NERDAPALOOZA IN LAS VEGAS : COMDEX TURNS SIN CITY INTO GIANT NIRVANA FOR HACKERS, SLACKERS AND WORSHIPERS OF BILL.

Byline: Glenn Gaslin Daily News Staff Writer

The first man waiting in line to see Bill Gates' speech terrifies the second. And the third. And the guy after him.

``He's really twisted,'' says Timothy Mallalieu, the third person standing in a 5:45 a.m. line outside the Aladdin Hotel and Casino. The sun rises over his shoulder as he points through a glass door to Leroy Gilman, a large man wearing thick suspenders and a blue Microsoft T-shirt, the first man in a roughly 8,000-people-long line to see the Microsoft CEO and America's richest man speak at 9 a.m.

``I've been here since midnight,'' says Gilman, who doesn't work for Microsoft, but builds and sells computers out of his house. ``I ain't slept in 48 hours.''

He hasn't caught a single wink since getting into his car Sunday in Graham, Texas, and driving right into the desert, into Las Vegas, to something called COMDEX Fall, the single largest gathering of people who love and worship computers and technology on planet Earth. He is one of nearly a quarter-million people spending the week here, searching for the Next Big Thing, looking at each other and keeping an eye out for the man known to them as ``Bill.''

``I guess I'm just a typical nerd,'' says Gilman, ``if that's what you have to call it.''

But at COMDEX, millions of dollars are spent every year in an effort to redefine the word ``nerd.'' The biggest annual convention in Las Vegas has become an incubator for the neonerds, the New Nerds, social creations of the booming, ever-important computer industry. Geeks, chipheads, pre-Bills and future rulers of the universe.

This New Nerd fits somewhere between the billionaire Bill and the gawking groupie who can quote Microsoft Office instruction manuals verbatim. He melds the pocket-protector stereotype defined in 1980s high school movies and the bleached-haired skater/hacker/mallrat blasting Rage Against the Machine's tunes through his headphones.

Computers and the Internet have become hip, cool and terribly ``in'' passions. And for these new nerds, COMDEX is Lollapalooza, Woodstock and Judgment Day all wrapped into one. The 210,000 guests wander through city-size, mall-like exhibits that celebrate printers and Internet tools and optical drives. They attend star-studded parties. They surround themselves with money and noise and beautiful people.

``It's just a bunch of computer geeks looking for something to do besides sit in their house and stare at a screen,'' says Erik Glemblin, 17, a Las Vegas high school student who spends a lot of time sitting at home and staring at a screen. ``But there's so many of us that, if you start making fun, we'll hunt you down.''

He ditched school to hit the convention centers, a hobby he developed at age 14. His name tag says Brainstorm, a company that doesn't exist, a company he uses to get into COMDEX. He wants to go into business selling Internet access. He wants to maybe have a booth here one day, to make as much money as those companies sponsoring lavish giveaways (Win a humvee!) or staging expensive stunts (See world-renowned pop artist Denny Dent create splatter paintings! Sponsored by Epson!). Heck, Bill Gates used to be his age.

On the surface, COMDEX is all about modems, mouse pads, symmetric multiprocessing, PC scalability, SQL event-blocking, object-oriented programming, applets, ISDN, ISPs, dpi, land lines, real time and feedback loops. But the real exhibits cruise the floors of the two giant convention centers, a hotel, five extra tents and the streets of Vegas.

The Strip hums with the music of the New Nerds, who, according to the town regulars (cab drivers, waitresses, blackjack dealers) have nocturnal habits developed while staring at glowing tubes flowing with C++ code.

They don't gamble much. They don't tip much. They do, however, create a banner week for the strip clubs and showgirls. And they throw parties worthy of CD-ROM compilation.

So witness the scene: A dance floor. A disco cover band. Huge fake afros and Village People songs. Free beer. Programmers and executives from one of the world's most powerful companies, IBM. Dancing the ``YMCA.'' Wearing togas. Bare shoulders, bare legs, sheets wrapped around bodies. Little sandals that say ``IBM'' on them. A Big Blue Toga Party. COMDEX at night. The future.

It's also on display in the Hard Rock Hotel auditorium, at a party and awards show hosted by PC Computing magazine. On stage - the same stage the Pointer Sisters and Jay Leno share several nights later for a Computer Shopper party - women in tight black dresses issue gold statues to smiling, mostly male programmers and systems analysts. An announcer yells things like ``Toshiba Tecra CDT3'' and ``Microsoft Office for Windows 95'' and the crowd goes wild. Nuts.

``I wish I was geekier,'' says one Hard Rock waitress. ``I wish I knew what they were talking about.''

And you don't expect Elvis to know about computers, either. But he gives it a shot:

``It's the newest thing,'' says a hesitant Elvis, or rather, a hesitant Charles David, who travels the 1.3 million square feet of COMDEX floorspace in sequins and sideburns. He joins Einstein (actually a stand-up comic), Elvira (a magician's assistant) and an elf (a green-suited midget named Stretch) to promote something called E4 (Get it?), which none of them can describe.

``This used to be our town,'' says Elvira, lamenting the loss of the old casinos and Mafia influence and old-school rules. ``But this is the future: It's a bunch of hype. A bunch of smart-asses thinking they're cool.''

This temporary city crawls with the likes of mimes throwing candy, Houdini clones tied to chairs and rock bands singing passionately about hard drives. Dr. Ruth is here. So is Don Adams, the guy from ``Get Smart.'' Bleached blondes in low-cut dresses draw attention to software booths, and two women in black tights and cut-off tops demonstrate a PC you can wear around your waist.

Vendors sell espresso to COMDEXers as they endure theme park-size lines for the men's bathrooms, taxis, pay phones and cocktails. Indeed, the marketing is so precise here, the hype so effective, the frenzy so ferociously whipped, that even high school kids get excited about the new gizmos designed to help offices run efficiently.

Small crowds of teen-agers - some holding free guest passes bearing fake company names, some arriving from states far away - squeeze between the power-suited executives and primped, prepared public relations pitchwomen.

``Must see Bill,'' says Chris Hodge, 17, shivering in the T-shirt he thought would be warm enough in this desert. ``Must get close to Bill. Must touch Bill.''

This kid who flew from Kansas City, Kan., personifies the New Nerd's half-earnest, half-facetious passion for Bill, the Moses who brought the culture of computer enthusiasts from darkened basements into the mainstream consciousness of America, into the brightly lit village of future worship that is COMDEX. Some wired celebs rival Bill, such as Andy Grove, CEO of Intel, maker of Pentium chips. But nobody gets in line at midnight for his speech. And they don't call him Andy. Just ``the Intel guy.''

``I've gotten close to Bill,'' says Gilman, the first man in line, the midnight arrival, the one-man, small-town computer company. ``But I get awe-struck. Stressed. Speechless.''

Several hours later, inside the main convention hall - the makers and marketers of the future whiz up and down the aisles, the executives and hired actors and PR people reach for their ringing cell phones - the man who stayed up for two days straight just to see Bill Gates say something slouches against a wall, in a blue hump, fast asleep.

CAPTION(S):

Drawing, 4 Photos

Drawing: (Cover--Color) NERDS' NIGHT OUT

Las Vegas' biggest convention is a high-speed, battery-powered party for the cyber-elite.

Len De Groot/Daily News

Photo: (1) Trying to win a contest by covering himself with buttons advertising Iomega disk drives is Orem, Utah, high school senior Phillip Bennett, who posed as the CEO of a fake company to get a free COMDEX pass.

(2) Providing local color at COMDEX are a band of impersonators: Elvis, an elf, Elvira and Albert Einstein.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News

(3) COMDEX visitors examine LG Electronics Inc.'s hand-held PCs, which use the new Microsoft Windows CE software. The trade show draws about 210,000 people to 1.3 million square feet of exhibit space.

(4) Call him the main event, heavyweight champion, or king of the geeks, it's COMDEX's keynote speaker, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

Associated Press