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"HONG KONG (AP) -- Ang Lee says he's baffled by the poor box office results of "Taking Woodstock" -- the Oscar-winning director's worst-performing English-language movie in the U.S. in 10 years.

This event had been promoted as a taxpayer “tea party” but the crowd’s concerns were wide ranging, from outrage at ACORN and Obama’s socialist cadre known as Czars, to Obama’s untruthfulness. Protesters also displayed signs mocking Nancy Pelosi and others for smearing the grassroots movement as “astroturfers” and as an “angry mob”.I think this gathering should be appreciated as the extremely important historical event that it is. This is the first great conservative anti-statist manifestation in American history. The conservative movement, which developed in the post-WWII, Cold War environment has now fully matured into the most significant political movement of...

Someone recently asked me if I had attended the Woodstock Concert in 1969. I had to disappoint them by telling them I was in Navy flight training and about to go to Navy SERE School (one reason we vets laugh so hard when the Dems claim we've been "torturing" the guests at Gitmo by denying them a private swimming pool and making them eat gourmet dinners off plastic plates). For those of us who are over 50, where were you during the mud, drug, desease, and feces-soaked "expression of universal love" the end of August in 1969 that has attained...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Baby boomers, now well into middle age, are still turning on to illegal drugs, doubling the rates of illicit drug use for the older generation, according to U.S. government statistics released on Wednesday. The rates of people aged 50 to 59 who admit to using illicit drugs in the past year nearly doubled from 5.1 percent in 2002 to 9.4 percent in 2007 while rates among all other age groups are the same or decreasing, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported. "These findings show that many in the Woodstock generation continue to use...

Obama Healthcare Logo Looks Like An Acid Trip! The logo makes a rather celestial plea for Obama’s health care reform plan. A stylized caduceus rises ethereally from the fields of Obama. Three heavenly stars grace its crown, while a faint bubble trembles above the silhouttes of expectant Americans. If Uncle Sam himself were tripping, this is probably what he would see... “Santana is going to bring a lot of joy, light, peace and happiness into a place that is basically based on illusion,” “We have to triumph, because we’re bringing the opposite of what Las Vegas is built on.” In...

The Baby Boomers and those of the post sixties generation are joyfully celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival which took place in 1969. Since then, the event has been glorified, glamorized, sensationalized and etched into the very fabric of our American consciousness and youth culture. This festival was the defining point against “the Establishment” and America’s core Judean/ Christian values. This festival was the brown acid of the radical Left’s agenda, whose goons in the reprobate (godless) music industry have steadily pushed the boundaries of morality over the past 40 years. In the wake of Woodstock and...

The Baby Boomers and those of the post sixties generation are joyfully celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival which took place in 1969. Since then, the event has been glorified, glamorized, sensationalized and etched into the very fabric of our American consciousness and youth culture. This festival was the defining point against “the Establishment” and America’s core Judean/ Christian values. This festival was the brown acid of the radical Left’s agenda, whose goons in the reprobate (godless) music industry have steadily pushed the boundaries of morality over the past 40 years. In the wake of Woodstock and...

Meet the new boss, just same as the old boss, as the song goes ("Won't Get Fooled Again," 1971, Pete Townsend), was one of many great songs written in what amounted to a musical renaissance that took place in the 1960s and '70s. Music in those days spawned many aficionados; it was important to many of us and held deep meaning. It strikes me as ironic (if not hypocritical) that many of the idealistic youth of the '60s who complained, "The Man is keeping me down," now are "The Man," and attempting to grow the power of the federal government...

Screw Woodstock. Really, I mean it. If you're my age -- I was 9 when the three-day concert took place -- you noted the 40th anniversary of the key event of our culture's endless 1960s nostalgia by thinking, "Gee, have I really been listening to these goofs celebrate themselves for only 40 years? Because it feels like 400." Doesn't the self-regard and self-significance make you want to vomit? OK, 400,000 people gathered for a rock concert and didn't kill each other -- big flippin' deal. Ten years later, in 1979, 1.2 million people showed up in Grant Park for a...

Recite them in K-12 classrooms and college campuses. Print them out and distribute at all Townhall meetings! Oppose the manufactured right-wing slander with the heart-felt truth of Party-approved slogans! 1. Long live the Great Psychedelic Woodstock Revolution - the main event of the 20th century, the beginning of the worldwide historic turn of humanity away from the monochrome past, towards a bright, vividly colorful future! 2. Let live for centuries the name and work of Timothy Leary, the splendiferous leader and creator of the psychedelic revolution - the new objective reality! 3. Long live sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll -...

Jimi Hendrix, the Star Spangled Banner...

Sickeningly, an effluvium of nostalgia over the debacle concert near the town of Woodstock, New York in August of 1969 is everywhere. It's the big 4-0. We should take this anniversary to remember that the catch phrase of the Woodstock generation eventually became "don't trust anyone over 30." In the case of the white wash of what really happened with the concert in Max Yasgur's field, the warning is fitting because the truth seems to be forgotten for the fluffy propaganda of how wonderful the concert was. The concert is also emblematic of some of the vapid 60's generation --...

For them, Woodstock was a chance to let their freak flags fly, their hair grow long, and perhaps most important of all, define themselves as a generation that didn't want anything to do with the values of their uptight, middle-class elders.

The editor of the Veterans of Foreign Wars' national magazine thinks the media have been irresponsible to throw around the term "defining a generation" as we near the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. In an article titled "GIs Died While Woodstock Rocked," Richard K. Kolb challenges giving mythological status to the (in)famous concert held Aug. 15-18, 1969. He takes umbrage at concertgoers frolicking in mud while an equal number of soldiers (following in their fathers' footsteps) were crawling through mud to protect the celebrants' freedom to party. Granted, Pete Townshend's guitar smashing, Country Joe's "We're-All-Gonna-Die Rag,"...

(Co-creator of the original Woodstock celebration says funding was main issue.) While there are plenty of tribute celebrations going on across America to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the legendary 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts festival, perhaps the most fitting bash is the one that just fell short of happening. In a recent article with Variety, Michael Langdon — cocreator of the original festival — says he had planned a concert event that was to be as eco-friendly as it was star-studded. "It required sponsorship at a pretty hefty level, and the sponsors had to be green," Lang told Variety....

This weekend marks the fortieth anniversary of the much beloved and widely worshiped “counterculture festival of peace and love” -- Woodstock. According to popular belief, Woodstock was a generation-defining event that represented the best of the sixties spirit: half a million young people gathering for peaceful anti-war protest, easy sex, great rock music, mind-expanding psychedelics, and a rejection of lifeless commercialism. But is that what Woodstock really was? This hallowed sixties legend, like that of so many “iconic” counter cultural events, has deeply and deliberately distorted the truth. In reality, Woodstock consisted of masses of people spending several days outdoors...

VFW: Woodstock Wasn't the Only Thing Happening 40 Years Ago By Colleen Raezler (Bio | Archive) August 12, 2009 - 13:47 ET    While some in the media have been dusting off their love beads, bell-bottoms and broomstick skirts in an effort to wax nostalgic about Woodstock, the VFW has reminded its members that the world did not stop for those four days in August 1969. In fact, for 109 American soldiers, the world ended that weekend.VFW Magazine honored those soldiers in the August 2009 cover story, "While Woodstock Rocked, GIs Died." Much has been made over the "half...

Woodstock promoter Michael Lang has dropped plans for a 40th anniversary concert. Asked why he abandoned the pursuit for a third anniversary concert celebrating the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Lang simply told Rolling Stone, “Money. No sponsors.” Lang, one of the four partners to stage Woodstock in 1969, had wanted to hold a free concert in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to coincide with the anniversary in mid-August. Those plans were postponed after he failed to find sponsors to cover the $8-$10 million cost. He then turned his attention to the end of September and had hoped to hold the concert...

With the 40th anniversary of the '60s cherished rock concert, the so-called "Sixties Generation" remembers fondly those four days in August 1969. Instead, VFW magazine commemorates the 109 Americans killed in Vietnam then. Newsweek described the as "a youthful, long-haired army, almost as large as the U.S. force in Vietnam." One of the promoters saw what happened near Bethel (nearly 40 miles from Woodstock), N.Y., as an opportunity to "showcase" the drug culture as a "beautiful phenomenon." The newsmagazine wrote of "wounded hippies" sent to impromptu hospital tents. Some 400,000 of the "nation's affluent white young" attended the "electric pot...

Happy birthday Woodstock baby, if you exist Babies reportedly born 40 years ago at music fest remain a mystery Depending on the source, there was one birth at Woodstock. Or two. Or three. Or none. By MICHAEL HILL Associated Press Writer July 17, 2009 BETHEL, N.Y. - Welcome to middle age, Woodstock Baby — if you're really out there. The babies reportedly born at the Woodstock festival 40 years ago remain the most enduring mystery from that chaotic weekend that defined a generation. Depending on the source, there was one birth on that patch of upstate New York farmland between...

It was billed as three days of peace and music, but the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was really the culmination of months of planning, begging, borrowing and countless hours of hard work. To mark the 40th anniversary of that historic concert, the man at the heart of it all, Michael Lang — the producer who co-created Woodstock — peels back the curtain and reveals the stories and the passion behind one of rock's most powerful moments. Lang and Holly George-Warren deliver The Road to Woodstock on June 30, but here they give RollingStone.com a first look at some of...

A press conference was held last week announcing Michael Lang’s Woodstock Ventures had served “West Fest, Woodstock’s 40th Anniversary” with a cease and desist for using the name “Woodstock” . After much Peace and Love an agreement was reached between the events producer, Boots Hughston and Woodstock Ventures’ Michael Lang. 40th Anniversary of Woodstock Free Concert Will Take Place as Scheduled in Golden Gate Park San Francisco, Sunday, October 25, 2009 Event: “West Fest” Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock Producer: 2b1 Multimedia Inc. and the Council of Light in association with Artie Kornfeld, the original producer of “Woodstock 1969”...

CANNES , France (AFP) – Oscar-winning director Ang Lee Saturday offered Cannes' glitzy festival-goers a message of "peace and love" with a warmly acclaimed movie on the iconic hippie Woodstock festival, vying for the Palme d'Or award. "It is the innocence of a young generation departing from the establishment and trying to find a fair way of living with people and with nature," Lee said of the 1969 festival that gathered half a million people for three days of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. "I think they planted the seed of some of what is happening today," the "Brokeback Mountain" 2005...

Run for the hills. The official Woodstock "brand" is approaching America like a big hallucination.

What's the one thing Las Vegas needs more of? Light, according to Carlos Santana, who figures he's just the guy to bring it during a Sin City residency he'll begin May 27 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Santana, the man and the band, will play about three shows a week through 2010 at the Hard Rock's expanded and refurbished concert theater, the Joint, which another classic rocker, Paul McCartney, will inaugurate April 19. "Santana is going to bring a lot of joy, light, peace and happiness into a place that is basically based on illusion," the multiple Grammy-winning...

Michael Lang said plans for a 40th anniversary Woodstock concert are "all speculative ideas" for now, but he hopes to bring them to reality this summer. The Woodstock co-founder told Billboard.com that his vision is "a free event...a very green project," possibly in New York City. "We want to have as small a carbon imprint as we can and use as many green techniques as we can," said Lang, who was in Austin as part of a South By Southwest panel discussion about Woodstock. The holdup? "It's got to be sponsor-driven," he explained. "It's free, but it costs a lot...

Woodstock ponders kinder, gentler manufacturing Thursday, 3:05 AM EST By WILLIAM J. KEMBLECorrespondent WOODSTOCK — The Town Board is considering acting locally while thinking globally. Specifically, members are discussing whether to try to prohibit the local manufacture of parts used for military equipment. The concern arises from the fact that Ametek Rotron Inc. has a manufacturing operation on Hasbrouck Lane in Woodstock, and a letter submitted to the Town Board by 14 local residents notes the company makes parts for helicopters, rocket launchers, tanks and armored personnel carriers. Rotron’s Web site confirms the company manufactures those parts, but it does...

'Taking Woodstock' set to start Emile Hirsch, Demetri Martin to star in Ang Lee pic By MICHAEL FLEMING Focus Features will begin production late this month on "Taking Woodstock," scripted by James Schamus and to be directed by Ang Lee. Lee's ensemble cast includes Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton and Liev Schreiber. Pic is an adaptation of the memoir of Elliot Tiber, who played a role in helping the historic 1969 music fest unfold on his neighbor's farm (Daily Variety, April 22). Less than a month ago, Focus had been thinking about postponing the start of production over concerns that a...

Joe Cocker, "With a Little Help From My Friends." Woodstock, 1969. Closed captioned for the clear-headed.

I posted a squib on the National Review Web site about a robo call I received from John McCain. (Virginia's primary is Tuesday.) The call stressed that he would, if elected, be a down-the-line limited government conservative who would never raise taxes, would defend life, would enforce immigration laws and would win the war on terror. The candidate is trying, I said, to meet conservatives "more than halfway." The response of readers was, shall we say, emphatic. One lady wrote that she would never vote for him as "He is the most disloyal, ill-tempered man and he brings out the...

Funding for a controversial “Hippie museum,” co-sponsored by presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), may still find a lifeline even though its earmark was stricken from a Senate appropriations bill earlier this year. A conference report of two combined appropriations bills — Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor-HHS) and the military construction-veterans’ affairs measure — removed a provision that would have explicitly cut funds for the museum, located in Bethel, N.Y. That clause was authored by earmark foe Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). The conference agreement states there is no “general provision proposed by the Senate that prohibits...

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain criticized Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton's proposal for a Woodstock museum as wasteful spending in a new television ad that started on Friday. In the ad — McCain's second new one in a week — the Arizona senator touts his record fighting such spending and repeats his mocking of the Clinton's failed effort to spend $1 million for a museum in Bethel, N.Y., site of the August 1969 rock festival. "John McCain says if you want to relive Woodstock, buy the record," an announcer says in the 30-second spot. The ad also hits Clinton, a...

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Republican John McCain contrasts images of Woodstock and his years as a Vietnam prisoner of war in a new television ad that pokes fun at Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. The commercial, set to air on New Hampshire television Thursday, decries a proposal, since scrapped, to spend $1 million for a museum in Bethel, N.Y., site of the August 1969 rock festival. Clinton and her fellow New York senator, Chuck Schumer, had backed the plan. The ad highlights McCain's criticism of excessive Washington spending, reminds voters of the Arizona senator's decorated war record and also shows...

$1 Million Earmark Removed From Health Bill Plans for $1 million in federal funding for a museum to honor the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival struck a sour note with critics Thursday. It ended badly, with critics successfully striking down the plan for federal tax money to be spent on the museum. The plan began as an earmark in the federal health and education spending bill. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Chuck Schumer, both of New York, supported the earmark. Critics, though, targeted the plan after it gained some national exposure. “The Woodstock museum is a shining example of what’s wrong...

<p>Abbie Hoffman interrupted The Who's performance during Woodstock 1969 to attempt a protest speech against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit! While John Sinclair rots in prison..." The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, cut Hoffman off in mid-sentence, saying, "Back off! Back off my f-ing stage!" He then struck Hoffman with his guitar, sending the interloper tumbling offstage, to the roaring approval of the crowd. Townshend later said he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, though he made the point that he would have knocked him offstage regardless of his message.</p>

RUSH: Mrs. Clinton had a conference call with reporters, and we had the story yesterday, she's actually going to try to send a note out with the money going back saying, (paraphrasing) "Feel free to send it back in." Turns out, this is illegal. Federal Election Commission rules make it illegal. I got a note from a guy who worked on John Anderson's campaign in 1980, who ran that third-party independent candidacy when Reagan and Carter were battling it out, and they had a snafu. They had to give back $80,000 in donations, and they asked the FEC, "Can we...

The Wall Street Journal has tracked down the source of Norman Hsu's cash, and the good news is that the People's Republic of China didn't provide the funds -- at least, not some of them. However, the bad news is that Hsu apparently moved from Ponzi schemes to outright embezzlement as a former Woodstock backer proved as inept at background checks as the Democratic Party: New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who...

Woodstock Creator Tells DA That Funds Have Gone Missing A $40 Million Shortfall Where did Norman Hsu get his money? That has been one of the big questions hanging over the prominent Democratic fund-raiser, as reports have surfaced about hundreds of thousands of dollars he made in political donations, plus lavish parties, fancy apartments and a $2 million bond he posted to get out of jail earlier this month. New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run...

The infallible Washington Times reports that up for sale is one of the most famous scenes of infantilism in the 20th century, "Woodstock." Actually, what is on the block is the late Max Yasgur's New York farm, 38 acres of which were used for the 1969 Woodstock music festival that hagiographers for the "1960s Generation" have ever since boomed as a pivotal event in American history. Such rock singers as Jimi Hendrix and Richie Havens got together before a stupefied crowd of some 500,000 eternal children to sing of peace, and freedom, and mind-numbing substances, even the most feeble of...

The famous farm near the alfalfa field that drew 400,000 people to Woodstock for three days of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is up for sale. The asking price: $8 million. Roy Howard, the current owner, is packing it in after years of tangling with local officials over permits for reunion gatherings to mark the 1969, three-day Woodstock music festival that helped ignite a generation. Up for sale is the 2,000-square-foot house that belonged to dairy farmer Max Yasgur, along with a larger farmhouse, a barn and 103 bucolic acres about 80 miles north of New York City. Included...

Bethel, N.Y. (AP) -- The famous farm near the alfalfa field that drew 400,000 people to Woodstock for three days of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is up for sale. The asking price: $8 million. Roy Howard, the current owner, is packing it in after years of tangling with local officials over permits for reunion gatherings to mark the 1969, three-day Woodstock music festival that helped ignite a generation. Up for sale is the 2,000-square-foot house that belonged to dairy farmer Max Yasgur, along with a larger farmhouse, a barn and 103 bucolic acres about 80 miles north of...

The grassroots free-market group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today released a list of Senate earmarks slated to be included in the Fiscal Year 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill. The 1,016 earmarks total nearly $392 million, and include millions for questionable projects such as $1 million in tax dollars for a museum dedicated to recreating the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival experience and $250,000 to help fund the Polynesian Voyaging Society, which makes and sails ancient canoes from Hawaii to Japan. AFP compiled the earmarks scattered throughout the Senate Appropriations Committee Report 110-107 into a convenient, searchable...

Summer of love: 40 years later Hippie Hippie Shakedown: But where was love? BY DAWN EDEN, Guest Columnist LA Daily News WHEN it comes to inappropriate names, "Summer of Love" has to be right up there with "Joy Division," the name the Nazis reportedly gave to the sections of concentration camps that housed the guards' sex slaves. For one thing, it was not just a summer event. The countercultural happening that swept through San Francisco and beyond began with an April1967 planning announcement by concert promoter Chet Helms, aka Family Dog, creating the "Council for the Summer of Love." It...

Hippies still trying to ruin the country By Jenean Mcbrearty CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias. Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives. No matter what they rename themselves, however, their agenda hasn't changed. They still want utopia, and it wouldn't be worth mentioning except that their naivetŽ has aged into a persistent denial of reality that may have devastating consequences. For example, consider their continued belief that America's armed forces are neo-Nazi stormtroopers who delight in burning babies to further the aims...

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. - As he walks to the stage of a Hofstra University lecture hall, Robert Leonard's attire is every bit the college professor: blue blazer and shirt, charcoal slacks, yellow tie, glasses. He's a long, long way from the summer of 1969 when the uniform of the day was a gold lame jumpsuit. Leonard was a founding member and bassist for Sha Na Na, a zany doo-wop group that played one of its first gigs at Woodstock. Leonard's specialty today is forensic linguistics — employing the science of language to help identify the writers of ransom notes, threatening letters...

CNSNews has broken the story on anti-war protesters outside Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. This is the facility where those with significant injuries are sent to from the battlefield. They are there holding up signs such as "Maimed for Lies" and "Enlist here and die for Halliburton". The organization organizing this is Code Pink, the same organization that has funded terrorists with the apparent knowledge of Rep. Waxman. For the most part the anti-war crowd doesn't see a problem with this, mostly because it garners attention which is what they are seeking. They think by kicking around...

Thunderstorms and torrential rain were today threatening to turn this year’s Glastonbury Festival into a wash-out. Thousands of music fans arriving at the Worthy Farm site in Somerset last night were greeted with heavy downpours and even lightning as the glorious sunshine came to an abrupt end. Weather forecasters have warned an expected crowd of around 150,000 to prepare for a mud bath – as rain threatens to waterlog the site and turn camp sites into bogs. Festival organiser Michael Eavis said he was keeping his fingers crossed that there would be no repeat of the infamous mudfest of 1997....

The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from the leading lights of the so-called 60s generation. Tom Brokaw has published two oral histories of “The Greatest Generation” that feature ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was historically unique. Chris Matthews of “Hardball” is fond of writing columns praising the Navy service of his father while castigating his own baby boomer generation for its alleged softness and lack of struggle. William Bennett gave a startling condescending speech at the Naval Academy a...

Up to six days ago my post automatically carried my tagline. Abruptly that stopped. If I do not enter it manually, it does not post. Clues as to why? And I can't seem to figure out to fix it. This is apparently one of my duh days.

just read a fascinating book – "Chronicles, Volume 1" by Bob Dylan. There are some real surprises in this book. Most of us baby boomers thought of Dylan as a man with a political agenda. It turns out Dylan wasn't trying to lead anyone anywhere. He just wanted to be a singer-songwriter. It's quite a revelation, and Dylan has an interesting way of telling the story. Dylan was a private man who tried to put his family first. He didn't want to get caught up in the '60s activism. He was conspicuously absent from Woodstock, Altamont and all the other...