A birthday with Dennis Rodman, great gifts and great memories
Howdy folks. I bring you great news: In this week’s edition of brain vomit, I promise not to dwell on the negative. I am going to try my darndest to stay positive and upbeat. Let’s see how that goes.
A few weeks ago I celebrated my birthday. I started with the frame of mind that 51 was not a huge milestone, so I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. Then the truth set in, and who knows how many birthdays I have left? So I thought, fuck it! Let’s party.
I ended up having an amazing week … or two.
I have the best friends that made what I thought was a small birthday into an extremely great time — mostly by just showing up. It means a lot to me anytime someone takes time out of their schedule, especially on a weekday, to come hang out, bring a cake and make what I thought was going to be a “meh” kinda birthday into a feel-good fun time. Life is too short not to celebrate every chance you get.
By the way, did I tell you who showed up to my little birthday show at J.R.’s? Freaking Dennis Rodman! I know he has been popping up all over Dallas for a while, but it was cool that he was there on that particular night.
I met Dennis Rodman the first time in 1999-ish when he was playing, however briefly, for the Dallas Mavericks. To be 100 percent honest, I don’t care too much for the sportsball stuff, but he was out with his then ex-wife Carmen Electra. To me and my friends, that was a bigger deal than basketball. They were only married for, like, nine days but hung out a lot for a while after they “officially” broke up.
Back in the 1990s, many of us were obsessed with Carmen Electra — especially Celeste Martinez.
Celeste idolized Carmen. Celeste’s staple wig style that she wore was inspired by Miss Electra. It was four or five different-colored wigs cut up and sewn by hand to make her streaked iconic hair. This was way before you could buy wigs already streaked and fabulous. Back then our wigs were handcrafted works of art that took so much time and upkeep.
Back before these famous TikTok wig designers, we had Celeste Martinez to be inspired by.
So, when Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra walked into the bar, I immediately ran to the phone in the back of J.R.’s. to call Celeste. (This was right before we all had cell phones, so I had to call her land line. For the kids, a land line was … Never mind.) It was so crazy because it seemed that by the time I was hanging up with Celeste, she was walking into the bar with a Sharpie and a photo in hand. We walked up to Dennis and Carmen and said, basically, “Hello Dennis, now move. Oh my God Carmen, we love you!”
They were both really nice.
Fast-forward to my birthday this year, and Dennis was nice again. He said he remembered me from way back then. But something tells me he doesn’t remember even walking in the door that night. Miss Dennis was feeling no pain. To be fair, neither was I, but it was fun — strange but fun.
He wanted to come onstage, and he made a little speech about how much he loves our community, and he teared up. It was very sweet — strange but very sweet. He then asked the DJ to play a song — Sean Paul’s “Hold on to the Dream” — and we all kinda danced and rocked out for a couple of seconds.
Then he started to kind of ramble on, so I politely snatched the microphone from him and thanked him for making the night a memorable one.
It was awesome — strange but awesome. I will definitely remember that birthday.
One of the other great things about my birthday was the thoughtful gifts I received. I got all of the hot sauces from this season of Hot Ones and a Hot Ones game. It’s like truth or dare, but the dares require you to eat hot sauce — extremely hot sauce. I can’t wait to play it with my “Ooh this mayonnaise is too spicy for me” friends. They might die!
I also got a stunning dress made just for me, a Stephen King throw blanket, two “Beware of Killer Tortoise” signs for the backyard and a bunch more. I’m very lucky.
My favorite of the gifts I received is very unique. It is from Storyworth. Every week they send you a question for you to answer. The questions are very random — like, What was your first family vacation? What was your first boss like? What is the best thing you remember about your grandfather?
It encourages you to tell a story about your answer to that question. Then, after you have a years’ worth of stories, they send you a hardback book containing all of your stories.
I’m super excited to get started on it. Many of the questions I have already written about in this column, so for some of them, I am looking back at old articles from the Dallas Voice to send to Storyworth. The only problem is now I have to go way back to find the articles I want to share again.
I’ve written about my grandpa and about family vacations here, so I want to use those. But I saved all of my articles under the same title plus the date, so now I am going back through them to amend the title with what it is about. I’m an idiot for not doing that when I first wrote them.
It’s also been very interesting reading this column from years ago. Some of them are gold; others are complete crap and completely cringe-worthy. Some have been funny as fuck, and others have made me cry.
It’s been nice revisiting where my headspace was at different times in the past. I believe I started writing for the Dallas Voice in 2014. That is nine years of my weirdness. This book is going to be very interesting. Thank you Bleach for the gift of more me. It’s gonna be a best seller.
Remember to always love more, bitch less and be fabulous. XOXO, Cassie Nova
