Recently, the phone at my apartment has been ringing off the hook. Well not really, but I have gotten three calls over the past two weeks from people looking for Brian Greene, String Theorist, including one from the booking office of Good Morning America. I'm not sure what caused the flurry of activity, but my hunch is they want his thoughts on the Pluto planetary discussion. Then again, I might be way off base.
Anyway, the reason I'm writing is that while I'm used to being mistaken for him and getting calls for him doesn't really bother me, what does bother me is that it's not that hard to find his real contact info. Here's his Columbia University faculty webpage. It's got everything you need to get in touch with him right there. But do me a favor when you call him; be more polite than you are to me. When I picked up one of the calls (at 10:00 on a Wednesday night), the first thing out of the caller's mouth was "You're in big trouble."
"I am?" I responded. "Why?"
"You're coming to [some university in Kentucky, I can't remember which one specifically] tomorrow, right?"
"Um, who are you looking for?"
"Is this Brian Greene the professor?"
"No, can't say that I am."
"Oh, sorry." [click]
How fucking obnoxious. You're speaking to the foremost expert on String Theory, an Ivy League professor, a Rhodes scholar, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and just a nice guy (at least he seems that way from his photo). Show some respect.