And Now, Something Terrible!

I may be entirely off base in this assumption, but I like to consider myself a man of culture. Well-read, educated in the arts, with a cursory knowledge of numerous subjects and an expertise of a few others. I’ve read bits of a few philosophers, kept my nose in the classics, and have been known to opt for Bach over Beck every now and again. Heck, I even listen to NPR and watch the History Channel. But every now and then, I get a craving. A craving for something more than what is considered “fine culture” – something that, in fact, has no place in the repertoire of someone who claims to consider themselves “cultured”. A craving for something Terrible.

And I’m not talking about normal, every day terrible. Not some commonplace children’s-television-show dreck. I’m talking about something truly unique in its ability to be bad. Something so poorly executed, so poorly thought out that it defies nearly every well-regarded law of its form; logic and craftsmanship, talent and skill. Something so pure and truthful in its misguided creativity that you cannot bear but to stare at it like it’s some sort of horrible car-crash or one of those faces that truly only a mother could love. I delight in finding these hidden gems of wonderful badness, and there’s nothing quite so refreshing as trolling through a thrift-shop or used media store and finding that one completely unnecessary object that will sufficiently make my day, sometimes my week.

And so, I bring you Something Terrible, a column I plan on writing every now and then, perhaps monthly, about a work so terrible that it can only be appreciated when examined as a work of total genius. Hopefully, by reading it, you too will find enjoyment in these frankensteins of art and culture I’ve learned to love so dearly, and maybe even be inspired to take up your own study of the banal and insipid in search of something truly inspired.

Now, without further ado – Something Terrible, O.F. [Object of Fascination] #1: Bad as I Wanna Be: The Autobiography of Dennis Rodman.

As any of us growing up in the 80′s-90′s know, Dennis Rodman was – oh, how to put it – that weird and wild man who played for the Chicago Bulls, lived constantly and bizarrely under the shadow of the almighty Michael Jordan, and was widely regarded as one of the strangest men in the world of sports at that time. I knew kids on my block growing up that were Dennis Rodman fans, but back then I generally imagined that those kids must have been simply unaware of just how utterly bizarre he was. After all, the man married himself, didn’t he? He’s a basketball player, not Salvador Dali – he’s not supposed to be that eccentric.

But, like most of us who grew up in the 80′s and 90′s, I am now grown up. As a young man of some experience, I have dealt with my fear of the bizarre creature that is Dennis Rodman, and have come to appreciate him as both pop-culture icon and as a figure of strange and inscrutable wonder. Which is why I have a hard time not discussing his autobiography as anything less than some bizarre form of literary genius – however misguided and accidental it may be. Allow me to elaborate:

From the very first sentence in the very first chapter (titled “New and Improved: One Night, One Gun, One Decision”), Dennis promises to be nothing less than real with you when he states:

“On an April Night in 1993 I sat in the cab of my pickup truck with a rifle in my lap, deciding wether to kill myself.”

Here, the reader is notified of several facts about this book in the following order:

1. This is serious.
2. Dennis Rodman is serious.
3. Dennis Rodman is seriously overdramatic.
4. This sentence of the book is printed in 16-point Bold Impact font.
5. The next few paragraphs of the page are in uniform 12-point Times New Roman font.
6. …What?
7. *turning the page
8. There are three different sections on this page where for the duration of a sentence the font changes to sometimes 14, sometimes 20-point font ranging between Impact, Arial, and…is that Comic-Sans?
9. Dennis Rodman has no idea how to write a book.
   And finally,
10. This book is genius

Although it might be appropriate to say that the book begins with “guns blazing”, it is perhaps even more appropriate to say that it begins with “guns being held in a truck and pondered over to a sound-track of Pearl Jam and a sincerely laughable amount of self-pity”. It outlines Dennis’ decision not to kill himself while sitting in his pickup truck and listening to Pearl Jam (his favorite band, a fact to which he refers to about thirty times throughout the course of the text) outside of the Pistons’ stadium in Detroit, MI. He was playing for the Pistons at the time, and tells us that though he was following his dream of being a star basketball player and making a ton of money on a winning team, he simply wasn’t being his true self. He tells us how he used to be a janitor at an airport, and how he, in a strange way, misses that sort of life. He tells us how his life is incredibly and seemingly irreparably screwed up because of his fame and his money and whines incorrigibly about the same things that every incredibly successful person seems to complain about with an air of melodrama and self-pity that is the trademark of only the most insincere of writers.

But in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t so much the raw content of the book (the melodrama of Rodman’s struggle with success, drugs, sex, romance, etc.) that is so entertaining. It’s all pretty standard fare, in that respect. But the over-production and shameless hyperbole of it all, the schizophrenic typography and relentless way in which he constantly refers to the reader as “bro”*,

(“Everyone was gone. My teammates were gone. My child was gone. My coach was gone. I was alone, bro, all alone.”)*Chapter 1, p. 4

alongside other incredibly entertaining tendencies that all filter into what I like to call “the Dennis Rodman experience” make this book an incredibly unique read.

It is more than apparent to the reader that Rodman, as many stars do for their autobiographies, has dictated his story to a ghost-writer who wrote down what he said, then went back and filled in the blanks, plugging them all into some semblance of a cohesive order. The result of this method of writing is that every few pages there is a paragraph that just doesn’t seem to fit; a place where the ghostwriter has obviously tried to squeeze in an artfully crafted description or relaying of events which inevitably falls flatly and dumbly on its face, tripping over the long and dirtied shoelaces that are the rest of the text. This all ads to the aforementioned schizophrenic nature of the text, and when all of these elements are tied together it results in a work that is instantly humorous, loathsome, shocking, and so self-sabotaging that one cannot help but describe it as utterly endearing. At times, despite this book’s many faults, it even manages to be strangely inspiring.

If you’re looking for something provocative to make you think and write and experience the world around you in a better way, something profound to mull over for the next several months, there are many better suggestions that I could make to you. If you’re looking for something uplifting and inspiring that speaks to the irrepressible human spirit, I have no suggestions here for you. I hear Julia Roberts is in a new movie and it’s based on a book – look into that. But if in the midst of reading those surely classic selections that you are choosing for the above reasons you find yourself over or under-whelmed, I would thoroughly encourage you to take a minute to indulge, to jump into the giant vat of self-sure insanity that is this book and just stand a while, basking in the glory that is this beautiful, abhorrent monster of a biography. I promise, you’ll feel rewarded when you do. It may not be a work of genius in quality, but – much like its author – in terms of absurdity it is head and shoulders above the competition.

*Author’s Note: If you’ve enjoyed this article and would like to read more editions of “Something Terrible”, please feel free to comment with suggestions of terrible things to be reviewed (Films, Music, Artwork, Literature – anything, really). They are much appreciated.

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