When you see a phone number on TV or a movie, do you call it?

I’m curious if curiosity gets the best of you when you’re watching a program and a number comes up. Like maybe you see a number on a caller ID box on TV or on an infomercial that the characters in your show are watching. And I don’t mean 555 or other fake numbers, but ones that could legitimately lead somewhere…do you wonder where they lead?

I know a lot of people over the years have dialed numbers they hear in songs, like I guess people still dial 867–5309 so much that the number gets sold on eBay when it becomes available so a business that wants the bonus traffic can cash in. So, if you call musical numbers, I suppose you can comment on that too.

Some examples that I’ve either called or Googled. 1–877-TAME-HER was the fake # put up in the movie Magnolia for Frank T.J. Mackey’s (Tom Cruise) infomercial on how to get any woman you want. If you called it you’d get a recording of Tom Cruise in character selling his product.

Dialing 414–466-MIKE will get you to Mike Schank, one of the two main “characters” in the film “American Movie”, a documentary that a guy and his burnout friend (Mike) made about their making of a completely different movie that no one will ever see. They claim you can get him directly if he feels like picking up, so far all I’ve gotten is a machine where you can leave a message (but not before being told how you can buy some of Mike’s music).

And finally, more recently you may have seen a commercial for a new Fender edition T-mobile smart phone, which features Eric Clapton. During the commercial while he is demonstrating some of the ways he can play a pretend guitar or listen to/watch, some of his own music, a call comes in from Buddy Guy, and we see the number 1–877-490–6637, which implies that this is Buddy Guy’s phone number, but of course we should know better because no one has a home phone number that starts with 877, and no celebrity is going to give out his number in a commercial. But if you call it, you get a sales rep from T-mobile saying they’re sure you must be calling to order that particular phone, right?

So, I’m wondering…are there numbers you’ve run into on TV shows or movies, or for that matter in songs, that you just had to know what you would get if you called it. What happened? Share your stories….