Les Moonves, Jerry Bruckheimer, baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. and Pat Riley occupied the power table at Saturday night’s comic-book themed Maxim Bash.
All but Riley are board members of successful video game publisher Bethesda Softworks (Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”). At an earlier event, Moonves told TheWrap “These guys are my best friends.”
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Less friendly towards surprise headliner Ludacris, the foursome departed their dead-center VIP table with Cinderella-esque precision right at midnight. Ever the coach, NBA royalty Riley led the exodus from the prime real estate during the actor-rapper’s extended set.
“Next year,” Moonves told TheWrap, referencing the big game’s return to CBS in 2013.
Reminding waistlines everywhere that this one of the biggest eating holidays of the year, chefs Guy Fieri and Tom Colicchio hit the event, with sponsor Tabasco Buffalo Style Hot Sauce tying in to the expected surge in wing consumption for the game. Colicchio helped himself, stuffing a bottle of the condiment in his back pocket.
In case anyone was unclear which guy was Mark Cuban at Saturday afternoon’s DirecTV Celebrity Beach Bowl, he was the one wearing the Dallas Mavericks pullover sweatshirt with his trademark jeans and sneakers.
“You can smell the G6 jet fuel on him,” IMG Vice President and agent Carlos Fleming quipped as Cuban strode in. (Fleming’s client Cam Newtown was named NFL Rookie of the Year later on Saturday night.)
While the effect of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball is widely documented, Snoop Dogg hinted at a surprise benefit of his own performance-enhancing regimen.
Before the sand flag football game where he was on the receiving end of three touchdown passes from Joe Montana, the youth football coach predicted his MVP performance. “My advantage is, I fly the friendly skies so I’ll be able to jump up higher than everyone else,” Snoop said.
Live concerts HD network Palladia broadcast a post-game performance by soundtrack-friendly group “The Fray,” before producers somehow transformed a million pounds of sand into a massive party venue in under six hours. Katy Perry performed a non-corporate, not-mailing-it in, full set later in the night at the HD Net/DirecTV hosted event.
At right, Alyssa Milano, Antonio Brown, and Joe Manganiello at Rolling Stone and Bacardi’s Saturday night mega-concert. (Photo by Getty Images.)
The man many thought would be playing on Sunday, Green Bay Packers star Aaron Rogers, rolled in to the Playboy party on Friday night with Clay Matthews. Past the crush at the bottom of the stairs, VIPs like Shaquille O’Neal and the guys from Gym Class Heroes were part of the scene, at which tables bartered bottles of Ciroc back and forth to get the flavors they wanted.
Audi brought talent from L.A. to Indy, and was able to commandeer a motorcade to bring talent to the Conrad Hotel, where it took over the owner of the hotel chain’s penthouse residence for the lower-decibel Friday night soiree.
Neil Patrick Harris and Matthew Morrison were the high-wattage names in the room, before New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft showed up. “Twilight” vampire Kellan Lutz was catching glimpses of Audi’s vampire-themed Super Bowl ad that was playing on a loop.
Maria Menounos, an unrestrained cheerleader for all things Massachusetts, made sure to get a photo with the Pats owner.
The library revealed that someone else manages the fortune that built the hotel. On the bookshelf: “Accounting for Dummies”, “Mutual Funds for Dummies”, and “Reading Financial Reports for Dummies”.