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In the cooler hours of a summer morning, Paul Ryan, professional troll, rises before dawn. He eats cold pizza for breakfast but skips his usual glass of whiskey. Whiskey makes his voice raspy.

In downtown San Diego, on the second floor of the city’s sprawling convention center, a stoned high school dropout sets up chairs in conference room 6A. It is 5:15am. In a mere 14 hours, David Hasselhoff will arrive at this Comic Con press panel, sit in a cheap folding chair and speak to a crowd of fans about the making of “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No”, a straight to cable TV movie that is guaranteed to be awful.

Each “panel” at the convention has a Q&A session at the end where any idiot from the crowd can walk up to the designated microphone and ask the actors a question. Any idiot at all. Even a stupid idiot.

Back at the hotel, Mr. Ryan stares at his 2015 Comic Con badge with a quiet determination.

“I’m not afraid to get thrown out,” said Mr. Ryan, as the sun approached the horizon. “I almost got thrown out a few times before. One year I was really high and kept bumping into people and touching all the signage on everyone’s booths for no reason. Another time I got into a shouting match with a security guard about where I was allowed to eat a pretzel. In 2011, I accidentally knocked over a few people while sprinting to the Kidrobot booth to pay $100 for a collectible toy that now sells for $30 on Ebay. None of that was worthwhile, but The Hoff is different. Bro was Knight Rider, for shitsakes.”

It is now 7am, and 130,000 people are readying to storm the world’s largest comic book convention, dressing in elaborate superhero outfits and getting into fistfights over complimentary He-Man coins. They will stand in line three hours to hear William Shatner read from his crummy autobiography. They will pay $50 for a signed photo with the guy who played the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld. They will literally sleep on the sidewalk for days to hold their place in line for the Game of Thrones panel, just to see if Natalie Dormer smells as nice as she looks.

I’ll bet she smells amazing. She looks like she does.

It is now 2pm, and Mr. Ryan has not left his hotel yet. There is only one line worth his time today. The Hoff is here, and there may never be another chance to ask him mind-numbingly stupid questions that will cause an entire room of nerds to boo. Such is the thrill. The bigger the reward, the greater the risk.

Getting to the Q&A microphone during a panel is a delicate dance. First, Mr. Ryan must think up a fake question, a positive and thoughtful one that will impress the staff member who screens the questions ahead of time. Once Mr. Ryan is allowed to approach the microphone, he will instead ask the rude and condescending question he was planning to use all along.

“Mr. Hasselhoff, are you mad that the guy who played Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore is a better Hasselhoff than you?” That question is no good, says Mr. Ryan. It has too many words. By the time he’s halfway through that sentence, other crowd members will realize he’s being a dick and start booing, drowning out the punch line.

“Mr. Hasselhoff, you’ve released nine music albums. Have you ever considered doing one that isn’t shit?” Too mean. If this convention were held in the riding mower aisle of a Walmart, Mr. Ryan says, that question would get big laughs, but the Comic Con crowd is surprisingly conservative. They’re very protective of their b-list celebrities. Mean questions are met with awkward silence, as if the offender has single-handedly ruined the entire convention for everyone.

“Mr. Hasselhoff, do you sometimes talk to your penis in the same voice as the car from Knight Rider?” Perfect. Short, simple, completely idiotic but technically not insulting. It doesn’t make enough sense to be insulting. This could be the one that not only gets a big laugh but also gets Mr. Ryan banned from the convention for life.

Which is, of course, the goal.

“People always try to impress others with the money they’ve earned or the possessions they’ve bought,” said Mr. Ryan. “Any idiot with a credit card can get nice things. But a great story, like getting banned from Comic Con for heckling David Hasselhoff’s penis? That will impress people the rest of my life. I’ll be a legend.”

It is 5pm. Two hours until showtime. Mr. Ryan gathers his things: A small backpack filled with Lunchables, Capri Sun and nude drawings of Natalie Dormer that he drew himself using tracing paper (and hopes to get signed if he sees her wandering the convention floor). Will he ask the question, or sissy out? Will his question asking be thwarted by a horde of Germans who have infiltrated the convention to hog the Q&A microphone? Mr. Ryan says only God knows.

“I just wanna thank Jesus Christ for giving me the strength to heckle The Hoff,” said Mr. Ryan. “I’m heckling because I’ve been blessed with a gift. Asking the Hoffer if he talks to his penis in a Knight Rider voice; I couldn’t have come up with that on my own. Jesus puts the weenus jokes in my head, and if The Hoff recoils back in disgust and mumbles a curse word at me, well that’s all for Jesus, and it’s well-earned.”