"Yahoo! It's what we do!"

So I'm going to Maryland to visit the fam for a couple days and need to get to the airport. My computer is packed and we don't own a phone book so I dial 411 and ask for a taxi in Hermosa Beach. I call. "10 minutes." Perfect. Ten minutes pass and one of the sorriest looking SUVs I'd ever seen pulls into the driveway. "I'm your taxi!" proclaims the eager guy behind the wheel. There's no taxi sign and there is no meter. I didn't have time to call another cab so I ask him how much. He says it's a $20 flat rate. That's what the fare would be so I decide to hop in and embark on one of the more interesting "taxi" rides I've ever been on.

During the twelve minutes it took to get from my house to LAX...

• He asked me if I wanted a McDonalds fish sandwich. Apparently he ordered two but could only eat one. It did smell like fish in the car but I never saw the sandwhich or a wrapper. Strange.
• He told me he was going to try to convert his SUV to a hybrid engine so it could get 50 mpg.
• After I told him I was a writer he asked about how you go about selling a tagline idea. He told me he had the best one for Yahoo! He built it up saying "are you ready?" over and over until I got "Yahoo! It's what we do!" followed by the obligatory pause for a response. I told him it was interesting but that I didn't know how to sell a tagline. (I was lying. Last October I actually wrote tagline-type copy for this Yahoo ad.)
• He told me that Malibu, when pronounced in Arabic (as Mal abu) means "From your father's money". I told him that I thought a lot of people in Malibu were living off their father's money and he thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He then told me that I should go up to someone speaking Arabic and tell them this. He insisted that they would find it funny. I told him I would try to do that. (I didn't)
• He asked me to pay him before we got to the airport. He said it would make things faster. (Obviously it was because unlicensed cabs are illegal!)
• He tried to give me his card but since it was magnetic and sitting in a stack under the hot sun he couldn't separate a single card. He offered to give me this huge stack of fifty fused cards so I'd have the number. I politely declined.

I made it alive, I wasn't ripped off, and I have a story. What more can I possibly need!?