Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Off the Reservation

As we warned you, it became possible at 9 AM this morn to book online hotel reservations for this year's Comic-Con International through their website. I haven't monitored the activity but others are reporting that by Noon, all the main hotels were sold out and the remaining rooms were off in distant zip codes. More rooms will become available later (especially around June 8, which is when credit cards are charged) but the scramble is on, and many will find no room at the inn.

This year, the convention rates for a single at the Hilton, Marriott or Hyatt hotels that are within walking distance of the convention center range from $175 to $219 a night, and they're sold out of those. A lot of people have already booked at those and other hotels without going through the convention even though that means a higher pricetag. Lodging near a convention center is usually contracted under a promotional arrangement designed to encourage conventions to come to town and give them loads of business. Each hotel will commit to making X% of their rooms available at a convention rate, then they'll sell the rest at higher prices — whatever price they can get. The convention rate for the Westin Horton Plaza, which is six blocks from the convention center, is $160 per night and I think they're sold out, too. Some online hotel bookers are currently saying they can get you in there for $465 a night and we can only guess what they'll charge for any rooms that become available in late June.

This, of course, creates a powerful financial incentive for the hotels to keep that X% as low as possible. The more rooms they don't make available via the convention plan, the more they can get for them. In future years, we may see fewer and fewer rooms available at a convention rate, and there's really nothing anyone can do about that.

It's rather amazing, in a way. I've been attending comic book conventions since 1970, the year of the first one in San Diego. I've gone to them all across America and recall a time when many hotels didn't want them and the ones that did take them were hesitant and treated us like a second-class booking. We were a young, non-spending crowd. We didn't come in with lavish expense accounts and run up huge bar tabs. We didn't book huge banquets or cocktail parties or take the higher-priced suites. We were a little rowdy and we had a tendency to disturb the "real guests." I even remember one hotel accepting a comic convention booking and then, when some other group wanted the place on the same dates, reneging on the commitment.

Sure ain't that way these days. Just in the hotel rates alone — never mind the cash we throw around in restaurants and on taxis and other local merchants — the convention has a major impact on the economy of San Diego. As Jack Kirby — who predicted all this way back in 1973 or so — would say, "Never underestimate the power of comics!"

• Posted at 3:32 PM · LINK

Today's Cheney Thoughts

Good to hear that the gentleman who was on the receiving end of Dick Cheney's shotgun blast is doing better. I frankly don't understand the appeal of "hunting" as he and the Veep practice it...and I put that in quotes because a friend of mine would have wanted it that way. He's a championship hunter with a whole trophy room into which I will not go because I can't stand to see all those mounted animal heads. On the phone the other day, he said (approximately), "What these guys were doing was not hunting. Hunting requires some skill and stamina and in some cases, a little personal risk. These guys were at a club where they arrange it so anyone can kill some birds and pretend it's hunting."

Either way, I don't see why anyone would enjoy it...but then, I never figured out why people enjoyed the original Star Trek, either. So I'm content that there are just some things in this world that thrill others without thrilling me, which is fine. We don't all have to love everything the same way and to the same degree.

A lot of websites seem to be getting all Grassy Knoll on us with theories as to why there have been the odd delays in announcing the news and in Cheney making any sort of public statement of regret. I admit it's odd but in these situations, the simplest explanation is the most likely. It may just be taking a long time for someone to teach Dick Cheney how to utter the words, "I did something wrong." This whole administration has had a bad tendency to confuse never admitting errors with always being right. They won't even admit that they might have been wrong to act on faulty intelligence. It's kinda like, "Whatever we did was correct, even if we didn't know what we were doing at the time." One presumes he will not take that approach in his interview on Fox News later today.

• Posted at 11:40 AM · LINK

Early Morning Blogging

I just finished a by-phone guest appearance on the fine New York radio show about comics, 'Nuff Said! It's been on for years, hosted by some combination of Ken Gale, Ed Menje and Mercy Van Vlack, broadcasting (now) over WBAI, which is listener-supported radio. For some reason, they thought having me on would bring in the pledges and I hope we got a couple. Over at their website, you may be able to locate info on how to hear old broadcasts. It's worth looking because there are some real gems in there.

While I was talking on the radio, I was simultaneously posting an old article on my website here. It's this one, a report on the 1996 (I said 1997 earlier) party celebrating the 100th birthday of the great ventriloquist, Señor Wences. I didn't write much in there about how Rickie Layne and Velvel did what I now think was Layne's last public performance...but he was there and folks who remembered him and Velvel from The Ed Sullivan Show were thrilled to see him there.

Okay, going to bed. And I just realized my doctor reads this weblog and will scold me for staying up so late. I'm still recuperating.

• Posted at 2:51 AM · LINK