It Was 50 Years Ago Today…

You can kill yourself by putting your head in an electric oven, Enthusiasts. You just also need to add your hand, and be holding a gun. You don’t need to know how to tie a proper noose to hang yourself, either. The traditional coiled knot exists to give the rope enough heft so that your neck can snap against it when you drop six feet; that’s why it’s placed to the side rather in back. Any knot will do if you’re just gonna choke.

And when you choose your end, please leave a note–it’s rude not to–outside the room you did it in. Don’t let family walk in on your fresh corpse. Having trouble finding the words? Let TotD help:

Dear Cruel World,

I just don’t have the strength for the 50th Anniversary of Woodstock. It’s going to be unbearable. One intuits such things.

Sincerely,
Lester Bangs

It’s gonna be dire, Enthusiasts. There will be documentaries and articles and lists and thinkpieces–the content, my God, the content–and you’ll get tricked into watching that moribound, stereoscopic slog of a film, and then ingesting content–CONTENT–about the film, and whoever’s still alive from the roster will be touring as hard as their hips can handle. The codgers, my God, the codgers. It’s gonna suuuuuuuck.

And I’ll get to it. I’ll do a big post about the festival and one of them real-time jerkoff posts about the movie. For now, we concern ourselves with the event announced this week, Woodstock50©®™. What’s left of the Grateful Dead (Touring Version) is headlining on Saturday night, preceded by every 50-year-old white guy’s favorite hip-hopper, those ugly guys who write songs for commercials, the fellow with the interesting name, and a Zeppelin cover band.

Also noted within the lineup:

• The Earl Sweatshirt?
• Pussy Riot is Quiet Riot’s cousin.
• Common is the focus-grouped, corporate version of KRS-ONE.
• Alternately, he is the male Alicia Keys.
• In 20 years of knowing of Hot Tuna’s existence, I’ve never once been curious to listen to them.
• Pick a non-disgusting name, Hot Tuna.
• I’m never gonna not think that Vince Staples is a country artist.
• No Ye?
• Where the fuck is Ye?
• Whoopity scoop?

There’s a website, of course, and there’s merch available, of course, and one piece is the Woostock Psychedelic Tube. You heard me.

The misspelling is not reassuring as to the item’s quality, nor is the fact that “tube” is not a recognized sub-category of clothing. No, what these mud-brained ninnies are selling is the makings of clothing.

Look at this bullshit:

Fuck you, Woodstock50©®™. Don’t sell me a piece of fabric and some instructions and try to pass it off as “clothes.” Also: one of the 13 ways to wear the Woostock Psychedelic Tube is as a blindfold. Are there to be executions during Imagine Dragons’ set? Will the undesirables receive a last cigarette in addition to their Woostock Psychedelic Tube?

Oh, hey, remember how I opened this post by telling you to kill yourself?

Seriously: kill yourself. This will be awful.

For those of you without the courage to end it all, here is Ray Charles singing Hank Williams. Neither man will be at Woodstock50©®™.