"Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. Goddamn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off," says Fight Club's Tyler Durden -- played to perfection by Brad Pitt  -- who is the dark alter ego of the nameless narrator/protagonist played brilliantly by Edward Norton. Equally powerful is the actress Helena Bonham Carter in the supporting rolel of Marla Singer. Meat Loaf and Jared Leto also play secondary characters in the film.

Today, October 15th, 2009, is the ten year anniversary of the date the David Fincher directed movie first arrived in cinemas.  Based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, the engaging dark tale, with its underlying theme of consumerism and the ptifalls of materialsim, is about the nameless Edward Norton character who, in his struggle with insomnia and lack of medication to treat it, ends up in support groups, which he soon becomes addicted to attending. And then by some twists of fate he gets drawn into the web of the dark violent psychē of Tyler Durden, ending up living in his large dilapidated house where the fight club is formed. The violent and provocative film, which has a really dark humor to it, is the sort of film you can go back and watch repeatedly. The movie's great soundtrack by the Dust Brothers also includes The Pixies ("Where Is My Mind"), Marlene Dietrich ("No Love, No Nothin"), and Tom Waits ("Goin' Out West")... Look for both the Fight Club CD and DVD at each Amoeba Music store. Below is the scene with the eight rules of Fight Club.

Of the numerous new releases to arrive onto the hip-hop shelves at Amoeba Music today (Tuesday, Oct 13th), my personal fave new joint is the latest from the ever prolific Del The Funky Homosapien. On the new CD the longtime Oakland Hieroglyphics emcee teams up with the equally talented Jersey guy Tame One -- formerly of legendary hip-hop duo The Artifacts (with El Da Sensei) and member of the East Coast hip-hop super-group The Weathermen (Aesop Rock, Cage Kennylz, Yak Ballz, El-P, Breeze Brewin, etc.).

Parallel Uni-Verses is the title of the new album featuring this bi-coastal power duo, released on Gold Dust Media. The collaboration comes as a surprise to many hip-hop fans (myself included), since you would never expect these two artists to join forces. But the good news is it works, and really well, too, on songs such as "Flashback," featured above in the new video directed by Alex Ghassan. The vid was recorded two months ago at the East River State Park on the Williamsburg Waterfront outdoor show in Brooklyn and at various other NYC spots including (what looks like) Fat Beats record store on Sixth Ave. in the West Village.

As a kind of promotion for the recently published, long-titled new book Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day there will be a night of "punk rock storytelling" this evening at the  Broadway Studios featuring numerous contributors to the book, including the Avengers' Penelope Houston, Tribe 8's Lynn Breedlove, Jesse Luscious (Blatz, the Gr’ups), Johnny Strike and Hank Rank (Crime), Anna Joy Springer (Sister Spit, Cypher in the Snow), Bucky Sinister (Gilman spoken-word), Oran Canfield (the Farm), Rozz Rezabek (Negative Trend), John Geek (Fleshies, Triclops!), Chicken John (Circus Redickuless), and Kareim McKnight (Barrington/Cloyne). Following the storytelling there will be a live performance by Penelope Houston and her band.

Tonight's venue, the Broadway Studios (formerly the On Broadway), is the perfect location -- The Broadway Studios and the long gone Fab Mab (Mabuhay Gardens) downstairs from it on Broadway in San Francisco were the settings of so many legendary and memorable Bay Area punk rock concerts and events in bygone years. All those nights will be relived tonight via spoken word. Note that tonight's event is just one of a half dozen in the highly recommended series of readings to tie in with the new book, including another one on Saturday (Oct 17th) night at Gilman Street. The book, which is published by Penguin, was penned by Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, whose many published credits include both having being contributors to the SF Weekly.

1) Ghostface Killah Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City (Def Jam)

2) Crown CIty Rockers The Day After Forever (Gold Dust Media)

3) Jay-Z The Blueprint 3 (Roc Nation/Atlantic)

4) Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Links Pt II (ICEAL)

5) Brother Ali Us (Rhymesayers)

Thanks for this week's Amoeba Music Hip-Hop Top Five chart go out to Tom at the Berkeley store where, in addition to updating the Amoeblog on the top selling new hip-hop albums, he reports that, as of yesterday,  the Telegraph Ave. store has, "got all the Halloween decorations up and it looks mighty spooky." What's spooky to me is how quickly the summer just flew by and the fact that it's almost Halloween again. Dang! Time really does fly. Case in point is Ghostface Killah -- it seems like it's only been a few years since the Wu-Tang Clan rapper dropped his first solo release, Ironman, but actually that release came out thirteen long hip-hop years ago, in 1996! His latest album, Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City on Def Jam, which is this week's number hip-hop release at Amoeba, is actually the eighth solo release from the Wu rapper, who took his name from the 1979 kung fu film Mystery of Chessboxing.