The most interesting Lyft driver in Las Vegas
Every Lyft ride is a journey, but riding with Harold was a trip.
Hello and welcome! I’m Michael Estrin. I write Situation Normal for people who take their humor with a side of humanity and a dash of insight.
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OK, that’s enough preliminaries, let’s get to it, shall we?
Before ride/share apps, I usually called a cab when I needed to go to the airport. If something funny happened in the cab, my frame of reference was usually the sitcom Taxi. If something disturbing happened, I’d reference Martin Scorsese’s neo-noir Taxi Driver. And if the experience was peculiar, or strange, or surreal, or beautiful, or overflowing with humanity, I’d reference the underrated Jim Jarmusch film Night on Earth. But none of those references really capture Harold, the Lyft driver who picked me up at my mom’s house in Las Vegas and drove me to the airport.
Harold wasn’t silly like Andy Kaufman’s Latka Gravas. Nor was he disturbing like Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle. And while Harold could be described as idiosyncratic, I wouldn’t cast him in a Jim Jarmusch picture. But I would put Harold in a Dos Equis ad, because Harold is the most interesting Lyft driver in Las Vegas.
“I love this town,” Harold said. “My daddy took me to Vegas when I was seventeen, and I was hooked.”
Harold looked to be in his late fifties. He had blonde hair and wore aviator glasses. There was twang in his voice, so I asked where he was from originally.
“Florida, the armpit of America.”
I have mixed feelings about Florida. As the husband to a Florida woman, I am grateful to the Sunshine state. As a writer of funny crime fiction, I owe a literary debt to Florida for inspiring the likes of Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, and Dave Barry—all writers who inspired me to write Not Safe for Work. But I’m not exactly Florida fan. I agree with Homer Simpson, who called Florida “America’s wang.”
“When my daddy died, he made me promise him two things,” Harold continued. “First, I promised him I’d stay with mommy for six months. She still lives in Florida on the Intracoastal. Keeping that promise was hard, but I did it for my daddy.”
“What was the second promise?”
“That I’d get the hell out of Florida and move to Vegas,” Harold said with a chuckle. “Vegas is the town for me. Know why?”
I didn’t know why, so I asked.
“It’s got all the crazy people, just like Florida, but there’s no humidity.”
“Or gators,” I said.
“Exactly. First time I came here with my daddy we stayed on the strip. We had a good ole time. But the thing that hooked me was seeing snow-capped mountains in the distance while walking around in eighty-degree weather. Florida can’t do that, can it?”
“No, sir.”
Suddenly, I had a twang in my voice. That worried me, so I moved the conversation away from Florida.
“How long have you been driving Lyft?”
“Three weeks,” Harold said. “I was bored. I wanted a job where I could talk to people.”
“What did you do before Lyft?”
“Little of this, little of that.”
When I pressed to find out more about “this” and “that,” Harold explained that jobs are for “regular people.”
“I am not regular people,” Harold said. “I’m colorful.”
“Is there good money in being colorful?” I asked.
“Colorful, no. Eccentric, yes. When my mommy dies, I’ll be eccentric. But for now, I’m colorful.”
I didn’t like the sound of Harold’s mommy dying, and maybe that showed on my face. But he told me not to worry about her, before adding that she knew all about his inheritance plans.
“When she goes, I’m getting a lot of money. I already told my lawyer I’m bringing him a big inheritance. His job is to find me a mansion and hide the rest from the government.”
Harold chuckled again. I chuckled too, but just to be polite.
“Of course, it can’t just be any mansion. I need space for a wrestling ring.”
“Huh?”
“Wrestling.”
“Like, Greco-Roman?”
“WWE. I’m a part-time wrestling promoter. It’s a great sport. Very athletic. Very theatrical.”
“So do you work for the WWE?”
“No. I promote independent wrestling matches.”
“But they’re the same as the WWE, right?”
“Oh yes. Same style, but unaffiliated. I used to work for the WWE. I even met Vince McMahon once.”
“Really!?”
“Oh yes. I was a promoter in Tampa back then. The way it worked was, Connecticut called you, but you didn’t call Connecticut. That’s where the WWE headquarters are, but back then they were the WWF. That was before the wild life people handed Vince his butt in federal court.”
“What does a promoter do?”
“Get the word out. I had this idea about how we could get some butts in the seats, and everyone said, ‘you don’t call Vince, he calls you.’ Well, I called Vince. I told the gal answering the phone to put me through to Vince McMahon because I had a million-dollar idea.”
“A million bucks?”
“I exaggerated, a little. But she put me through to Vince. And we talked. When he came down to Tampa, he made it a point to find me. He said, ‘I wanna met the sonofabitch who has the balls to call me.’”
Harold chuckled. I chuckled too, but for some reason, I added, “you had the balls.”
“I had the balls,” Harold confirmed.
For a moment, we were silent. In the rearview mirror, I could see Harold beaming with proud over his Vince McMahon anecdote. But my comment about Harold’s balls worried me. For one thing, it’s my policy not to talk about another man’s balls. Also, I had referred to Harold’s balls in the past tense, which felt… disconcerting.
“How did you get into wrestling?” I asked.
“I was radio DJ,” Harold said. “That was a fun job, but the business went to doo-doo. Nobody listens to radio anymore, unless you’re a lunatic about politics or a religious nut. I’m neither. I’m an old school FM radio guy. I spun records, but it’s all streaming now. I have the gift of gab, but it’s all podcasts and what not.”
“You could start a podcast.”
“No money in that. Joe Rogan took it all and moved to Texas. Besides, I like it live. I like people. You’re probably not going to like hearing this, but I helped make Carrot Top famous.”
“Carrot Top, the comedian?”
“Yes, sir. One day, I’m sitting there in this bar, and this kid comes in and does his stand-up act.”
“That was Carrot Top?”
“Yeah, but he was just Scott Thompson then. I wasn’t much older than him. He was maybe seventeen. He was good, so I finished my cocktail, went over to him and said, ‘listen, I don’t know doo-doo about doo-doo, but you’ve got talent, my man.’ And the rest was history.”
Harold didn’t cover the history of Carrot Top, or say how he helped make the redheaded prop comic famous, but he did let me know that they’re still friends.
“He has a residency here in Vegas. I take friends to see him all the time. Then I go backstage, knock on the door, and Scott answers. He always says the same thing: ‘what are you doing here, you sonofabitch?’ We laugh and have a good ole time. My friends can’t believe it. They’re partying with Carrot Top. But to me, he’s just Scott.”
“So in addition to working as a DJ and a wrestling promoter, you also work in comedy?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes, but not really. I’m just part of the scene. You ever see Night Court?”
“Hell yes, one of my favorite shows.”
“You remember Roz, the bailiff? The actress who played her is Marsha Warfield.”
“I’ve known Marsha for thirty years,” Harold continued, “but I haven’t talked to her in twenty-five. One day, I’m delivering DoorDash. Don’t ever deliver DoorDash. It’s no fun. You hardly talk to anyone, and your car ends up stinking of French fries that you don’t get to eat.”
“Good tip.”
“I delivered DoorDash to Marsha. I recognized her. I said, ‘I know you.’ She said, ‘the hell you do.’ I said, ‘Marsha, it’s me, Harold.’ I took off my glasses. She recognized me! ‘Get your butt in here, Harold, what the hell are you doing?’ I told I her I was bringing her dinner. She said, I was having dinner with her and her wife, no excuses. So we had dinner. Then she said, I needed to help her with her act.”
“You helped Marsha Warfield with her act?”
“Not really. She didn’t have a closer. I reminded her that she had twenty minutes on slavery that she did back in the day. She said, ‘yeah, but that bit is so damn offensive.’ And I said, ‘Marsha, that bit killed then and it will kill now. She made me come to her show and stand backstage. The bit killed every time. And every time she walked off stage she said, ‘Harold, you’re a genius.’”
My head was spinning. In twenty minutes, Harold had name-dropped Vince McMahon, Carrot Top, and now, Night Court’s Marsha Warfield! A skeptic might say Harold was lying. But the names Harold was dropping didn’t feel like the kind of names a liar would drop. To me, Harold’s celebrity anecdotes sounded too weird to be fiction. Still, as we pulled up to the airport curb, I felt the need to do a little fact-checking.
“Are you really friends with Carrot Top?” I asked.
“Course I am,” Harold said.
Then he proved it. Harold opened up the photo album on his phone, selected a folder labeled “comedy friends” and swiped through a dozen pictures of him and Carrot Top over the past three decades. There were pictures of Marsha Warfield with Harold in there too.
When I got home to Los Angeles, I told Christina about Harold.
“What about Vince McMahon?” she asked. “Did Harold have any pictures with him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t have the balls to ask about Vince.”
Stick around and chat!
I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers.
Why does Harold, a man in his 50s, refer to is parents as “mommy” and “daddy”? Is that a Southern thing? A weirdo thing? A lovely thing? Tell me!
Is Carrot Top a great prop comic, or a real problem?
Do you have the balls to call Vince McMahon? Explain.
The original Night Court was amazing, but the new Night Court leaves me cold. Why? Night Court bonus question: Why wasn’t Dan Fielding disbarred?
Taxi, Taxi Driver, or A Night on Earth? You can only choose one, which will it be? Choose wisely and explain yourself.
Can YOU ask ME a question?
Yes, please do! I love hearing from Situation Normal readers. Ask me (almost) anything, and I’ll answer your question in a future issue of Situation Normal.
Email me at michaelestrin@substack.com
Want more Michael Estrin stories? I’ve got two books!
Ride/Share: Micro Stories of Soul, Wit and Wisdom from the Backseat is a collection of my Lyft driver stories🚗🗣
Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir novel based on my experiences covering the adult entertainment industry💋🍑🍆🕵️♂️
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Last thing…
Just. WOW. Harold is your next book: A has-been-ish prop comic trying to stage a come back is found dead in his dressing room, strangled by a pair of oversized underpants. Harold is a gumshoe from way back, old school all the way. He's taken "mommy's" inheritance and left all that sordid business behind. But he gets this call. Sure, he knew the kid when he was coming up in the scene; you might even say Harold had a small hand in his success, but still, is that enough to pry him out of retirement? He's got it pretty cushy now, including a weekly poker game with Vince and some of his wrestling buddies. He pours himself a scotch and stares at the snow-capped mountains in the distance. It's going to be a long night..... ;) (PS: CLASSIC Night Court 4LYFE)
So good! You picked the right Lyft driver. His stories seem way too random and filled with specifics to be made up. I recently drove by WWE headquarters and its giant sparkling wrestling belt in Stamford Connecticut . I imagine most people (outside of Stamford) have no clue that’s where the HQ is located.
While I’m no Harold, I did have the balls to ask Vince McMahon for his autograph in 1988.
For question 5, I’m going with Jarmusch, as long as I’m able to keep listening to Angela aka the Taxi theme song.