American phone card
I picked up a $5 "UTA LA" phone card to make a call home from LAX in August. It's not all that useful to me now though, and $0.69 gets automatically deducted from it twice a month, so it won't be any use to me next time I get over there.
So... if anyone in California wants to talk to someone in the USA or overseas for a few minutes for free, call 1-800-470-4521 and use the PIN 1180-582-9459. It's probably got about $2 left on it by now, which is an hour of calling to NZ from a normal phone or half an hour from a payphone. Good luck!