My cell phone stalker

Somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, there is a publicist with my name -- and, more importantly, number -- in her cell phone directory. She, or rather it, dialed me twice last night (click on photo).

Well, that'll happen when your name starts with the first letter in the alphabet -- twice. Over the years, several people have sat on their cell phones and wound up calling me. Trunk dialing, I guess you could call it. Every now and then I will hear from a friend of mine at my old church. (By "hear," I don't mean I have a conversation with him, but get to listen to three minutes of ambient noise from inside his truck left on my voicemail.) Andy Ihnatko once left a similar message from a restaurant where he had just sat down (one must assume) with friends.

But this publicist keeps dialing me, apparently clueless to the fact, even though I left her multiple voice mails explaining her role as the accidental dialist. She has never acknowledged my existence -- which is a funny thing to be saying about someone who calls you on the phone all the time. I am pretty sure, though, that she is a publicist. The 818 area code is a giveaway, as is the fact that she usually calls late at night and is usually (a) getting in a car to go somewhere or (b) clearly at a bar or club with people, but not sounding like she is there to have fun. It's always very professional-sounding, this background voice that burbles up every so often on the three-minute-long messages routinely deposited on my voicemail.

I have tried googling that phone number, to no avail.

If I ever do identify my cell phone stalker, I'm going to pass along some advice from my friend Ana, who has been known to accidentally text me (as this involves a higher degree of difficulty, I give Ana extra points for it). She writes, "I think I have remedied the problem by placing mySELF as the first person in my phone book (My friend David's genius suggestion, having tortured his own first-friend on numerous occasions!)"

That is genius.