WELL spray-paint my head a dozen colors. Rodman will worm
his way to the Big IslandLooks like Dennis Rodman might be paying the Big Island a visit this weekend during the Hilton Waikoloa's Dolphin Days festival.
He might be the only thing that could give the Mighty Mo any competition right now.
Organizers say they're "90 percent" sure that the "Worm" will come because his girlfriend, Carmen Elektra, is already booked.
Rodman might want to bask in the sun and contemplate who, other than Phil Jackson, can stand him.
Under Jackson, Rodman blossomed -- both as an athlete and as a certifiable fruitcake.
But (Red Auerbach forgive me), he gives the NBA exactly what the NHL lacks.
An all-in-one entertainment package, marketable in any form.
Wayne Gretzky and Sergei Fedorov can't create such savory mayhem.
Derek "The Turk" Sanderson of the late-1960s Boston Bruins came close. He was a killer/scorer on the ice and a rebel without a cause off it.
I recall late-night TV host Dick Cavett coyly saying to Sanderson, "So, you're the naughty Hans Brinker."
The Turk self-destructed due to his off-ice antics. But he was the league's neon light in the brief time he played.
Now NHL stars -- for all their badness -- seem to blend into each other.
It used to be that fighting was the NHL's ace when it came to bizarre entertainment. But the NBA has that in spades, too, nowadays.
And it has Rodman. On a championship dynasty no less.
Nope, I don't like seeing this kind of a guy awarded mainstream hero status.
Aarrrgh.
When "Bad As I Wannabe" plays defense, I think of Jack Nicholson in "The Shining."
I'm tempted to call "Jungle Jim" Loscutoff, the Boston Celtics' burly enforcer from the 50s-60s era, and ask him if he'd like to fly over and go one-on-one under a school yard basket in Kona with the Worm.
You might recall Loscutoff, now a surly 60-plus, saying in this column that Rodman "would be ice cream for me" if the two had ever met in the NBA.
Anyway, I've gotten very distracted here.
What I really wanted to say was, don't run out to buy a ticket to the Big Island. Worms don't always surface when you want them.
Speaking of surly, I noticed that Kyrgyzstan's Irina Bogocheva was taking on Russia again last weekend in San Diego's Rock 'n Roll Marathon.
Bogocheva, you might recall, got into a shoving match with eventual winner Svetlana Vasilyeva of Russia in the late stages of the Honolulu Marathon last December.
Bogocheva confronted Vasilyeva twice after the race, engaging in a heated exchange with her both times.
On Saturday, Bogocheva finished just 11 seconds behind another Russian, Nadezhda Ilyina, and made sure she got into it with her, too.
Ilyina was disqualified from victory last year at the Los Angeles Marathon when she cut through a gas station and gained about 30 yards on everyone. That moved Bogocheva into second place behind the woman declared the winner, Kenyan Lornah Kipleget.
Bogocheva didn't forget the incident. So, when it came to questions on Saturday, she was ready.
"I don't like racing against Nadezhda," she said. "I never know whether she is running on the course."
Bogocheva won the Belgrade Marathon earlier this year. No word on whether she'll return to Honolulu and resume her road war with Vasilyeva.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.
