NEW Ratlinks: WHAT'S UP DOC ANTLE
A "RARE" BRAND NEW MID MONTH Ratlinks on what else - Tiger King.
TOXIC
Like everyone else in America, I watched Netflix’s Tiger King and thought - there is a lot to unpack here, like Joe Exotic’s thruple or Carol Baskin’s “missing” husband.
Yet, there was one character who definitely needed more air time, one that lives among tigers along with his many “wives.” I had to delve deeper to learn more about an individual that once forced a woman in his cult to get implants. Upon leaving said cult and returning to “normalcy” in Iowa, she somehow completely forgot about ever getting breast augmentation surgery, but I digress.
This is the story about a boy named - Mahamayavi Bhagavan Antle.
Early morning, he wakes up
Knock, Knock, Knock on the door
It’s time to feed the tigers, perfect smile
It’s you they’re all waiting for
They go
Isn’t he lovely, this Hollywood Zookeeper?
And they say
He’s so lucky
He’s a Netflix star
LUCKY
“Doc” Antle was born in Phoenix and grew up on his parent’s ranch in Southern California. Due to difficulty pronouncing his unusual name, he went by “Kevin” in school.
His father was a boxer and put him through martial arts training.
His mother, who nurtured an interest in Eastern philosophy and chose her son’s Hindu name, sometimes cared for sick horses and cows in the family kitchen. “Some blend between Rambo and the Dalai Lama – that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up,” he says.
Antle spent much of his youth competing in rodeos and training dogs, and didn’t care much for school; he dropped out before the ninth grade. “In my early days,” he says, “drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll were it.” (Rolling Stone)
After dropping out of high school, “Doc” studied abroad in China where Antle earned a doctoral degree in Chinese Medicine after years in the field.
In 1982, Doc was approached by the Exxon Corporation about giving a presentation with a tiger at the Exxon Annual Convention. By 1983, Doc was training tigers for Exxon’s “Put A Tiger In Your Tank” advertising campaign.
Raising exotic animals brought Antle more than his fair share of the limelight.
In 1994, Antle was hired to work on a remake of The Jungle Book; then Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and Mighty Joe Young. This work earned him enough to buy his Myrtle Beach property, which had been a multifamily horse ranch.
Today, that property is known as TIGERS / Myrtle Beach Safari.
At TIGERS, tours are offered three times a week during the summer and a cost of $339 per person. Personal photos and videos are forbidden and professional photos start at $150. According to longtime staffer Rob Johnson, “If you [take photos], you will be ejected from the park – with a catapult. We’ve got one sitting right back there.”
OOPS … I DID IT AGAIN
In the late 90s, one could argue that there was no one more famous or more important than Britney Spears. Chuck Klosterman’s profile of Britney in IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas best exemplifies this with choice selections reproduced below:
Britney smells excellent. She smells like fruit (kiwi in particular). Like many celebrities, she seems smaller in real life than she appears on television, but Spears also looks a little harder—sometimes brittle, sometimes fragile.
(YOU DRIVE ME) CRAZY
“What is she really like?” the answer was usually, “I don’t know, and I don’t think she does, either.” And that’s not sarcasm; I honestly believe Britney Spears was so insulated from the public (and so exhaustively governed by the people trying to control her image) that she became unable to differentiate between
(a) the person who was famous and (b) the person she actually was.
I suspect this is why she kept making so many strange decisions in the wake of this interview (i.e., getting married in Las Vegas to someone she barely liked, wearing T-shirts that said things like “MILF in Training,” constantly being photographed barefoot in public, etc.).
Her management team directed so much emphasis toward turning her into an unsophisticated semi-redneck that she now has no idea what is normal and what is marketing.
I suppose her life is exciting, but I suspect it’s a pretty terrible way to live;
GIMME MORE
Antle breeds tigers for cub petting at his zoo, but can’t house and feed all the cats when they mature. Instead, Antle distributes the animals to disreputable zoos all over America. One named Tony ended up in Louisana at the world-famous “Tiger Truck Stop”.
Whispers of animal trafficking lead South Carolina State law enforcement to serve Antle with a search warrant in December 2019.
Don’t take my word for it, instead, listen to fellow wildlife enthusiast, Carol Baskin, describe that Federal Agents were “mad cause Doc was flagrant, even tapping his cell and the phone in the basement.”
NOT YET A GIRL, NOT YET A WOMAN
Cliché as it may sound, Britney is truly all things to all people:
A twelve-year-old girl thinks she’s a hero;
That girl’s older brother thinks she’s a stripper;
That older brother’s girlfriend thinks she’s an example of why women hate themselves;
That girlfriend’s father secretly wishes his own twelve-year-old daughter would invite Britney over for a slumber party.
As long as she never dictates her character—as long as Spears never overtly says “This is who I am”—everyone gets to inject their own meaning.
Subconsciously, we all get to rebrand Britney Spears.
WOMANIZER
Vanity Fair recently caught up with Antle to delve more into life at the TIGERS / Myrtle Beach Safari compound, specifically, his love life.
Leading Antle to release a photo with his known girlfriends China York, Moksha Bybee, and Rajani Ferrante (whose real names were Michelle, Meredith, and Renee, respectively, according to the docuseries)
Not a soul ever imagined that there is a cult going on here. There are a lot of cute girls here, because the conservation movement does draw in cute girls. But those cute girls have nothing to do with this old fat guy running the place.”
Several decades ago, that was a different story: “Back in the day, when I was in my 30s, 40s, sure, tons of women were hitting on me all the time. I’m a wealthy tiger guy. It certainly created an atmosphere.”
Now, though: “I’m not the heartthrob. But my son is the heartthrob. He is a living Tarzan. He has women throwing themselves at him.” (Vanity Fair)
ME AGAINST THE MUSIC
Just like Britney Spears, Antle was a mainstay in the 90s pop music scene.
Antle remained visible thanks to his menagerie.
His elephant Bubbles was featured in two different music videos: “Together Again” by Janet Jackson and “Rock Wit U” by Ashanti.
One of Antle’s white tigers featured prominently in “Hate Me Now” by Nas and Puff Daddy where said tiger famously tried to eat Puffy’s white fur coat.
To keep the media interested and elongate his 15 minutes of fame. The good doctor once took two of his apes to a Carmike Cinema in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for a public showing of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
Perhaps saying something about the current state of cinema, Dr. Antle told the U.K. Daily Mail that the chimps were fully aware of the movie.
The older one, Vali, is a very bright guy, he’s watched The Lord of the Rings many times, and he could follow the whole plot of the movie.
Vali, the chimp also has a complete connection to the Geico gecko, Antle says.
“He doesn’t like Flo, from Progressive, particularly.
He’ll watch a Flo commercial because they’re kind of zippy, but he’s a Geico-loving dude.”
CIRCUS
At the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards, Britney performed I’m a Slave 4 U. The performance began with Britney inside a cage on the stage as Doc Antle himself handled the live tiger, who he described as "super macho" and "aggressive". Not that those labels were cause for concern for Antle.
"I have total confidence in that tiger," Doc added. "I knew him since he was a baby. He's about seven years old right there [and at the] peak of his game. A super macho, aggressive male tiger.''
"That's the tiger that you go somewhere like that with because he cares less about the fireworks, the gas explosions, the banging music. He's totally concerned with just holding his own and being cool."
"The Tiger always had women in his life – because there's so many women trainers that raised him from a cub and hung out with him – so he just thought Britney was one more friend."
Britney petted him and was hugging on him and hanging out there with him.
Doc Antle (Source: ET)
SOMETIMES
What keeps Britney perfect—what makes Britney perfect—is that she can produce a video where people lick the sweat off her body (as they did in 2001’s “I’m a Slave 4 U”) and still effortlessly insist the song has no relationship to sex whatsoever.
It’s just about being a slave to the music or to the animals
