently obvious this season. The bullpen has been the athletic equivalent of a Uwe Boll film. The bullpen is last or next to last in the National League in almost every conceivable category including saves, ERA, hits allowed, HR allowed and runs allowed. Brandon Lyon, who was the closer to start the year, has an ERA of 11.48, which is possibly larger than his shoe size and most certainly higher than your intelligence quotient.

It's also called an IQ, Ed. I'll save you the trouble of having to look it up.

We know our #1 pitcher to start the year is an alleged wife beater who has an ERA approaching 5. Our best pitcher is a 32-year-old streaky southpaw who is at best a .500 pitcher. In fact, he's 69-71 for his career.

That's right, Ed. We know. Our best pitcher is a guy who is my age, and is below .500 for his career. That's pretty pitiful. And by the way, Ed, I'll save you trouble of your next argument which is "Well, Wandy's WAR is 2.3 which is the highest on the team."

He's also my age, Ed. He's not getting any better. And we know it. Spare me the new-fangled statistics, and look with your own two damned eyes, if you can bear the sight of what we've had to look at this year.

Ed, we also know that we have one of the shortest left field porches in the majors and the Astros are next to last in the National League in home runs. It was a park specifically designed for Jeff Bagwell and power-hitting right handers. Instead we have Big Fat Carlos Lee, our $100 million beer league softball cleanup hitter, who's hit 30+ home runs once in his entire stint with the Astros.

We don't hold that signing against you, of course. Big Fat Carlos was signed by your equally incompetent predecessor Tim Purpura. However, we do fault you for hiring the catering staff that keeps feeding him those $100 bills slathered in lard. Those aren't helping the cause.

So just to review, Ed. Our bullpen has blown more leads than Lindsay Lohan has dudes. Our starting rotation is riddled with mediocrity, inferiority and guys who only belong as a #1 starter in Lifetime movies about abusive husbands.

The Astros can't hit either as evidenced by the fact that our power hitter swings through the doors of Ruggles more often than he swings for the fences.

The Astros are 36-73, far and away the worst team in baseball. We need to look to the future.

So if we're all in agreement on that point, then tell us this: Why in the hell did you trade it?


Hunter Pence went 3-4 with a home run against the World Series winning San Francisco Giants on Thursday night. Sadly though, Pence did this wearing a Philadelphia uniform. They won 3-0.

Ed, you definitely don't realize this, but Hunter Pence was the simultaneously the present and the future of the franchise. He was a two-time All-Star, and he wasn't just an All-Star because the Astros needed a representative. He's currently eighth in the NL in batting average, 10th in RBIs, and in the top 20 in OPS. He still leads the team in HRs and RBIs even though he doesn't wear an Astros uniform any longer. He accomplished all this despite the fact that Pence has played the vast majority of the season for a team with a collective batting average of just .260. His only protection in the line-up was the constantly juggled duo of Jeff Kepinger and Angel Sanchez along with Big Fat Carlos who is too busy smearing cream cheese and barbecue sauce all over his $100 bills to care about his clean-up hitting duties.

So Pence pretty much had to go it alone and still produced respectably despite having less protection in the lineup than a broken condom.

And Ed, you traded him in his absolute prime for three prospects.

Let me clarify something to you about prospects, Ed. "Prospects" do not mean "sure thing." For example, I'm a single man, but I've been on a fair number of dates recently. The women I've been dating have been prospects for a long-term relationship. One woman who recently moved to Texas by way of Louisiana had potential, but I had to kick her to the curb because she got a little too flaky and greedy.

Another woman I'm currently seeing seems pretty cool, but the jury is still out on her right now. Yet another woman I went out with recently...well, let's just say her online profile picture was from about 30 pounds ago and let's just leave it there.

Ed, the same thing holds true here. The women I'm dating are prospects, not girlfriends, and certainly not wives. At least not yet. And the guys you acquired might turn out to be legit players, All-Stars in fact, but for now they are just like the women I go out to wine bars and play putt-putt golf with. They're prospects, and prospects don't always turn out for the best. Just ask Todd Van Poppel or Brien Taylor. Or for that matter, ask our current first baseman, Brett Wallace, who was one of the most balleyhooed prospects in recent memory. Wallace was a a two-time Triple Crown Winner at Arizona State University, and was the #27 prospect pre-2010 by Baseball America.

He's currently hitting .256 with six home runs. The jury is still out on Wallace, but he's not exactly setting the world on fire right now. And he was considered a great prospect.

So you just traded an All-Star for a group of guys that might--I stress, might--work out a few years from now. And why? Pence's contract doesn't expire until 2013, anyway. It's projected that the two biggest prospects, pitcher Jarred Cosart and 1B-OF Jonathan Singleton, won't even be ready for the big leagues until Pence's contract is near expiration.

You traded Houston's best player in exchange for two guys who won't be able to help the club for another two years? You traded Houston's best player for a couple of guys that you may have been able to acquire two years from now, especially if you needed Pence's expiring contract as a bargaining chip?

Ed, we all know about the rebuilding process, and Houston fans have been here before. Don't worry, we're veterans of the rebuilding process. But you still have to concern yourself with the present. And presently, you have absolutely no shot at getting anyone to the ballpark in the next two years. I mean, none.

How in the hell do you exactly plan on marketing this team, Ed? Everyone knows the franchise is rebuilding but for God's sakes, trading Pence still doesn't address how awful the bullpen. It doesn't address the shaky starting rotation and it doesn't address the fact that Big Fat Carlos is in the clubhouse smearing butter all over his baseball bat in an attempt to eat it.

Hunter Pence was the one reason that people were coming to ballpark. He's a Texas kid who grew up rooting for the Astros. Fans loved to see him choking up on the bat, his cannon arm in right field, and his hustle down the first base line. Pence always gave a damn, and carried the offensive load with nary a complaint publicly. He certainly wasn't in the Pantheon of Houston sports legends, but Pence was standing outside the doorway listening in on the conversations between Biggio, Bagwell, Nolan, Hakeem, Earl and the newest Pantheon member, Andre Johnson.

He was getting damned close, Ed, and you rudely slammed the door in his face. Ours as well.

We could accept rebuilding for the next two years if Hunter Pence had been the center of the rebuilding process. We could accept rebuilding if we knew that we could go to the yard, watch the pieces start to come together with Pence as the focal point of marketing campaigns, encouraging everyone to come out and support the team.

We could even understand if Pence needed to go in a 2013 trading deadline deal provided that the Astros still weren't getting any better, but got a really good deal in return.

But this, Ed? This? What is this? Instead of building the pieces around Pence for the next two years, you've decided to field a team that is still inept at virtually every phase of the game, won't be any better for the foreseeable future, and might--might--be better depending on how "prospects" turn out.

And while you're waiting for the prospects turn out, how exactly are the Astros marketing team suppose to spin this for the next few years? What kind of campaign are they going to have to produce in order to get people to come watch the team play?

Your 2012 Houston Astros: We Make Losing Creative

Your 2012 Houston Astros: Come to Minute Maid Park or Brett Myers Will Have to Choke a Bitch

Your 2012 Houston Astros: You Gonna Eat That?

And if the prospects don't work out, Ed, then what? Are we going to see years of endless gimmicks, ridiculous promotions and bobbleheads just to get people to come out to watch what was once a great franchise play baseball?

It's got a lot of fans pissed off, but from the looks of it, I'd say they're getting pissed on too.

Actually, that sounds like a great promotion now that I think of it.

Your Houston Astros For The Indefinite Future: Enjoy The Golden Shower Years

If only that weren't such an apt metaphor for what just happened, Ed. Truth be told, Hunter Pence might get a World Series ring this year along with Brad Lidge and Roy Oswalt. And if that happens, you'll be singing in the rain completely oblivious to the mess you've just made.

For the rest of us, we see a future controlled by a man who thinks all a season down the toilet needs is another flush.

What a pisser.

Crazy King: What I'll Always Remember About Chadd Thomas

May 2001

I spent my first night as a college graduate at a seedy, rank shithole of a rock n' roll dive on Dirty 6th.

I was at the Black Cat Lounge at the request of one of my best friends, Chris Harrison. Chris knew that I wanted to party that weekend, and he said he had just the tonic for my gin n' sin. He was playing in a new rockabilly band fronted by a gentleman named Chadd Thomas. Chris said they were hitting the stage just around the same time I was walking off the stage, diploma in hand, from the University of Texas.

Chris even promised me that if I showed up, he would play a very special solo just for me. They were rehearsing a closing song where Chris' guitar solo borrowed liberally from the intro lick to "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC. Knowing how much I love AC/DC, and how much I enjoy seeing Chris play, I agreed to see him out there as soon as I could.

So on a steamy, late spring Saturday night full of publicly drunk college graduates cramming 6th Street in jubilation, I dragged the two people who were with me that night, Uncle Tim and Aunt Kathy, out to see Chris and his new band play at the Black Cat.

We probably got there around 10:30 PM. The Black Cat was nothing more than a stage in front, two rickety black-tarred bleachers on the left and right covered in graffiti, a makeshift bar of graying wood near the entrance door and an overhang upstairs about the same color as the bar.

No chairs were up there. The overhang was standing room only.

The walls were concrete and tattooed in every possible color, in every possible way. The walls were spray painted, smeared with permanent marker, etched in with a pocket knife, all of them marking bands barely remembered. The floors were also concrete, but faintly streaked with blood from mosh pits.

Uncle Tim went to the can, and remarked that he had "to give this place an A for its shit-house smut." I never went inside.

The rest of the Black Cat crowd took on the resemblance of the place itself: hard-edged and tough. Beyond the obligatory tattoos, the Black Cat crowd was like a UN convention of body piercings. Multi-colored hair was waived proudly like a national flag. Younger green haired Mohawk dude with piercings decorating his face like zits stood next to an aging rocker guy who had long dyed black hair and was openly bragging about piercing his hemorrhoids.

The only one who appeared to be smiling was the pompadoured 20-something-year-old lead singer of the Crazy Kings. While Chris and the rest of band appeared mildly stoic still learning the new material, this guy was over here shaking his hips like Elvis and tapping his black and white wingtips to the groove of revved-up Johnny Cash and Hank Williams numbers.

The Crazy Kings finished out their 45-minute set with what started as an almost spoken word number from the lead singer about driving up a lone blacktop from Corpus Christi to Austin. And the only thing behind him, according to the song, was a Cadillac gaining closer.

"FUCK THAT CADILLAC!" was the refrain. I wasn't too sure why the Cadillac had gotten the Crazy Kings all riled up, but it sure sounded good. Even better was when Chris launched into his AC/DC solo that got a noticeable pop from the tattooed and pierced, but was intended just for me. I dug that.

Uncle Tim, Aunt Kathy and I shook everyone's hands after the set and congratulated Chris on the new gig. Sensing that the Crazy Kings were trying to pack up, we hightailed it out of the Black Cat and headed east for beers at the Copper Tank.

However, the lead singer Chadd Thomas, as well as Chris did their finest to send me out into the world properly with a fine night of rock n' roll, beer and a slight degree of danger. At the Copper Tank, the beers weren't Lone Star, the girls were cuter and dancing to "Pour Some Sugar On Me."

I would never walk into the Black Cat again.



February 2005

I ran ragged across the country in pursuit of a career. After college, I moved to Albuquerque, NM where I worked for an 80s radio station. The station flipped formats shortly before Christmas to Top 40, and I had the impossible task of telling our advertisers why they should continue to stay the course with my station while the ratings went into the tank, general managers were being fired at a rate of once every quarter and Britney Spears was playing once an hour.

I quit right before Christmas 2002.

Undaunted, I packed up and moved to Connecticut where I found a series of great part-time work including a weekend production assistant gig at ESPN Radio. However, permanent positions were not to be had. My steadiest gig wasn't ESPN or my teaching/play-by-play gig for the University of New Haven. It was waiting tables and tending bar at the Rainforest Cafe inside a West Hartford mall.

That too was unsustainable. After a long talk with my buddy Jesse Gonzales, he urged me to come back to Austin and start over again. He had a spare bedroom for rent in a house he was living at in the central Austin neighborhood of Hyde Park. I couldn't say no.

I quit all my gigs right before Christmas 2004, and I found myself back in Austin for New Years Eve. I had no direction, no career to speak of, but I was back home again in Austin. In February 2005, I got a call from Chris to see him play with the Crazy Kings, this time at a place on Red River called Headhunters.

Why Headhunters? Well, Black Cat was burned to the ground at some point during my three-year absence from the city. It was never rebuilt. There wasn't that much to rebuild, honestly.

Jesse and I found our old downtown parking spot--the old lot of the Texas Teacher Pension building on 10th and Red River--and walked one block exactly. That one block walk smelled like a sinful amalgam, a wonderful blend of Jack Daniel's and Shiner Bock, Marlboros and perfume, Tex-Mex from Jaime's and mesquite smoke from Stubb's.

Headhunters still attracted a lot of the same Black Cat crowd, but it was a much nicer venue. It used to be an old tiki lounge called Ocean's 11, and Headhunters still featured some of the same drinks from the old joint like the gin-heavy Sufferin' Bastard. It was much tighter quarters in the middle compared to the Black Cat, but the floors and walls were mahogany paneled, void of the old graffiti coverings of the Black Cat.

Jesse and I found the bar, ordered a round of Shiners, and spotted a long-haired brunette wearing a tight black tank-top and a short white skirt also at the bar. We start talking it up with this girl. Turns out she had just moved to Austin from Utah with a friend of hers. A friend of hers who was also there that night.

Chris and Chadd came out to greet us before the show started and shared a Shiner with us. Well, we drank Shiners. Chadd drank a Lone Star. Shiner was too fancy for him, he said.

We shook hands and let them get down to business. They hit the stage around midnight and it was clear that this wasn't the same band that I remembered. Chadd Thomas and the Crazy Kings sounded loose but completely locked down the rockabilly groove. Everyone was smiling on stage and kept the crowd dancing. Dylan, the bassist, started throwing around his upright bass w/ abandon, twirling it around his head like an eight-foot, four-stringed baton. Chris was grinning wildly while playing whirling dervish blues solos on his prized grid orange Gretch guitar.

Somewhere around the song "Nueces County Jail," I spotted the friend of the girl in the blank tank-top. She was tall, about 5'9" with long blonde hair and a glittering nose stud in her right nostril. I walked up and asked her why she had a shiny booger in her nose. I offered her a tissue to get that cleaned up. She smacked me in the shoulder, but smiled and said how rude I was being to a total stranger.

It was on.

Throughout the set, I regaled her with tales from Connecticut and New Mexico, some of them true, but most of them false. The best was when she bragged about how good she was at air hockey. I told her that when I was at ESPN, we had a game room with an air hockey table. One day when I was there, Wayne Gretzky was there and challenged all comers to a game of air hockey. I told this girl that I beat #99 in air hockey by a score of 8-5.

She was completely enthralled by this. I was, of course, lying. I've never met the Great One, let alone kicked his ass at air hockey, but I know one thing for sure. There's no way in hell I was letting this girl beat me at air hockey or storytelling or dancing to rockabilly music.

So with her mouth still agape from the Gretzky tale, I grabbed her hand and lead her on the dance floor. Chadd winked at me while this blonde cutie and I tried our best to reenact the final dance scene of Swingers. I was Mikey, she was Lorraine and Chadd Thomas and the Crazy Kings were our Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

We twirled all over the makeshift dance floor, laughing like the semi-drunk loons we were while careening into other people on tight quarters of Headhunters. Chadd was putting the final notes on a song called "Hot Rod Man," while the Crazy Kings ended the number with a desperate fury. I flipped her down in the classic way to end a song, her back over-arched in my arms, her soft, glistened hair barely scraping the booze-soaked floor.

I brought her back up and we were both standing upright, smiling. I leaned in to kiss her.

Her friend in the black top and white skirt had about enough of this. Just as I was about to reach her lips, her friend grabbed her free hand and told her she was leaving.

Now.

She hauled her out of Headhunters, and was about damned near on 7th Street--two blocks away--before I could catch them. I asked her for the girl's number, but the girl in the white skirt hustled her down a side street before I could get an answer.

I got back in time for "Fuck That Cadillac." Jesse and I had one last Shiner as the Crazy Kings closed out the bar and the night. Regardless of the outcome with the blonde girl, one thing was clear. This was the first night I had been out in Austin, Texas since I moved back. It consisted of pretty girls, great beer, the greatest friends any man could have and ass-kicking rock n' roll.

I never saw the pretty blonde girl or her friend again. But it was good to be home. And I haven't left home since.


Two of the most memorable nights out. One night marked the end of college for me. The other night marked the beginning of my homecoming here in Austin. Both times I was there to support my friend, Chris Harrison. Both times, though, it was the voice, the direction and the vision of Chadd Thomas that was the soundtrack to those nights.

On July 12, Chadd Thomas was found dead on South Congress, the victim of an apparent homicide.

He was 38 years old.

Chadd was the voice of so many great nights out. Nights that marked passages and rites, departures and arrivals, beer and whiskey, and the promise of dangerous liaisons. Most of which didn't happen, but a few certainly did.

Chris left the Crazy Kings about a year ago to pursue his own surf rock act, the Mighty Landshark. While I will always support Chris and his musical ventures, I will, as well as the Austin community, miss the voice and the talents of the Craziest King himself, Chadd Thomas.

Austin Police continue to search for clues and suspects. What I've been searching for the last few weeks is peace and understanding as to why or how this could happen. I still haven't found that yet, and I don't suspect most will for awhile either.

But for now, I think of the crazy nights with the Crazy Kings. I give thanks for sending me off in grand fashion, and welcoming me back with open arms and a beer in hand.

Until we meet again, Chadd. Fuck That Cadillac.