Simon, Garfunkel in Surprise Reunion

Duo inspired by reaction at Simon show this weekend

(NEWSER) - The audience at Friday night's Paul Simon show in New York got a taste of what's to come when Art Garfunkel joined his long-time collaborator on stage for three songs: The two today announced a new tour, inspired, said Garfunkel, by the “knockout” reaction to that concert. More»

Pop group kicks off world tour

(NEWSER) - If what you want, what you really really want, is a Spice Girls reunion, you've got it. The five-woman pop group resurfaced yesterday in Vancouver, dressed a little more conservatively than in the past. It was the quintet's first concert in a world tour expected to run through Canada, the US, Europe, and possibly South America and South Africa, Reuters reports. More»

Fortunes even bleaker in Saginaw than songwriters imagined

(NEWSER) - Real life is underscoring art in a Midwest town even more poignantly than Paul Simon imagined. Simon and Garfunkel's famous tune " America " recounts a young man's journey from the working class Michigan town of Saginaw to seek his fortunes elsewhere. Now the song's bittersweet lyrics have turned up on vacant buildings and shuttered factories to become a comment on the dying hopes of small town America. "A few years ago, me and my friends decided to go around the city and start painting the boarded-up buildings and storefronts," mural painter Eric Schantz tells NPR . "That ended up building into kind of an underground, grass-roots group called Paint Saginaw." More»

Daily Beast ranks America's pot-loving locales

(NEWSER) - In honor of today's date, 4/20—and the pot-steeped lore of those numbers—the Daily Beast has ranked the nation's 40 "highest cities," where weed culture reigns supreme. To read the full list and see how it was compiled, click here . The top 10:

1. Eureka, California
2. Tallahassee, Florida
3. Manhattan
4. Boston
5. San Francisco

Gig Jordan 'grasped at straws' at clinics

(NEWSER) - A wealthy Manhattan mom found babbling incoherently next to the lifeless body of her 8-year-old autistic son last week gave the boy a fatal overdose because she was overwhelmed by his condition, said a family friend. Pharmaceutical executive Gigi Jordan, 49, "went to clinics all over the country looking for a treatment, grasping at straws" to find effective treatment for her "severely autistic" son, Dr. Marcus Conant told the New York Daily News . More»