Columnist Dean Juipe: These vows were made for walking

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998 | 10:27 a.m.

He's not the first man to get married and immediately regret it.

But Dennis Rodman must have had an inkling Carmen Electra wasn't really the girl of his dreams, even though he agreed to marry her three weeks ago in Las Vegas.

They said their "I do's" at the Little Chapel of the Flowers, a pleasant looking facility that sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere on Las Vegas Boulevard. Actually, the Little Chapel sits hard on a less glamourous portion of the Strip immediately across from White Cross Drugs.

Rodman, no doubt in a lovely sequined outfit or perhaps a floral ditty, exchanged vows with Electra -- real name Tara Patrick -- only after his pals cleared the room of cameras and likely handed the receptionist and minister a buck or two in exchange for a lifetime of sworn secrecy.

The only addendum that has surfaced: Rodman was outrageously drunk, although not so drunk as to have been denied a license by the Clark County Marriage Bureau an hour earlier.

Two days after the blessed event, the cross-dressing Chicago Bulls forward with the multi-hued hair filed for an annulment.

That belated bouquet didn't sit too well with Ms. Electra. The former Baywatch playmate supposedly is objecting to the annulment plea, and if that's the case the matter appears to be headed for court.

But if it was merely a publicity stunt for two publicity starved celebrities, it worked. Rodman had a few laughs to lighten his NBA lockout angst, Electra got her name back in the Hollywood trade publications and even the Little Chapel put one in the plus column with an increased visibility in the giddy aftermath.

It's a story that continues to receive excellent play outside of Las Vegas but one that has been somewhat neglected here because it's so typically Sin City. After all, this is a place where drunken males fall for voluptuous bombshells on a daily basis.

They usually don't score and then back out quite so quickly however.

(An aside: Annulments are far more commonplace than you may imagine. A lifelong friend who married his Catholic school sweetheart at the age of 18 and had three children with the woman over the course of 20 seemingly pleasant years was later granted an annulment by the church. The fact that his uncle was a priest may have had something to do with it.)

But rebounding -- if not debauchery -- has always been Rodman's specialty and here he is looking to rebound from a night or two of legalized co-mingling if not pure wedded bliss. A complication: "I love Carmen and am proud to be married to her" Rodman allegedly said in a press release distributed by Electra's publicist after Rodman's attorney filed for the annulment in Southern California.

Does he or doesn't he? Maybe only Rodman's hairdresser knows for sure.

One thing about it, the bad boy and the babe have turned into an item as the gossip columnists would say.

"The Worm Turns" a New York tabloid screamed on its back page, using Rodman's nickname to draw attention to a tale that would be downright sordid if anyone could take it seriously.

But it's Rodman and it's Las Vegas and after all each has been through, neither can be sullied.