Calling Jeff Goldblum

My car, the Chevy Sonic Turbo, recently turned 12 years old. I’ve had it for 10 years myself, and together we’ve enjoyed a decade of driving. I love my car, but the one thing that drives me crazy, and I’ve discussed this before, is the fact that the hands-free calling is very archaic. There are a lot of commands to go through, and it has a terrible time recognizing simple names like ‘Ken’. As a result, I changed ‘Ken’ to ‘Kenneth’ in my contacts list, but even still, it invariably asked me, “Did you say ‘Kenneth’? as if I have some thick accent that makes my requests indiscernible. But then on Friday, this happened. I was driving back from the bank in another town, but I’d stopped off at the Restore Store, and wanted to let Ken know about the cool lamp I found. I hit the call button on my steering wheel:

Car Lady (because it’s a female voice): Ready.
Me: Call.
Car Lady: Call. Using ‘Suzanne’s phone’. Please say the name or number to call.
Me: Kenneth.
Car Lady: Did you say ‘Jeff Goldblum’?
Me: What?
Car Lady: Pardon?
Me: ???
Car Lady: Please say a command.
Me: Call!
Car Lady: Call. Using ‘Suzanne’s phone’. Please say the name and number to call.
Me: Kenneth!
Car Lady: OK. Calling ‘Jeff Goldblum’ using ‘Suzanne’s phone’.
Me: What the f*ck?! (hangs up)

I sat there for a minute, not sure what to do. Jeff Goldblum? Then I realized that years before, I had received a link to get text messages from Jeff Goldblum, which I thought at the time might be a scam. I had received an initial text from him that said this:

Which is exactly what someone who WASN’T Jeff Goldblum would say, am I right? At any rate, Jeff Goldblum really WAS in my contacts list, but that didn’t explain why my car phone lady was trying to get me to call him. Was it a sign from the universe? But I didn’t want to talk to Jeff Goldblum, I wanted to talk to Ken, although I’m sure Jeff Goldblum would have been breathlessly ecstatic over my lamp find, if the way he acts in most of his movies is any indication. I pressed the car phone button on my steering wheel again:

Car Lady: Ready.
Me: Call.
Car Lady: Call using ‘Suzanne’s phone’. Please say the name or number to call.
Me: Kenneth!!
Car Lady: Did you say ‘Jeff Goldblum’?
Me: No, you stupid woman! Kenneth!! Kenneth!!
Car Lady: OK, calling ‘Kenneth’.

The whole situation was so bizarre that I decided to investigate. And you know what? It turns out that the text number IS actually Jeff Goldblum. Here’s a link to his Facebook video from November 2019 announcing that if you set his number, 310-620-6558, as a contact, he would text you with updates about his career: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=529097061000888 But I guess he got bored very quickly of the whole thing, because I haven’t had a message from him since 2022. Yes, I got ghosted by Jeff Goldblum. And I’d gotten over it, years ago, so thanks Car Phone Lady for re-opening that wound.

Speaking of wounds, Ken once again managed to almost lose a digit on the table saw. This time it was his thumb. And this time, I was a little less sympathetic—I mean, the first time, it’s a terrible accident; the second time, it’s more like, “WHAT DID YOU DO?? WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT WAITING FOR THE BLADE TO STOP SPINNING?! Even the doctor at the hospital (who had sewn him up last time) asked, “Is this ‘weaponized incompetence’? (which is where you do something so very badly that no one asks you to do it again) to which I replied, “I didn’t ask him to build a shed! He WANTED to do it!” and the doctor said, “Oh, I wasn’t talking about him,” and I said, “Are you referring to the way you’re stitching up his thumb? Because yes, I’m hoping we never have to ask you to do this again,” and we all laughed. Except for Ken, who was grimacing in pain.

In other news, last week, I had a lot of people ask for pictures of my cute boots, so here they are:

Adorable, yes? Jeff Goldblum would love them.

31 thoughts on “Calling Jeff Goldblum”

  1. You got ghosted by Jeff Goldblum? There was one Valentine’s Day in Upstate New York when the only thing that arrived in my mailbox was a jury summons. Life is strange sometimes.

    On a related note, I’m keeping mom’s house, as it was the place where I grew up before being kicked out at 16. Mom saved everything of mine from that year (1996). Details to follow. If you and Ken are baseball fans and ever want to visit Cooperstown, let me know. 😉

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  3. My sister-in-law’s last name is Wagner and whenever my wife asks the car’s hands-free device to call her sister it pronounces the name ‘Vagner’ like the composer. It’s not even a German car! But at least it gets her name. Anyway thank you for showing us the boots, I hope Ken keeps his digits without any other mishaps, and I’m sorry about the Blue Jays. I was rooting for them and they played amazingly well.

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  6. Weaponization, the meme of the decade. Incompetence is a new one, but a useful one. Don’t want to do an arduous task? Feign failure. “Are you TRYING to get yourself killed? Step back, let me do it.” [Excellent…]
    The Radical Reds have weaponized vacation, healthcare, food!, education, the rule of law… Sheesh. “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
    I fear our Ozymandias has spawned from the corruption, our despair awaits.

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  7. Pingback: Tech Phone – Michael Seidel, writer

  8. Yes, we’ve encountered these things with Alexa and our phones, and they’re supposed to be state of the art. I highly believe that being modern sophisticated technology capable of being so many things find it boring just being whatever they are, so they’re messing with us. Anyway, this was hilarious and I shared it first with my wife and then on my site.

    Nice boots.

    Cheers

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  11. Your boots are very cute, Suzanne. I have some similar ones that I love! And sorry to hear about Ken’s skillsaw accident. Yikes. (Sounds like something my mom would do – she lost the tips of three fingers.) Finally, yup – phones are notoriously hard at hearing. 🙂

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