NEW YORK (AP) — Phish put its long-suffering fans out of their misery in style. Returning from a two-year hiatus, the Vermont jam band with the obsessive fan base played a long, high-energy show at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve before a raucous crowd, with some fans paying more than $1,000 to get into the sold-out concert. A band known for its New Year's Eve showmanship didn't disappoint: Tom Hanks made a surprise stage appearance . . . .<p>*** This has now been proven to be a hoax that really wasn't. As several media outlets have since reported, a man who appeared to some to look like Tom Hanks strolled out on stage with the band during the performance of the song "Wilson" (a reference known to all who saw Hanks' movie "Cast Away"). At no time did anyone say the man was Hanks, it was reported, but the journalists in attendance got excited and reported it as fact anyway -- including the AP, of course, and The New York Times. <p>AP has yet to move a correction or retraction across the wire. Maybe the folks there are still trying to explain how stupid they were to get tricked by a trick so clever that it wasn't really even a trick.
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