Today I'm poppin' off with something a little new, the introduction to Silk's Book Club. Now that busy season has 'come to an end' (does it ever really end?) and I have a chance to read the many books I've purchased the last few months, I figured I'd might as well share with you all what it is I'm reading, so you can strive to be as cultured as me (that was sarcasm, which you probably won't get until you see future SBC (yes, Silk's Book Club gets its own Acronym) entries).
Week 1 was none other than R.D Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez's book, the Death of WCW. I stumbled upon this book when I was stranded at the bookstore, "studying for the cpa exam", and saw someone left it at the unoccupied desk next to me. I read the first 30 pages, and was instantly hooked.
Book is instant nostalgia. I was always more of a WWF fan(I refuse to call it the "wwe"), but this book more than covers the metoric rise of WCW with the influx of the old WWF superstars, including Hulk Hogan, Keven Nash (Diesel), Scott Hall (Razor Ramon), Macho Man Randy Savage, Bret Hart, Mr. Perfect Curt Henning, and countless others.
My favorite book is by far all of the backstage stories and inside jokes. Two of my personnal favorites relate to the fued between WWF and WCW, and relate to when employees would switch from one promotion to the other. An example was Dusty Rhodes, who went to the WWF after being fired as head-booker for the WCW. Once at WWF, Rhodes was given the 'honor' of wrestling in black and yellow polka dot spandex, and was promoted to fans as a guy who "delivered pizzas, cleaned toilets, and shoveled horse crap".
Better yet, "The polka-dot outfits weren't the first time McMahon took a shot at Rhodes. In 1987, the WWF created a manservant character named "Virgil", so named because Rhodes' real first name was Virgil. If that wasn't childish enough, years later, when the WWF's Virgil jumped to WCW, he was renamed "Vincent" as a shot agasinst Vince McMahon."
Downfalls of the book are that it gets a little repetitive in the end, places a little bit too much of the blame on Hogan (I can see Nash, but at least Hogan brought something to the table), and focused a little too much on the numbers (as in Raw's had 3.7 to Nitro's 6.5! Or Bash at the beach only had a .7 buy rate). That may mean a lot to the advertisers, but to the casual wrestling fan re-living his childhood, I didn't need quite as much focus there, as it slowly came to look like filler.
All in all, good and bad, I give the book a whopping 7/10...
cop and read for yourself
here
Nike just came up with the ultimate hypebeast shoe here, combining elephant print on the black leather against a contrasting black mesh and infared upper, with pink splatter print on the laces and heel. It's a quickstrike, so you better act fast (fyi, for my non-sneakerhead readers, a quickstrike release goes to premium vendors only. these vendors don't know when they are going to get them, they just arrive with the rest of the ordered Nike product. Once they are sold out, they are sold out, no re-orders. Only way to get them then is paying triple retail on ebay). If you are in the WA area, MAJOR has them in stock now, with some limited matching tees.
Never heard of Juxtapoz, but browsing DG, it looks like they have a lot of shirts, most of which I'm not a fan of. But I will say this shirt, guest designed by the one and only Ron English (google him!!) is pretty sick...
