A nasty visit with Dennis Rodman

"The Worm" turned nasty Friday while supposedly swillin' Shirley Temples at Stella's Fish Cafe in Uptown.

Dennis Rodman, here to host a birthday party, was not interested in one more boring question about regrettable tattoos on his overly inked and pierced body and face.

"Let me do something for you, honey," he told me patronizingly, "something cool for you, so you shine today. Those questions you asked me wasn't ... [weren't toilet worthy]. You've got to ask me real cool questions."

Rodman predicted he could make me a star because he's gold on Youtube.com. (See what you think at startribune.com/video.) "The Freak," as Rodman is also known, need not release a rooster's crow unless this column and video garner more than the 76,045 hits attracted by my take on a Deadspin.com Brett Favre tidbit.

This Rodman thing all started when a friend who understands Twitter.com better than I do telephoned with an urgent message: "Dennis Rodman's at Stella's. Get your camera! Goooooooo!"

Without checking the latest Web gossip about Rodman, I ran out not realizing that he was in the mood for high hard ones. So I mentally put away the softballs.

Who was better in the sack, I asked: Madonna, rumored to have wanted him to father a child, or Carmen Electra, a Mrs.-Rodman-for-a-minute?

"Me," Rodman said deftly, in one of the few answers that didn't seem spoken for the pages of Playboy.

Many of the casual women from Rodman's past are not recalled fondly.

Rodman claimed that he's had sex with 2,000 "girls." Of that number, he labeled "probably 500" golddiggers or worse. And Rodman is not much impressed with the parents who raised these "girls." I can't even clean up the question he wanted me to ask their parents.

The issue of Rodman's trashy women came up when I asked him about women who date wealthy men, who will leap at sex instead of getting to know a woman's character first, and then call her a golddigger. Mel Gibson's done it. Kelsey Grammer probably will do it. Grammer has to divorce his third wife before he marries his pregnant girlfriend.

Rodman's handler, Thaer Mustafa, couldn't refrain from adding his two cents' worth on the subject of golddiggers (he's the voice yammering away in the video even when the camera's not on him). I tried to keep my focus on Rodman and not debate Mustafa when he WRONGLY asserted that Elin Nordegren was a golddigger. (She most definitely is NOT. She didn't even know who Tiger Woods was when her ex came a-courting. Woods has jeopardized Nordegren's health, caused her pain and suffering, and now wants her silence. Cha-ching-a-ling!)

Rodman indicated that he is currently married, but was ambiguous about his fidelity to a wife who lives in California while he lives in Florida. "I respect my wife, but we have a different relationship," Rodman told me. He said she's wonderful "to my kids and that's the most important thing."

TMZ.com reported in June that Rodman owed more than $300,000 to his estranged wife, Michelle, according to court documents, and it quoted Rodman's lawyer as saying he intended to clean up the discrepancy.

In an ex-spouse-related question, I asked the author of "Bad As I Wanna Be" about ex-wife Anicka Rodman's claim in her book, "Worse Than He Says He Is," that Dennis gave her two STDs.

"That was like 1996," Rodman said when asked if he had a chronic STD. Rodman, who likes to say that other athletes lie but he doesn't, said "never have" to a question of whether he's had STDs.

Hard to believe, with Rodman so closely resembling a two-legged petri dish. But if that's his story, so be it.

On or off the wagon?

"He added a certain flair to the party to make it a legendary night," Envy nightclub owner Deepak Nath said of Rodman's paid appearance Friday night.

With his handler in tow, along with Billy O'Rourke, senior veep of Santo Spirits and a former Twin Cities resident, and Armen Yemenidjian of Las Vegas' Tropicana, Rodman filled Envy with his exuberance.

"He was friendly to everybody, stopped to take pictures with everybody," said Nath, who hired Rodman to come here and host and deejay Deepak's birthday party.

While I am not sure what Rodman was drinking at Stella's, he reportedly downed a beverage that is not on Dr. Drew's approved "Celebrity Rehab" list.

"He loved the tequila," Nath told me Sunday. Rodman apparently was drinking the Ambhar tequila provided by O'Rourke's company. "I did a shot with him," Nath said. Uh, Rodman's not supposed to drink? "I know," said Nath. "It was for my birthday."

Your birthday is more important than Rodman's sobriety?

"I'm not sure he's totally on the wagon."

That's becoming a familiar refrain as other bar sightings are reported.

C.J. is at 612.332.TIPS or cj@startribune.com. E-mailers, please state a subject -- "Hello" doesn't count. Attachments are not opened, so don't even try. More of her attitude can be seen on FOX 9 Thursday mornings.