Chicago ? Out of character and costume, Dennis Rodman arrived 30 minutes early at the Comcast SportsNet studio clad conservatively (for him) in tan velour sweatpants, a dark jacket, sunglasses and a black hat covering a blue bandana that wrapped his bleached hair.

Bored by the cable-sports show on the TV in the guest’s waiting room, Rodman rose from a chair to change the channel to an episode of “The Simpsons” that entertained him for the next half-hour.

Just one cartoon character relating to another.

“That’s funny (stuff),” Rodman said to a member of his three-person entourage.

Life continues to be as animated as ever for the former NBA bad boy who came to Chicago last week to peddle his third book, “I Should Be Dead By Now,” and to attend Scottie Pippen’s jersey retirement ceremony on Friday.

At previous promotional stops for the book, a 224-page ode to drunken debauchery prompted by a near-death experience two years ago, Rodman has dressed in drag and popped out of a coffin.

The more people stare, the more Rodman smiles.

Since playing in his last NBA game in 2000, Rodman says he has missed the competition more than the attention. Yet his actions suggest the 44-year-old still has an adolescent streak that craves the spotlight that was white-hot during Rodman’s three championship seasons with the Bulls from 1995-98.

Recently, for example, the Miami Herald ran a blurb about Rodman throwing 500 $1 bills into the air at a restaurant simply to watch patrons scramble to grab them. A few days earlier, the New York Post reported Rodman was kicked out of a New York nightclub after he stripped off his shirt and exposed his backside.

Rodman, who says in his book that he “still has an edge but is no longer over the edge,” laughed off the stripping incident he says didn’t happen.

He does hope people make a big thing out of his book, which professes to be self-help but ultimately chronicles his path to self-destruction.

The book begins with Rodman assessing his life after a drunken binge in Las Vegas landed him in a hospital bed with 70 stitches from a motorcycle crash. It ends with Rodman vowing to be a good husband to his wife, Michelle, and the two preschool-aged children he lives with in Newport Beach, Calif.

In between, Rodman glorifies the sex-and-booze lifestyle that became as much a part of his identity as his skin graffiti. A color picture of one of his favorite tattoos, an X-rated image on his back, makes the book one that might be difficult to show his young children.

“My kids would say that’s just daddy, crazy daddy,” Rodman said. “Everything in the book is true. It’s more comedy than anything.”

For instance, Rodman got a chuckle from retelling a story about being with a woman in a Chicago hotel room while her boyfriend waited in the lobby. Before leaving, the man shook Rodman’s hand and called it “an honor” to meet him.

Someday, Rodman envisions the Bulls hanging No. 91 from the United Center rafters.

“I’ve done so much for the league and the world if it happens it would be good for the people,” Rodman said. “I don’t expect it will happen, but I would embrace it.”