Super Sad, Super Bowl: Playboy Bash Canned, Bunnies Blue

"What is this thing you Americans call the Super Bowl?" asked Robert Shaw, as Israeli Counter Terrorist Expert Major David Kabakbov, in the 1977 film Black Sunday, in which evil Bruce Dern's uses a renegade blimp to attack the Super Bowl.

"I wanted to give this whole son-of-a-bitchin' country something to remember me by!" Bruce Dern, as Captain Michael Lander, flying that Goodyear gone bad blimp down, down, down, into a burning stadium ring of fire.

What was with Bruce Dern in '70s anyway? Killing John Wayne in the The Cowboys wasn't enough to satisfy his maniac streak?

"Cancel the Super Bowl? That's like canceling Christmas!" Joe Robbie playing Joe Robbie in the same John Frankenheimer bad blimp attack film.

Joe Robbie is gone, long gone. Even his name has been erased from his old stadium by the used car salesman who bought the Miami Dolphins, but the Super Bowl is still our biggest national party.

And Hugh Hefner's Playboy bash was the best Super Bowl eve party on the planet. At least Hef thought so and cancelling it sends a sad red flag above Hef's crumbling empire.

The Emperor has no cloths. Well he likes it that way, but Hef is on a Detroit Lion like down spin.

His daughter, CEO Christine Hefner, jumped the bunny boat and, after dropping 70 percent of it value, the old bunny boat be barely afloat. Hef is cutting a $100 million made from bunnies butts from the payroll.

Kendra, perhaps his most popular tight end, has run off with back up Philadelphia Eagle wide receiver Hank Basket. Holly has become entranced with an illusionist and has disappeared in a whiff of fairy smoke. Bridget has gone a bit bonkers.

Hef is reaching way back into the eighties. His ex-wife, 1989 Playmate of the year Kim Conrad, is moving back to the mansion. Desperate times call for desperate measures and when Hef is bringing back bunnies from twenty years past times are desperate indeed.

I mean Kendra was only four in 1989. And Hef? Well Hef was 62, but a spry 62.

Playboy stock is going for less then two bucks a share, a lot less then a copy of the magazine itself. Perhaps the net has not only killed newspapers, slowly being strangled to death, but also sadly slain the skin book trade.

Playboy sales have plunged from 7.2 million a month to 2.6 millions and absorbed a $1.3 million loss last quarter.

Old Hef might have to pack up and head to the still Internetless Third World to peddle his softcore porn. And his articles, of course, the articles. But Hef is growing old and the Bedouin are said to frown on old men with pipes in pajamas peddling porn.

But the Bedouins do like blondes. Still, slippers are a scary thing to be treading the ancient Sahara in. Especially when ye are in your 80s.

Like the aging Satyr Hef, the behemoth NFL is feeling the pinch. The leviathan has leaks.

Washington Redskin owner Daniel Snyder has begun executing his seasonal workers to save himself a few dimes. To save on funeral flowers most are then tossed quietly into the Potomac well past midnight by a frightened, but still employed, underling.

Feeling especially frugal Snyder has begun billing the bereaved for the cost of the bullets used on the demised.

Cleveland Brown owner Randy Lerner, who just paid millions for a washed out ex-New York Jet coach and Bill Belichick gofer, has slashed some low paid staff. And is damn proud of it.

The always frugal Chicago Bears have just announced that they will play the 2009 season without a QB on the roster. RB Matt Forte will just carry the ball sixty five times a game until his shattered body stops working at the tender age of twenty four.

Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones has canned the Pacman and promised to only spend $900,000 or less on personal plastic surgery. Jessica Simpson has become so depressed at the future of her Romo that she is reportedly binge drinking pitchers of ice cold Budweiser and downing dozens of sizzling barbecued ribs then weeping and wailing over memories of her Tony's recent big game performances.

It's enough to make a down girl date a Chief instead of a Cowboy. A Kansas City Chief. Tyler Thigpen was looking pretty strong late in the year while her romeo Romo was rancid. Sure Thigpen might not be your thing but he, at least, has upside. Romo might be as good as he's ever going to be, much more Danny White then Roger Staubach.

Desperate times call for desperate cures.

Odd Oakland Raider owner Al Davis is contemplating suing ex-coach John Madden to regain the wages the eccentric owner paid him in the '70s. Adjusted upward for inflation of course. Al says Madden did, after all, lose a lot of AFC championship games.

Ex-New York Giant Coach Jim Fassell, desperate to get back in the game after his pal Brain Billick begged him to coach the Ravens offense and then blindsided him in Baltimore, has said he would coach the Raiders for free.

And cut Al Davis's lawn, do his wash, his dishes, rub his hoary feet, scrub his sweet silver and black scalp, and just generally play the part of Morgan Freeman in Driving Mister Mad Al.

Of course right now mad eyed Al is frothing, foaming, smashing his mallet-ted fist into his old oak desk, and plotting brutal, bloody vengeance on the seedy San Diego Chargers. That is if the rumors of their move to Los Angles is prov-en true.

Unconfirmed reports that the unstable, but still quite savage, Al Davis has actually made contact with rogue Russian scientists in an effort to acquire a nuclear weapon to drop on the Chargers complex if they make an effort to march North.

Mad Al's antics in Oakland are eerily similar to Adolf Hitler's last days in the old Berlin Bunker. "Spanos! Spanos must be stopped! How dare he betray me! It's all Rozelle, Rozelle, Rozelle, Pete's still plaguing me from beyond the grave! Otto! Get in here! Otto! Why can't we beat the damn Chargers! Los Angles is mine! All Mine! My market! MINE! OTTO!"

Poor Fassell is left on the ladder patiently painting Davis's fading ocean side mansion. Blame Brian Billick. Coach Jim should ask the old self proclaimed offensive genius why the Raven offense improved so dramatically once Billick was booth-ed.

Even the NFL is having trouble extorting the fans for outrageous Super Bowl ticket prices this year. Most of the owners give their allotment to ticket brokers and then salivate over the extravagant prices those blackguards demand. No the owners do not sell them to their loyal fans at price. Corporate jets need upkeep, rubes.

Sorry serfs, it's just business, nothing personal you understand. Hey how bout $50 for a Super Bowl Steeler Cup?

With the Hindenburg like economy wrecking havoc this year the ticket prices are low by Super Bowl standards. And demand even lower. Sure some sleazy, Viagra charged politicos and slimy fat cat types are still rolling into the Tampa strip joints pawing, pie eyed Florida coeds and drooling in their twenty dollar drinks, but most ordinary fans have a hard time digging up Super Bowl bucks.

In tough times the quality of strippers rises. Drunken politicians can't balance budgets but they do grasp that basic economic fact. Some broken down laid off Playboy bunnies might even be hitting the higher end strip circuit. Or the lower end strip joints if the market is truly flooded. Poor girls prepared to be pawed by the politicos.

Now pass that lithe Girl a Grant. Old Ulysses S wouldn't mind. Hell, he likely have a fine Tampa Cuban cigar, a quiet laugh, and a double bourbon and ask for a box seat at the 50. But, at least US Grant earned it at Appomattox.

We all should have rolled the 401K's into Tampa Stripper futures back in September.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell postponed announcing massive state layoffs, 'til Tuesday, so he could take his Pennsylvania posse to the big bowl. On the taxpayer tab, of course, but selfish, self-absorbed politico fiends are harder to find in these times with the dire wolf howling at some many peoples dark doors.

Well maybe the fiends are just harder to find because most are just digging deeper into their spider holes desperately trying to not draw fire.

Roger Goodell is spouting tales of economic woe and weakness. Of course he is about to negotiate with the NFL Players Association and the contracting television networks.

Roger may be right though, the NFL might have peaked. The monster has reached its ultimate mass and now the wave recedes. The days of the tax payer built palaces have passed, except in Gotham in the reign of Lord Mayor Bloomberg the Magnificent. And in  Jerry Jones Fantasy land, a land lacking playoff wins.

But the NFL, in this dire economic climate, which will continue for years, is unlikely going to be able to extort fans for the criminally vile personal seat license fees  and the stadium palaces paid for by tax payers so billionaire owners can sit in their golden thrones and watch their millionaire players play a child's game.

Lucky Luciano would have loved the personal seat license scam. Hell, Old Lucky might even have sneered at the sheer audacity of it. Meyer Lansky might have blushed at the fleecing of the fan flock.

Somewhere, Tex Rickard smiles. He broke a few towns in Montana and built a Madison Square Garden but never dreamed of the Roman Games like Holiday which has gripped America. Rickard would have grinned and grabbed someones wallet. Goodell, a Senators son, understands that greed game well.

Goodell may dream of a $99 NFL Pay Per View Super Bowl on the NFL network in 2014 but by 2014 the tax payer base likely will be in even more distress as the Boomers begin to retire in mass and the entitlement and pension system dam begins to crack.

Enjoy the game. The NFL beast has peaked, and perhaps our nation has also, and for the NFL all the pieces of the economic pie have been gobbled down. The television contracts will decrease, stadium money will shrink, and its fan base, many unemployed or underemployed, will not have the extra dollars to spend on entertainment.

But at least the NFL extorted the fans for a few years of full priced exhibition tickets and PSL's.

Follow the Big Bunny. The wily old rabbit  Hef see's the writing on the wall. The Bunny Bash has gone bye bye. The big Bunny, though a bit blue, is back in his hole with new buxom blondes, digging in and regrouping.

And if worse comes to worse wouldn't ye rather bailout a Bunny instead of a banker? All those bailout bucks are disappearing in the Congressional Cauldron, that bottomless buck eating brew, so why not throw the Bunnies a few? Bailout out a Bunny not a Banker, Hef ought sell bumperstickers.

The NFL ought to consider the Bunny's blues as its magnificent wave begins to inevitably reside. Wild waves that go up must descend down.

An evilly cackling Bruce Dern might be flying that big, bad blimp closer to the Super Bowl then even Roger Goodell imagines.

The Bunny Man saw the blimps black shadow does Roger the Commissioner see it?

It's enough to even make a beautiful bunny blue.