New Wave Wednesday: "867-5308/Jenny", by Tommy Tutone (music video)

In 1982, the pop/rock band Tommy Tutone hit it big with "867-5309/Jenny" and set the standard for prank callers, as drunk college kids and bored high-schoolers everywhere called the number asking for Jenny. In one case, the number happened to belong to the daughter of the Buffalo, NY chief of police, who wasn't all that thrilled about it.

When I worked in the Dish Network call center several years ago, it was what we called the code number given to customers to reboot their crashed DVR's. It was an early, inferior knock-off of Tivo that crashed or locked up at least twice a week. When we were trouble-shooting the issue with customers on the phone and nothing else worked, we gave them the Jenny Code, which they entered using their remotes, that caused a forced reboot but also wiped the hard drive clean of any saved programs.

Tommy Tutone is still around. You can check out their website here.

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