Art Garfunkel fights charge

He is a rock, indeed.

Art Garfunkel has decided to fight his marijuana charge.

The tall half of Simon and Garfunkel could have simply paid a $100 fine and been done with the case. But he has decided to contest the charge.

Apparently not wanting to leave fans with the impression that he was feeling more than a little groovy, Garfunkel had his attorney Michael Federoff appear in an upstate New York courtroom in his stead on Wednesday and persuade Judge Athena Groelle to set a February 11 hearing on the case, reports the Daily Freeman of Kingston, New York.

Garfunkel was on his way to Woodstock, New York, on the afternoon of January 17 when state troopers pulled over his limousine for speeding near the town of Hurley, 55 miles southwest of the state capital of Albany.

As an officer approached the car to write a ticket, he allegedly caught a whiff of ganja emanating from inside. The officer searched the limo and found 6 grams of marijuana in the 62-year-old musician's jacket pocket, according to police.

The driver, Ousmane Toure of the Bronx, walked away with a speeding ticket. Garfunkel was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana.

Federoff refused to comment on why his client would bother to go to the efforts of fighting what on the surface appears to be a minor slap on the wrist. Calls to Garfunkel's publicist were not immediately returned.

The $100 fine is the maximum penalty accorded people without past criminal convictions for the last three years. No word whether Artie has any such priors, but the fine was less than the average $137 the crooner was charging concertgoers per ticket for his hugely successful reunion trek with Paul Simon .

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers are preparing another leg of their blockbuster "Old Friends" tour, their first in more than two decades. Simon and Garfunkel's first installment netted $65 million last year and ranked as the sixth-biggest tour of 2003, according to industry tracker Pollstar.

Billboard magazine reports the pair are planning to return to markets in North America they felt were "underplayed the first time around." They will follow up with a tour of Europe and possibly Japan.
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