COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:It was a good day for techies

If you’re a techie, this could be interesting. If you have to ask what a techie is, this will be deadly dull.

Techies are people who are fascinated, captivated, infatuated, and otherwise fond of technology, most often in gadget/widget/gizmo form. When a major new technological doodle hits the stores or the Internet, techies get weak-kneed, light-headed and dizzy. On a day like last Friday, when Apple introduced its new iPhone — a cell phone-iPod-Wi-Fi-PDA thing — techies have to sit down and put their heads between their legs so they don’t pass out. By the way, is there anything as hip and happening as those initial lowercase letters — iPod, iPhone, eBay? Maybe it will pass. We can only hope.

On Friday, at the stroke of 6 p.m. across the country — a rolling rollout as it were — Apple put the very first iPhones on sale for the paltry sum of five to six hundred clams, depending on which version you cannot live without. For days, news crews covered the early arrivals lining up outside Apple Stores for Friday night’s big bang, the usual scenes of people pitching camp with lawn chairs, sleeping bags, food and water to stake out a place in line.

According to Reuters News, New Yorker Jose Sanchez, 22, drove his flag into the sidewalk, so to speak, in front of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue on Tuesday to be first in line. Yes, that’s Tuesday as in “three days before Friday.” South Coast Plaza opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday to accommodate any techies who appeared outside in an iPhone-induced frenzy. I called the Apple Store in South Coast Plaza a number of times on Friday afternoon to see how it was going with the thundering horde outside the ramparts. They would only say that there was a line, wouldn’t say how big a line, but did say they were closing at 2 p.m. to get ready for the 6 p.m. iBoom.

So what’s the big deal about iPhone? If a techie heard you say that, he would faint. Think of a cell phone, an iPod and a laptop all rolled into one, plus an ultra-high-tech touch-command screen, a full keyboard and a surprisingly large television screen. You can call your mother — which you don’t do enough by the way — answer your e-mails, get on the Internet to buy a ticket to Katmandu, check the Yankees’ score, archive every picture you’ve ever taken, download all of Paris Hilton’s interview on Larry King, listen to all your latest music downloads, including Frankie Laine’s “Muleskinner” and watch the last episode of “Lost” — all on one terminally high-tech device. Very impressive, but techies have been in line for days at Apple Stores across the country not to have a doodle that does all that stuff, but to be the first one on their block to have a doodle that does all that stuff. That is what techies live for. It’s in their DNA.

Also very important with techies, the thing looks white hot, even though it’s black. It is thin and sleek and sexy, and looks like it fell out of a UFO on its way back to Alpha Centauri. Would I camp outside a store for hours or days to get an iPhone or anything else for that matter? Is the Pope Italian? And bear in mind that while most of the people in those lines are techies, many of them wouldn’t know iPhone or iPod from eye of newt. So what are they doing there? They’re being paid, that’s what, a hundred bucks and up, to buy the little techno-beasts for someone else who intends to keep it forever or sell it on eBay. There are those who would counsel against buying a car or a techno-gadget in its first year, as if you didn’t know that. Those $500 iPhones will be $250 iPhones within a year and all the software bugs will be debugged, which really hurts if you’re a bug. But again, that is meaningless to a techie. A year from now the people who have the cheaper, better iPhones will be the last of millions to get their hands on them, and what’s the fun in that?

So there you have it. Everything you always wanted to know about iPhone, Jose Sanchez, Paris Hilton and UFOs — the last two being redundant.

Power on, dudes. It’s a brave new world out there and apparently you need something new, cool and high-tech to get through it.

Oh, almost forgot. Here’s a little Fourth of July gift just for you. If you’re at least enough of a techie to get on the Internet, try this site: www.njagyouth.org/Liberty.htm . Happy birthday to us, and may God watch over our troops and bless this country forever and ever. Now go have fun. I gotta go.