It was a scene straight out of Night of the Living Geeks, and we're sorry we couldn't have witnessed it first-hand. Actually, no, we take that back-- we're positively thrilled that we didn't witness it first-hand, because some things stop being funny and cross right over into the realm of intense psychic pain. If you watched Pirates of Silicon Valley (and hey, who here didn't?), you may have wondered whether Bill Gates was as much of a dweeb as he was portrayed by Hollywood Übergeek Anthony Michael Hall. Well, thanks to faithful viewer Jim Palmer and the Washington Post article he brought to our attention, it's pretty safe to say that Comdex may attract a lot of dorks, but Bill is their king. Long live King William The Dorky.

Now, don't get us wrong-- we have nothing against geeks in general, and in fact AtAT maintains a 100% geek-populated staff. But if there's a general difference between Mac geeks and Wintel geeks, that difference would appear to be this: Style. The very image of a pack of Comdex mucky-mucks overriding the dress code of Studio 54 and partying down on the dance floor is all the more disturbing because it's not the roller-disco scene from a TNT movie-- it's real life. Even John Dvorak, a PC geek in every sense of the word, knows the score; he wouldn't know a cool-looking laptop if it bit him on the rear, but he noted that "these guys dance like a 12-year-old kicking around a dead squirrel." (We apologize on John's behalf to young squirrel-kickers everywhere for the comparison.) And guess what? Bill Gates was right in the middle of it all, "twisting with the worst of them." Art imitates life. Or at least cable does.

We're not saying that Mac geeks are necessarily better dancers; in fact, the AtAT staff has, on average, 1.8 left feet-- two left feet would be an improvement. But at least we, personally, have the decency not to descend upon a high-profile dance club en masse and inflict our shocking lack of coordination and rhythm on any Washington Post staff writers who happen to be standing around. And there are definitely Mac aficionados who more than make up for our lack of skill. (Two words: Gregory Hines.) While we've never been to Comdex, we've been to enough Macworld Expos to know that Mac geeks certainly seem to maintain an image that's less polyester-and-bad-tips...