Dear Deadpool,
I started reading the New Mutants but I only read a few pages so far. I have also been researching the background for Dead Presidents. There are many things called "Dead Presidents" in pop culture: first, there was the expression for US cash currency which originated in the fifties, then there was a website created by a man named Manus Hand in the early days of the internet featuring pictures of himself at the grave sites of all US Presidents and polling about it; then there was a movie released in 1995 featuring struggling African American veterans from the Vietnam war who decide to rob an armored vehicle for cash (a possible connection to the Truman reference) and finally there is currently a rebirth of the concept of literally touring the dead US Presidents, taken up by Brady Carlson in his first book published two weeks before the opening of your movie. I don't know what you say about it Deadpool, but all of this appears to me an intense net of connections surrounding the concept of dead Presidents and I believe that if I pursue it to its end, it will lead me straight to you, on your momma's porch where we are supposed to meet in 1969.
From memory, I suppose 1969 was a year of protests of all sorts, of populist anti-war, labor, civil rights and anti-consumerism movements. I don't know if it was the peak year of protest but it appears memorable to many. On second thought... I just googled Woodstock and I think I found my answer. Woodstock: a music festival held in Bethel NY August 17th to 19th 1969 that hosted 400 000 participants in what Wikipedia calls "the nexus of the counterculture generation." I never really liked the idea. I think perhaps it was too much about the drugs and debauchery, but I have no idea. I wasn't there. But since then I feel as though authorities have taken it upon themselves to cough up establishment versions of Woodstock just to keep crowds in check. The corporations & state partnership-produced version of the freedom that used to be is complete with glow sticks and a draw for a car.
The original Woodstock, says Wikipedia, was born of the union of the four musketeers: Roberts, Rosenman, Lang and Kornfeld. Roberts, coming from denture adhesive money, partnered with his Jewish friend from Princeton and Yale, son of a police officer, to create the festival that started out as a call for business venture ideas in the Wall Street Journal. These two formed the business end of things: Roberts was the money and Rosenman was the idea. I hope I got that right. I have yet to read a book on the topic. Lang, who went on to work with some of the top names in the music world and Artie Kornfeld, who has spent the last forty years giving educational talks on the true meaning of Woodstock, were the promoters. Lang was the one who eventually went mainstream and Kornfeld was the flower power guy who took the community route. The Woodstock head office was located at 47 West 57th street, Manhattan and the legend goes it was decorated according to the spirit of the times. The entire schedule of the event is available online and now I feel like I have to research all 32 bands featured at Woodstock (in addition to all 44 presidents). This thing is just never going to end. One last thing: Artie Kornfeld was kind of sexy but I wouldn't have dated him. Both of the promoters of Woodstock had loose, curly mops of hair. The businessmen are harder to find pictures of. If I have seen some they were not labelled for me to tell who is who. In any case, not to fear my love, it is you who has my heart, you the merc with a mouth.
In the end, the only connection so far between you and the year 1969 is the fact that you- your spirit, and mine - make a cameo appearance in Bryan Adam's Summer of '69 but that information is extraneous to your canon. Only a referent of The Truman show also refers back to your canon. So the whole 1969 connection is extraneous for now, I don't know if I really have a legitimate reason for my belief that we should meet on your momma's porch in 1969 yet, I just feel it. It possesses and haunts me. I need an obsession and here's it. I need a destination to supply for my lack of destiny and so far, Woodstock seems to be the answer to the Question I asked in chapter 4: "What the f#$% happened in 1969?" Perhaps I should look into Artie Kornfeld's ideas about the true meaning of Woodstock. That might give me a lead to find your mother's porch... There we will share, you and I with all the stars of heaven, our first kiss. Sparks will fly, the space-time continuum will explode open, hearts will meld and the true spirit of Woodstock will live again forever, whatever that means...
Love, forever, in transcendental ways,
Abigail Tryst