A Tale of Three Cell Phones

Tale #1: Remember last month when we heard about a guy trying to sell his cell phone number on EBay because the number was the same as Tommy Tutone's 1982 hit 867-5309/Jenny, and he managed to get the (212) are code version of it? Bids had reached upwards of $80,000 when Verizon halted the auction, claiming that he can't sell the number because he does not own it.

Yeah, so that's old news, I know. I was just using it as a preface to a site I found that lists names and addresses of 867-5309 owners in every area code. Maybe. One wonders if there are some privacy issues here, but for now the site is up, though no info on when it was last updated, or how the data was obtained. Presumably, the guy phoned up and just asked. The (212) number is not listed on here, so it might be years out-of-date, for all I know. By the way, the page is verging on unreadability, with a dark gray on black scheme. Squint and mouse over the underlined area codes to see where all the Jennys are.

Tale #2: I work in the IT department for my county government. We used to have an intern here at work named Sean who kept getting calls on his cell at all hours from people trying to reach, apparently, the previous owner(s) of his number. Sometimes they would ask for Kevin, sometimes other names. It was all very mysterious. One time, after someone asked for Geronimo(!), and after explaining for the umpteenth caller that the number is no longer Geronimo’s/Kevin’s, the caller asks Sean if he could “you know…hook a brother up”.

Turns out that the number used to belong to an undercover vice detective (also employed by the county, coincidentally), and this guy was hoping to score some weed from what he thought was a dealer. Presumably, Geronimo and Kevin were a couple of his street names… Later, Sean and I happened to be making service calls in the same department that “Geronimo” worked, so we stopped by to let him know that someone was still looking for someone to hook a brother up. :-/

Tale #3: Fellow blogger Laura tells her story of how she got Chris Rock’s old cell phone number, and for five glorious weeks, entertained calls from Adam Sandler, Spike Lee, and Jack Nicholson, er… well, Jack Nicholson’s assistant, anyway.

(via Boing Boing)