Super Bowl With a Smirk V: $1 million ticket to Shaq party, Swift’s about-face, Trump’s pick and more
Super Bowl With a Smirk, a beloved annual staple of the Miami Herald the years we remember to do it, is back! (Although “beloved” might be stretching it.) Smirk flies under the banner Make Fun, Not War and delights to needle and tweak the NFL and the gravitas of its Big Game. Thanks for joining us this week and welcome to our fifth of five daily editions:
On Super Bowl Week, the top-end celebrity parties are even more highly anticipated than the Super Bowl ads, the halftime show or even the Big Game itself, according to top-end celebrity party organizers.
One of the biggest has become Shaq’s Fun House, which rages from Friday night to 3 a.m. Saturday at Mardi Gras World, featuring carnival rides, circus acts and music by John Summit, Ludacris and Shaq himself in his D.J. Diesel persona. Basic tickets start at $199, but for $1 million (you read that right), you get private jet service to and from New Orleans, a VIP table onstage and proximity to the private orbit of Shaq himself.
A mere $3 million gets you a 50-yard line suite for the game, seating 45 guests with catered chef tables and top-shelf liquor.
Myriad other parties this week included soirees hosted by GQ, which may or may not still publish a magazine, and Sports Illustrated, which cut its once-stellar staff to the bone and became a sad shell of its former self but evidently can still afford to throw a Super Bowl party.
Also, the 38th annual Leigh Steinberg Super Bowl party is Saturday, hosted by the eternal player agent. There’s an age restriction. Only 75 and older.
Smirk cannot afford most of these fancy parties and has been unable to fake his way into the biggest ones, but we are honored to say we will be attending a Saturday party on the far end of Bourbon Street hosted by the estranged former hairdresser for Cher’s ex-neighbor.
▪ Hamburger chain Carl’s Jr. ended its overtly sexual advertising eight years ago but is bringing it back in a Super Bowl spot for its new “hangover burger” starring bikini-clad TikTok influencer Alix Earle. She’s a University of Miami graduate whose boyfriend is Dolphins receiver Braxton Berrios. Smirk does not approve of using scantily clad young women to sell burgers, but watched the ad 17 times to be certain how disgusted he was.
▪ NFL.com ranked this Super Bowl’s “25 key people.” Predictably Patrick Mahomes and Saquon Barkley were 1-2. Ludicrously, the list included Tom Brady.. Um, Tom’s an announcer now. By that peripheral logic he list should have included Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift. Speaking of which...
▪ Taylor Swift ... turncoat! A Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl begs the revelation. Swift is the No. 1 Chiefs fan now because she’s famously dating tight end Travis Kelce. But she was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, and previously expressed her fandom and love for the Eagles, even sneaking a Birds T-shirt into her video for the 2020 song, “Gold Rush.” Smirk hears that — to be fair — if Philly wins Sunday she will dump Kelce and start dating Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert.
▪ President Donald Trump, who will attend, predicted a “great” Super Bowl on Sunday. Democrats issued a statement disputing Trump.
▪ New Orleans’ 11th time as Super Bowl host ties Miami for most ever, but Smirk reports the Big Easy won’t stay in NFL’s SB rotation without a massive upgrade in hotel space. The Superdome is old but well-situated, but the scarcity of hotel rooms -- one-fourth the number in Vegas last year — has led to price-gouging with some rooms as high as $15,000 a night. NFL hospitality provider On Location, with no space left in N’Awlins, had to place some fans an hour away in Biloxi, Mississippi. Miami has tons more hotel rooms. (Unfortunately most of them are miles and miles from Had Rock Stadium and the far-flung suburb of Miami Gardens.)
▪ Keep hearing Chiefs would be first with a Super Bowl three-peat? It’s a lie! First team, yeah. But not first overall. Former linebacker Ken Norton Jr. won Super Bowl rings with Dallas in the 1992 and ‘93 season and a third playing for San Francisco in ‘94 -- the first and still only with an individual three-peat. (Norton, son of the late heavyweight boxing champ, now coaches LBs for the Washington Commanders.)
▪ New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne posted on social media he would not attend the Super Bowl, miffed he was not included in the halftime show. (None of his people have had the nerve to inform him Kendrick Lamar is bigger and the NFL probably made a smart choice.)
▪ The Taste of the NFL, “the Party With a Purpose,” is Saturday night at New Orleans’ National World War II Museum in support of initiatives to combat student hunger. Because nothing conveys empathy for the hungry like hundreds of rich folks eating gourmet food prepared by world-class chefs.
▪ Google had to re-edit a Super Bowl ad for its artificial intelligence (AI) tool Gemini because the original ad had Gemini seeming artificially unintelligent. The commercial, meant to tout Gemini’s abilities, showed the tool helping a cheesemonger in Wisconsin write a product description by informing him Gouda accounts for “50 to 60 percent” of global cheese consumption. In fact, the Dutch cheese is nowhere near that big, trailing the likes of cheddar and mozzarella by far in popularity. AI: artificial inaccuracy.
▪ Super Bowl Party Tip du Jour: Surprise your guests with a strictly enforced two-drink maximum for each on alcoholic beverages. It will save you the bother of hosting another Super Bowl party next year.
Smirk IV / Smirk III / Smirk II / Smirk I
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 12:58 PM.
