All-Elite Wrestling’s flagship AEW Dynamite show came to Philadelphia on Wednesday night, and it was pretty much what I expected: A show good enough that I almost forgot I had to wait in an hourlong line in order to get inside. It was the same exact experience I had at AEW in New York last month! I am glad a new wrestling promotion is giving me flashbacks to ECW shows in 1998. I could go on and on about this, but I won’t!
One neat thing about last night’s AEW show was a DIY promotion held by Cody Rhodes. The wrestler, who’s also an EVP of AEW, offered to take a selfie with fans who donated a book to Treehouse Books, a library and literacy center for children in North Philadelphia. AEW came up with a little charity promotion and Cody stood out into the concourse to take photos with fans. It was nice! Usually, you have to go to a convention and pay $30 to get that kind of thing. (I once paid $5 to shake the hand of “Mean” Gene Okerlund.)
The promotion collected a decent amount of books, but once Cody left and the show began, the books just ... sat there all night, in the concourse in front of Temple’s sports hall of fame. I even saw a fan take one of the books. Another dude was clearly eyeing a book about programming in C, but said he wasn’t going to steal a book from a potential child coder. Good man.
I was curious when I saw the programming book, though. What else had people donated? A guy behind me in line outside had brought a biography of Salvador Dalí, for instance, and there is plenty of running room between that and a programming book. During a lull in the show, I went and took a quick look.
Yeah, this runs the gamut. I see some Dr. Seuss, some Beverly Cleary, the fifth book in the series that was made into True Blood on HBO, and a doberman pinscher. Here are some of my favorite book donations I noticed in the hallway last night.
Survivor Series Slam by Slam, 2015
I appreciate that some people decided to bring wrestling books. Why not give the children of Philadelphia a copy of Mick Foley’s enjoyable first autobiography or his boring third one? This one was my favorite, though: a history of the Survivor Series, published six years ago. In my childhood, my parents had to rent old Coliseum Video tapes from Four Star Video so I could learn about the time “Macho Man” Randy Savage teamed up with Earthquake, Dino Bravo and Greg “The Hammer” Valentine to face Jim Duggan, Hercules, “Rugged” Ronnie Garvin and Bret Hart. Now you can read about it! (I assume that match is prominently featured in the book.)
I will also note that this book was laying next to Chelsea Handler’s Uganda Be Kidding Me.
I Am Zlatan: My Story On and Off the Field, by by Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Lagercrantz, 2011
According to the cover, The Guardian calls this: “The most compelling autobiography ever to appear under a footballer’s name.”
Lightning, Dean Koontz, 1988 (or possibly the 2003 reprint)
This is a book about time-traveling Nazis.
Walden Two, by B.F. Skinner, 1943 and Unicorn Princesses 1: Sunbeam’s Shine, by Emily Bliss (words) and Sydney Hanson (illustrations)
I am just going to assume the same person brought these two books.
Comeback Season: The Untapped Art of Mastering Your Resilience, 2017, by Kenny Jones
I just want to share one of this books reviews on Amazon.
If you are looking to donate some books in the Philly area, be like Cody and the AEW fans last night. Contact Treehouse Books.
