En Vrac

If it's toxic to overdose on saccharine, then over the next few days, you should try to avoid the gathering deluge of reminiscence about Woodstock. It's the 40th anniversary of the upstate New York rock-and-roll extravaganza, and we in the media are already gorging ourselves on hazy recollections of the event—memories borne not so much from what actually happened, but from what hippie folklore says happened and from how popular imagination and wishful thinking transformed a chaotic mudfest into an epic pageant of peace and love. This wallow in artificially sweetened nostalgia is being supplemented by entertainment-industry efforts to exploit the occasion: according to The Associated Press, we'll soon be blessed with a remastered music CD of the festival, a new director's-cut DVD of the original film epic Woodstock, and a Woodstock comedy called Taking Woodstock, directed by Ang Lee. Several anniversary concerts have also been scheduled at the site of Max Yasgur's farm, which now features a concert stage and a museum dedicated to the 1960s.