So you’ve ravaged your Thanksgiving turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, and you’re settling in for a slow-moving afternoon or quiet evening. You’ve got time on your hands, time to check out Turdstock ’23, contemporary Nashville’s answer to Woodstock.
It’s not quite a three- or four-day gig, but the show brings together nearly four hours of music by some of Nashville’s most energetic — and patriotic –performers. These are the entertainers who aren’t threatening to join Bruce Springsteen and Cher overseas, but instead, they’re advocating the re-election of President Donald Trump to clean up the Democrats’ dirty, corrupt and pedophile-laden government.
John Rich organized Turdstock and leads off the event, alongside Big Kenny. They’re joined by a welter of talented singers, musicians and song writers, among them, Jeffrey Steele, Larry Gatlin Jr., Carmen Thompson and the notorious Catturd. There’s enough music here, you can return for seconds on Friday, and roll it out again all weekend.
Liberty is declining and the COVID-19 shutdown is a perfect example. Take the Draconian measures Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed on the residents of the Golden State–lockdowns across the board and farcical stay-at-home measures.
Valiant Riverside, Calif., Sherriff Chad Bianca, one of a handful of California authorities who will defy the orders, put it succinctly. “The metrics used for closures are unbelievably faulty and are not representative of true numbers, and are disastrous for Riverside County.” He goes on to say Newsom’s edict is a direct attack on our civil liberties and freedom, and adds, “I believe that all jobs are essential to someone.”
Dennis Prager concurs and cites a case in point from the legendary 1969 Woodstock Festival in upstate New York. The rowdy “party” drew more than 100,000 people from across the planet right in the middle of the highly contagious Hong Kong Flu pandemic. The flu, which broke out in 1968 and lasted nearly two years, killed an estimated 1-4 million people worldwide. Yet, there was no social distancing, no masks, no shutdowns, no abuse of our civil rights. Unlike in today’s pandemic climate, why didn’t people get locked down then? “Because people believed in freedom,” Prager says. “It would have been unacceptable to Americans.” Hear more of his logic on PragerU.
PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was founded in 1980 in Virginia, but not too surprisingly, the radical animal rights movement first became a fad in California. Perhaps none of the activists to the cause was more eccentric than Lewis Beach Marvin III, wealthy heir to the S & H Green Stamp fortune, as his late father had served as the chairman of Sperry & Hutchinson Co. In the 1960s, Marvin established a 60-acre compound near Topanga Canyon above Malibu, where, emulating Noah, he gathered together and sheltered scores of animals of many different species, allowing them to roam freely. At his mountaintop retreat, he also built the Moonfire Temple, site of orgies, Acid Tests and pagan rituals involving countercultural figures ranging from The Doors to members of the Charles Manson Family.
What specifically did Marvin believe? We can get a sense of his hardcore dogma from this 1966 clip when he appeared in “the beef box” on The Joe Pyne Show to assail the slaughter of any animal for any purpose whatsoever.
Notice the distinctive skull and crossbones hat he’s wearing? He let Jim Morrison wear the same hat on the night of March 1, 1969 when The Doors performed in concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Florida — the infamous concert in which a highly intoxicated Morrison fondled himself on stage, leading to his arrest on charges of lewd and lascivious behavior in public after allegedly exposing his genitals. Did Morrison really whip it out? No known photographs prove that, but stills show the singer arriving on stage carrying a lamb — one of the creatures from Marvin’s menagerie. Watch this compilation (extreme language alert) to get a sense of what transpired that night.
The Doors had hooked up with Marvin in 1966 when they agreed to perform a benefit concert at Will Rogers State Park in California to raise money for Marvin’s campaign to ban weapons-related toys during the height of the Vietnam War. Marvin continued to press his activism, helping to establish the Animal Freedom Fighters in Venice, California, and addressing the throngs at Woodstock with an anti-meat message, again carrying a lamb on stage, and telling the masses, “The killing of animals causes the killing of men.” He died in 2005 at a monkey refuge in Panama.
Why bring up Marvin now? For starters, he plays a prominent role in Mondo Hollywood, today’s Trillion Dollar Movie, containing two extended interludes devoted to him. In the first segment, starting at 12:34, we meet the multi-millionaire shacking up with his pet monkey, Mr. President, in a rented garage for $10 a month while he builds the Moonfire Temple, having already dropped a bundle on acquiring his mountaintop. He resurfaces much later in the film, at 1:08:47, cavorting in the temple as he delivers a sermon that evolves into a full-blown rant: “The universalist, the pacifist, the vegetarian and the compassionate are smothered, are overwhelmed and driven to the place of death. Each of us must become a Christ. Each of us must die before we would take the life of another.”
Exploring Marvin’s life and his connection with The Doors brought to mind all of the recent celebrities going nude to publicize PETA’s militant broadsides against its latest targets. These celebrities actually aren’t as daring or shocking as they might think. In retrospect, they are simply upholding a tradition that’s now a half-century old, with roots tied to a pagan temple in California and a quixotic, early animal rights activist. Kinda figures.
