Part 1

The plane ride
On the way to San Diego, I was seated next to the king of anti-government conspiracy theorists. He spent the entire time telling me about how the government tricks people into accepting false ownership of their land and how income taxes are illegal. A lot of it sounded like standard conspiracy theory bullshit; I would like to believe him about the income taxes, though. Apparently it has something to do with the improper ratification of the 16th Amendment and taxing our privilege of earning money.

The cab ride
My Spanish cab driver spent a long time telling me about his plans for a mushroom farm just across the border in Mexico. When he found out I was in town for the Comic-con he started to get all indignant on me about how the comics industry was ignoring the wide Spanish-speaking market. I explained to him (in Spanish) that this was not the case and that there were even several panel discussions going on there about the Hispanic market. This seemed to win him over and he started asking me a lot of questions about how I was going to personally address this. I told him I'd look into it and that if I ever branched out into comics I'd make sure they were available in Spanish. He asked for my card so I gave him one. He also promised to send me $2000 to fund my first self-publishing project. I probably won't hold my breath, but it was a nice offer.

The hotel
I checked into my room at the Maryland Hotel, at 630 F St. It was a quaint old hotel, mostly residential. I found out that this means that the majority of "guests" live there and look like they may or may not have previously been in some sort of trouble with the law. I also found out that the ridiculously low rate ($36/night) meant that the rooms lacked amenities like air conditioning, spacious bathrooms, good toilet paper and nice towels. The adage "you get what you pay for" was never so true.

The uninvited guests
The hotel rooms did include complimentary roaches, however. When I got back to my room on Thursday night I found some of these surprises running merrily around my bathroom. I could barely contain my disgust/revulsion/fear enough to go get my shoe and try to smash them. The final body count was 10. I mentioned this to the people I was with but they didn't seem to share my feelings. They'd seen roaches before. I hadn't. After killing several more when I got back from the bar I was petrified at the thought of them scuttering around where I couldn't see the buggers. Friday morning I killed a couple more. I was starting to find them in areas outside of the bathroom. At this point it was suggested to me that I lodge a complaint with the hotel. I did, but they weren't surprised in the slightest. They told me that they'd send someone around to take care of it and if it wasn't better by Saturday I should have them come again.

This is what I ended up having to do, since the spraying job done by hotel maintenance seemed really only to attract more. They even crawled across me while I slept, ruining any further chance I had of resting comfortably for the remainder of the weekend.