The Man who gave us a ride to the airport in Long Beach, CA. Capt Shabbin.

The objectivity of journalism is typically a farce. The author can never completely hide their intentions in writing what they’re writing, no matter how pedestrian the topic. At the very least perceptions and attitudes that they’re not even aware of as being the basis from which they’re writing color their work.

That being said it’s probably best just to be out with it: I’m not even going to attempt an unbiased account of the following events involving a trip in which two friends – Capt. AKAK and George Pants – traveled from Los Angeles to New York to witness and participate in 2009’s All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival. It begins, as many stories begin nowadays, on Craigslist.

After the festival we wanted to drive back across the country to Los Angeles on old US Highways: US 20, US 12, US 2, etc. Being the cheap bastards we are, or more accurately I am, I figured that we’d try to find one of those mythical situations that are assumed to exist but probably don’t: the family who needs their car driven from one side of the country to the other and is willing to pay you to do it. We never found them. Instead, we found a man identifying himself as Yang Wang.

Through an odd set of circumstances which began with me posting an ad offering our cross-country driving services and a lady finding it who needed a scooter delivered from New York City to Cleveland we found ourselves sitting in the JFK baggage claim at 6am on the first day of the festival waiting for this mysterious internet presence. The lady with the scooter recommended we talk to Mr. Wang soon because he needed to get a minivan from New York to Burbank – and he was supposed to deliver her the scooter at the same time.

Yang Wang's E-Mail of Death

6am is a tough time for people from Southern California to be in the JFK baggage claim. It’s really still 3am for you and things are starting to look and feel very odd. Capt. AKAK came up with the metaphor of the come down from psychedelic drugs and in a very tangible way he was right. Hopping on a plane at 9:30pm on the West Coast after working all day and landing on the East Coast at 6am the next day is a profoundly consciousness-shifting experience. Everything seemed like a diorama come to life – things that weren’t typically funny were ridiculously hilarious and there was a seedy edge to the entire scene. Capt. AKAK claimed that my beard was growing faster than it had been earlier. It was in this state of mind that Yang Wang presented himself to us.

George Pants crazed at the airport.

Mr. Wang is someone you don’t fuck with. He’s a balding man of mixed Korean/Anglo descent in his mid-thirties who speaks in a thick Boston accent and looked like he just stepped out of a thrift store dressing room. As we shook hands and spoke our initial greetings the first impression of him was of a general pleasantness, but like most people you find on the Internet he was crafty and was actually setting a trap for us to quickly fall into.

The story he’d told us up to this point was that he had the minivan sitting in the employee parking lot at JFK – he’d made a claim of “working for the airlines” – and if he was comfortable with us he would give us the keys and we would drive away toward our respective destinies. Alas, this was not going to be what went down. For the next half hour we would have to endure circuitous logic and finally exasperating frustration as he pursued his ultimate goal of making complete idiots out of us.

After initial introductions his first words to us were, “Wow, I thought you guys were gay.” This was comforting in an odd way, since he had apparently changed his mind upon meeting us. From there things went down hill. Beforehand, Capt. AKAK and I had decided that we would do a little “Good Cop, Bad Cop” routine on him. A few minutes into this Mr. Wang said, “You guys are trying out the old Good Cop, Bad Cop aren’t ya’?” Our strategy was quickly unraveling.

At the half hour mark we’d made no progress and were quickly trying to figure out how to get away from this guy. We finally agreed to meet in Boston in 3 days and pick the van up from him then…which we had no intention of doing. Somehow in Mr. Wang’s Universe meeting in Boston instead of New York made sense. At that point we were tired of asking questions.

As Mr. Wang left his parting words were, “I’ll buy you guys a hot dog in Boston.” Nice enough we thought, until he gave us one last look over his shoulder and said clearly, “I’ll make sure it’s Kosher for you.” By that time he’d entered the TSA line and we had no recourse but to walk away feeling like we’d been bested by this Asian man who enjoyed fucking with white people who prided themselves on their intelligence.

At the rental car counter we found a company willing to give us a good price on a small SUV and after loading up our bags we hit the road for the town of Monticello in upstate New York, near the Catskills.

Stay tuned for Part 2…which will actually involve music. Probably.

Capt. AKAK flying to New York.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Concerts, TSS Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.