We’re Talkin’ Real Culture Here
The Super Bowl is about more than some mere football game. This is about an opportunity for every true sports fan to fulfill his long-cherished dream of cruising across the high seas while wallowing in a Jell-O-filled swimming pool with Lawrence Taylor.
Not to mention “200 naked show girls.”
Consider the Platinum Plus Gentlemen’s Casino Cruise - advertised for weeks in Miami sports pages as “the hottest party of Super Bowl week.” This is why they call it Super.
The game itself is merely an inconvenience, likely to deteriorate into just another mismatched scrimmage - some steroid-crazed team from the National Football Conference versus the Barry University junior varsity.
But the Super Bowl transcends football. It’s super because of the super cultural amenities the game brings to the host community.
This year, South Florida gets an airport jammed with corporate jets, hotel suites populated with CEO party boys, a crush of thirsty, undernourished sports writers. Best of all, we get the Platinum Cruise. Deena Hale, official spokesperson, described this as a “first maiden voyage,” which may or may not be redundant.
The theme, of course, is football. Aboard, Hale promised, will be “more than 50 NFL sports figures, current as well as alumnae.”
She refused to say which “current” players. But she promised Taylor, Roger Craig and Jim Brown would be among the retirees sailing out of Port Everglades on Jan. 26. Hale also mentioned Wilt Chamberlain, who some of us tend to associate with basketball rather than football, but what the heck. Of course, the sexual prowess (20,000 partners and counting) Wilt claimed in his autobiography indicated that he’s a kind of walking Super Bowl himself. Unfortunately, with Wilt on the passenger list, the “200 naked show girls” makes the first maiden Platinum cruise seem slightly understaffed.
Hale droned on about coed bubble baths, nude lap dances, table dances, nude limbo, center folds and “high stakes” gambling, all on an unidentified 400-foot cruise ship, leased for a single night of Super Bowl excess. (Tickets range from $750 to $2,000, which buys a chance at “celebrity photos.”)
And what would any South Florida cultural experience be without at least one major indicted millionaire magnate? That would be our host, Michael J. Peter, who owns a nationwide chain of nude dance clubs.
Peter, when he’s not playing love boat captain, is fending off seven counts of racketeering, mail fraud and extortion by “wrongful use of actual and threatened force, violence and fear of economic loss by committing physical violence and threatening physical violence.” (Which puts him in league with several NFL cornerbacks.)
The feds also charge that Peter conspired with a capo of the Gambino crime family. No Gambinos, however, are on the love boat celebrity passenger list. That ought to relieve that seasick feeling experienced by the National Football League internal security honchos.
Peter appropriately has hired super lawyer Roy Black to navigate the case through federal criminal court. Hale didn’t indicate if Black would join the super celebs on the Platinum Cruise as his client (free on $1 million property bond) slips off into international waters.
Passengers also have a shot at two free Super Bowl tickets, which will be given away on the cruise. But with nude limbo, 50 NFL “superstars,” a Jell-O pool, 200 naked girls and an alleged associate of the Gambino family, who needs football?
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