Geeks slug it out in 'fight club'

Lest we forget, David Fincher's 1999 punching fantasy "Fight Club" was a movie. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But according to the Associated Press, a group of Silicon Valley geeks has been playing out the brutal, beat-each-other-up-for-fun mentality of the film in real life and for real fun. Or whatever people who beat each other to bits for recreation call it. Never mind the bruises, blood and hurt feelings.

"When you get beat down enough, it becomes a very un-macho thing," the AP quoted 34-year-old Santa Clara software engineer Shiyin Siou as saying. "But I don't need this to prove I'm macho--I'm macho enough as it is."

Apparently, the real-life versions of the film's underground fighting clubs have been appearing throughout the country and are the province of the techie types more known for trading shares of stock and sitting prone in front of computers than for trading bare-knuckled body blows.

And this has been going on for several years in places like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and elsewhere. Who knew?

Well, not everyone thinks that the fighters are entirely sane to be partaking in this exceedingly testosterone-driven form of get-together.

"Real-life fight clubs are the male version of the girls who cut themselves," Michael Kimmel, a Stony Brook University in New York sociology professor told the AP. "All day long, these guys think they're the captains of the universe (and) technical wizards. They're brilliant but empty."

Still, the fighters themselves find the club meetings to be among their most important pursuits.

Witness Dinesh Prasad, a 32-year-old Santa Clara, Calif., engineer, who told the AP that he'd gone to a fight club meeting instead of celebrating his first wedding anniversary with his wife.

Perhaps he was practicing for the violence he expected would be heading his way for skipping the anniversary.