PEOPLE

By Belinda Luscombe

DENNIS THE MENACE

Can no one save America from DENNIS RODMAN? He plays a Martian on 3rd Rock from the Sun! He does a risque lingerie commercial with a supermodel! He announces on TV that he's getting married, mystifying everyone including his stripper girlfriend! He shows up at a book signing in a wedding dress! He goes to Rome to make a movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme! All just a regular week or two at the office for the publicity terrier. Over at the Rodman Group (his manager has an 800 number, natch) they're unapologetic. "This is a small representation of things coming his way," says his personal assistant, Tammy Rodriguez. Now, what did Rodman use to do for a living?

SEEN & HEARD

Double baby-shower time: singer Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher, her lover, are to be mothers. Cypher is four months pregnant, but the two women are mum on how the baby was conceived. It's probably a safe bet that the dad isn't Lou Diamond Phillips, who was Cypher's husband when she met Etheridge. "Love comes in surprising packages," Cypher told a reporter.

Liz Taylor met her last husband at the Betty Ford Clinic. Now that Larry Fortensky is single again, could he be headed back to rehab? Police arrested him outside an illegally parked motor home for investigation of being under the influence of a controlled substance. "This just shows how victimized and vulnerable he is," says his lawyer, Raoul Felder, who adds that Fortensky was taking prescription medicine.

MAMA MIA! HERE AGAIN?

ANNA-FRID LYNGSTAD, better known as the brunette one in ABBA, the '70s Ur-pop group, is back. A Swedish division of Warner Music is releasing her first album in 12 years, Djup Andetag (Deep Breath). It's in Swedish, so the songs may prove blessedly less tenacious than ABBA hits like S.O.S. Since the band broke up, Lyngstad, who's married to Italian architect Prince Ruzzo Reuss, has worked with environmental and antidrug causes in Switzerland. Agnetha Faltskog has lived in heavily guarded seclusion in Stockholm, and Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus have been working on music projects. Lyngstad's not the only one resurfacing. Faltskog will publish an autobiography and greatest-hits CD this month. You've been warned.

BUT HOW DOES HE VOTE?

And they say it's hard to get a man once you pass 50. BARBRA STREISAND has a new beau--and he's even from her generation. He's JAMES BROLIN, 56, the hirsute hunk of Marcus Welby, M.D. and Hotel. The two were introduced at a party given by Streisand's onetime hairdresser-lover turned Hollywood mogul Jon Peters, according to Variety's old-time celeb columnist Army Archerd. For a Streisand beau, the twice-divorced Brolin is pretty low profile (remember Andre Agassi, Don Johnson, Peter Jennings and that guy who guest-stars on Friends, Elliott Gould?). It's probably only coincidence that this news broke just weeks before the arrival of Streisand's latest producing, directing, starring effort, The Mirror Has Two Faces.

NOT TALKING

A little publicity can be a dangerous thing. After reading (in TIME) of a new album from the Heads, three members of the Talking Heads, the fourth and most famous member, DAVID BYRNE, filed suit to stop the band from using the name. "Critics and the public used to call us the Heads," says Byrne. "And like it or not, the band was identified with my voice and my style. People will get confused." While band member Chris Frantz says he's surprised by Byrne's action, Byrne says it's the culmination of a feud that began when the band broke up, a process that was "like being with a wife beater who won't divorce you."

SEEN & HEARD

Keith Hamilton Cobb hates his steady job being a "bland" good guy on All My Children. So he's leaving for L.A. and more challenging roles. "I don't mind playing the scum of the earth if he can also recite Byron," he says. Wait a minute. Haven't we seen this episode before? Roger Howarth, sick of being a good guy, left One Life to Live for L.A. late last year. And where is he now? Back on One Life to Live.

THE GORILLA OF AMERICA'S DREAMS

Among apes there are few celebrities: Tarzan's pal Cheetah, Dian Fossey's friend Digit and, of course, King Kong. Now we can add a female to that list. BINTI JUA ("Daughter of Sunshine") was sitting in her enclosure at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo when a three-year-old toddler, in the uncontrolled exuberance common to his species, fell 18 ft. into the area, knocking himself out. Although his lack of fur showed he was not one of her brood, and Koola, her daughter, was clinging to her side, Binti gathered the boy gently in her arms and took him to the door where most of his kind usually gathered. The humans, after retrieving the boy, went, well, ape. Binti became a heroine of the purest sort: mute, unassuming, expecting nothing. She hasn't even asked after the boy, who suffered brain contusions, bruises and a laceration but appears to have fully recovered. He remembers nothing of his ordeal.

Binti has made it clear she won't do interviews. But much is already known about her. She's a young widow (age 8) and has always been special. Raised mostly by humans in San Francisco, she was on loan to Chicago when she had a fling with Abe, the silverback patriarch who was more than six times her age. He died not long ago, after Koola was born, a father at last. Until Binti came along, no female had interested him. Fame and oodles of fan mail have not changed her. For example, Binti shared a 25-lb. gift basket of bananas with all the zoo's inhabitants. After all, a gal has to watch her figure.

--Reported by James L. Graff/Chicago

With reporting by JAMES L. GRAFF/CHICAGO