"He arrives here with trumpets blowing.

He arrives here with his catchy name, and his showy game, arrives here with a personality as big as his talent.

He also arrives here with a certain reputation, one of those stars-in-his-own-movie types, the kind of guy who fans love and coaches seem to grow weary of, whether it was his gold Mohawk haircut, his gold tooth, his nude photo shoot for a magazine, or just about anything else to call attention to himself.

He's already said he's looking for a fan to perhaps live with this year, and appears to take to New England the way Shaq did, out and about, see and be seen.

But who is Chad Ochocinco anyway?

Not that we're probably going to find that out in the customary news conferences that come with playing for the Patriots, where information is usually treated as state secrets.

So we turn to his book for answers.

It's called "Ochocinco," the name he gave himself in 2008 because it means "eight five" in Spanish, though his real name was Johnson. It's subtitled "What Football and Life Have Thrown My Way." It came out in 2009, and it's all there: the lack of a father, the mother who essentially abandoned him, the grim ghetto reality of Liberty City in Miami, the journey through an education system that no longer works, football as a life raft, and finally the riches and celebrity of the NFL, the sports version of winning the lottery.

Is it any wonder he says, "I got six paintings of myself in the living room of my town house in Cincinnati. Why? Because I love me. I'm great and I know it."

Then there are the cars.

But let's have him describe them, as if you were pulling up in front of his house in a gated community in Plantation, Fla. "