Zach Selwyn

Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.

  • vskiyPuTWo17189lY-NBiBEr90tCA4WwzD0ag4abUtuY3EAp6y9xrIpkTvevCUc5N6gF5wJr7W3fPucQWvBEWrlfXx6gac13fj5ryJCFacIA-dj3Xdcptyy1KIVXCJNVF7SLAE-UvNDQhSaS0ROcex98Flgu3wf0Rbkb-RBd51u8KEdmMql_dAzntlevDDBM7gPA2XvoQdhIQYoK7uU3kHlhfmc

    This past weekend, I decided to have a yard sale. It sounded like the perfect idea. A fun and social way for me to unload the over-crowded boxes that had been shoved in the back of my garage and turn them into some serious cash. After all, who wouldn’t want to buy my old snap button western shirts I once wore on tour with my band? Or my vintage t-shirt collection that ranged from soft 1970’s Wild Turkey Bourbon logos to an original Rick Springfield Working Class Dog Hanes Beefy-T? Or even the dozens of valuable beer coozies I had collected rifling through Goodwill crates across the country that I just never used? And what neighborhood fashionista wouldn’t jump at the chance to own a pair of my wife’s designer leather pants for a steal at $100? Or any of the hundreds of blouses she had earned working in the fashion industry for twenty years? The way I saw it, my yard sale was more of a vintage pop-up shop than a junk sale – and I was expecting nothing but a hipster, gypsy crowd with millennial money in their wallets and a dream of buying an old suede fringe vest on their minds.

    Oh how wrong I was.

    The Craigslist ad I had placed stated that the sale would begin at 7 o’clock in the morning. However, a crowd of freakish haggling ghouls began showing up at 5:30, knocking on my pre-dawn door asking me if I would give them a sneak peak into my wares before everybody else arrived. Some came by van, others by bike. One man, I had assumed by the sleeping bag he carried, had camped out on our sidewalk the night before like we were about to release tickets to a One Direction concert. Suddenly, having a yard sale became somewhat frightening but I thought of all the time it would save me having to deal with ebay and those pesky fees, shipping costs and trips to the post office.

    Our first early morning visitors were two Spanish-speaking men who were very interested in knowing if we had any “tools for sale.” Having only owned a screwdriver, some nails and a hammer in my illustrious DIY carpentry career, I calmly told them no – before inquiring if they would be interested in a brass Jackson Browne belt buckle.

    “No, gracias,” the older gentleman said. He took a look at my daughter’s rusty Frozen decorated bicycle before driving off.

    The guy with the sleeping bag asked if we had any bedding and/or pillows for sale. I told him no, and asked him if he’d be interested in a Jane Fonda Workout vinyl record.

    No sale.

    ExKQ4GeS_dLCuP1y8yrXR4GwzJ35__jsYfbOYulVTc5tsqpxt2VD_13UyyiD8XPFYnNjhSwp4J88-SCEy2_Jzz1u-DKux0xHXuHk999O9oUjZx98-XSfnYcIvciNfFCLemJ12B2FrM0T1OefbkMQot7N4o5KP5l5SekZ3qb_R1k21d_FpKNJCjHVAxRwWdd0BJmPJZPZ0gH3sOegIPcw4drl_xl
    Vintage T-shirts. Priced at $10. Sold for $1.00

    Our next visitor arrived around 6:00 a.m. She was an older, haggard bag lady who had over 45 satchels draped off of her weathered bicycle. In the knapsack that was slung around her shoulder she carried an actual brass tai-chi sword that she insisted on wielding in front of my son in a terrible re-enactment of her early morning lesson she had just taken in Griffith Park. After frolicking around the sidewalk like Westley in The Princess Bride for 25 minutes, she finally walked in and inquired about buying some iron rods and curtain rings we had recently taken down from our inside windows. Originally, these rods were purchased for $300 when my wife was doing some interior decorating to her old home in Laurel Canyon. Feeling generous, I offered her the rods and rings – with the curtains included – for $200. She stared at me as if she was about to run me through with her weapon. She mumbled something beneath her breath and eventually moved onto the junk table I had assembled in the back corner. She picked up a set of hippopotamus salt-and-pepper shakers and giggled while examining them.

    “These are fun,” she exclaimed.

    “My mom brought me those from Morocco,” I told her, lying. In reality they were Goodwill purchases I had used as a prop in a film I had made with my brother in 2011.

    “Could you do ten bucks?”

    Again, she laughed and twirled around the yard and started speaking what seemed like French to nobody in particular. She wrote her name down in a tiny notebook she had hidden in her stocking, ripped the page out and handed it to me. As she pressed it into my palm, she whispered, “Call me when you realize you’re asking way too much money for everything.”

    I looked at the slip of paper. Her name was Laurette Soo-Chin-Wei Lorelai.

    Around 7:15, the floodgates began to open. More and more groups began appearing, asking for mainly larger items such as furniture and floor lamps. I was somewhat amazed that no one had snapped up the Crosley turntable, the Pablo Neruda collection of poetry or the coffee table book Nudie: The Rodeo Tailor. After 45 minutes, I was beginning to wonder if that sword-carrying woman was correct… Was I charging too much?

    I quickly Googled Yard Sale Etiquette.

    According to yard sale laws, the average price of most of your items that are not bulky or still in the packaging – should be around $1.00. My average item was in the 5-10 dollar range, and in my mind, totally reasonable. It wasn’t until I made my first sale that I had a change of direction for the rest of the afternoon.

    In 2007 or so, I had bought my son a collectible Star Wars denim jacket with R2-D2 and C-3PO sewn on the back at a trendy Farmer’s Market for $45. Even though he had probably thrown up and peed on it a few dozen times during his toddler-hood, I felt that $30 was a fair asking price. When I mentioned this to the interested woman who had been measuring it up against her own 3-year-old’s torso, she scoffed and hung it back on the rack.

    “Ay de mi!” She said in Spanish.

    Determined to make my first sale, I decided to bargain with her.

    Now, I come from a long line of world-class bargainers. My mother and late grandma used to waltz through Canal Street in New York City with peacock-like confidence, able to nudge an unwavering vendor into dropping the price on an imitation Louis Vitton handbag from 500 dollars to roughly 50 cents in under three-minutes. Together they played the street like silver-tongued Jewish barter hounds, satisfied only when departing the area with 3-5 purses, imitation Rolexes and fake Prada luggage beneath their arms. They have been taking me to the secret inner space of fake handbags since I was about two-years-old and as far back as I can remember, they were the Ronda Rouseys of price negotiating… In fact, I recall one legendary trip where my mother actually made a profit while buying a purse.

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    Canal Street Fake Handbags. Fertile Hunting Grounds for Jewish Women Across the World.

    Throughout the years, I have mastered the talent myself, but mainly when talking down a woman who once offered to cornrow my hair on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. I have also, never really been the haggled, only the haggler… Nevertheless, I felt that my family history had prepared me to challenge this woman over the Star Wars jacket to the very end… and I would not give in.

    “Maam, could you do 25?” I asked.

    “How about one dollar,” she said.

    “What?” I screamed. “This is Star Wars! Like, collectible!”

    “Senor, I will give you two dollars.”

    At this point I knew my grandmother was watching down from heaven like a boxing trainer watching her prizefighter take hits in the ring. I refused to back down, so I just slowly lowered my price until she agreed. I decided I would not go lower than 18 dollars.

    “20 bucks,” I said.

    “3 dollars,” She barked,

    “18?” I pleaded.

    “Adios, senor,” she said, walking away. Oh my God! What was wrong here? Had I lost the sale? Was I going to be stuck with this jacket in my garage for the next 30 years? Like most hoarders I thought to myself, maybe when my son has a kid of his own, he will give this to him… but I knew that was a long way off. Finally, I surrendered. Mainly as a way to break the ice and make my first sale of the day.

    “Maam? 3 dollars is fine,” I said. The lady reached in her wallet.

    “How about two?” She offered.

    I paused. I looked up at grandma, undoubtedly shaking her head in disappointment from that great Nordstrom’s Rack in the sky.

    “Fine,” I said. She pressed two wrinkly dollars into my hands and just like that, I was $42 in the hole, but I had made my first sale of the day.

    As the day wore on, my prices dipped lower and lower. I sold a handful of action figures for .25 cents a piece, a stack of vintage T-shirts for a dollar each and had the day’s biggest score when an unopened buffet dish that we had received for our wedding in 2004 went for $4.00. Nearly every item of clothing I was selling dropped in price by 99% by noon. My wife’s leather pants went for two bucks. The Rick Springfield shirt went for a dollar, as did the Mumford and Sons shirt, some Jack Daniel’s glasses and a silver booze flask that had an engraving of a man bass-fishing while naked. As the yard emptied, my wallet grew fatter and fatter – albeit with one-dollar bills – until I found myself exhausted, bored and anxiously wanting to count the bankroll in my pocket. My guess was that I had made $100 or so, based on the flurry of quick deals I made unloading the DVD collection, stacks of children’s books and my unbelievably large collection of novelty trucker hats… which had sold to some professional tree service men who had been working on a job a few blocks down. (Which might explain why if you drove by Franklin Avenue last weekend, you saw six guys on ladders wearing hats with My Other Car is Your Mom on them).

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    A customer scoffs at the $7 asking price for a pair of diamond earrings.

    The most disgusting sale of the day went to the three ladies who argued over who would get to wear my wife’s used LuLuLemon Yoga pants. In retrospect, I probably could have sold them to some perverted Japanese businessmen in a vending machine for $60 a piece. Instead, I settled for – yep you guessed it – a dollar.

    A crisis struck when I sold my son’s old Nintendo Wii console for ten bucks. Originally, he had wanted $100 for it… Which is 90 dollars more than what the smug bastards at GameStop will give you for the same item. Convincing him that I was a master salesman, I let him give me the Wii to sell at the yard sale instead. Sadly, I buckled early and let it go for $10.00 and I threw in some accessory called a Skylanders Portal. Not even sure that the console worked, I was just happy that I had made a double-digit sale. My son was not thrilled at all.

    “You’re the WORST!” He screamed at me. “That was worth at least 300 dollars!”

    One thing that kids fail to recognize is how fast technology loses value in today’s ever-changing world. Still, there was very little convincing him that I had struck a decent deal and he continuously stuck his head out the door and screamed at me for my “epic fail.” Ultimately, I ended up giving him the ten bucks even though I was the one who had bought him the original console for $275 back in 2010. Screw technology.

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    My son, the gamer, was pissed when I unloaded his old Wii for $10

    Around 4, the traffic had dwindled down to some neighbors, who we basically just handed items for free to get the stuff off of our property. Although it seemed like a bunch of things had been sold, I was still staring down a massive pile of clothes and books and toys and albums and knick-knacks and just straight up garbage. I prayed for some Saudi billionaire to walk in with a briefcase full of cash and just tell me he was taking the whole lot for $50. Alas, it looked as if my day was over. I cracked a beer and peed on a cactus.

    And then, like a boll weevil out of a nearby hedge, Laurette Soo-Chin-Wei Lorelai re- appeared, tai chi sword in hand, pushing her bike in my direction with a Cheshire cat-like simper on her face.

    Like a panther she strutted around the sale, inquiring about every single item remaining. She decided to mention that she was a regular on “the scene” and that she could tell you what was going to sell the minute she sets foot in someone’s rummage sale. She offered to help me whittle down my items to try and resell the next day for the bargain price of 10 dollars an hour… I relented. All I was thinking was “get the hell out of my yard.”

    I started gathering everything that was left over and throwing them in boxes. She suddenly slid next to me, holding the iron curtain rods, the rings and the hippopotamus salt-and-pepper shakers from earlier.

    “Ready to make a deal?” She asked.

    “Lady,” I said. “Give me five dollars and go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

    She handed over a bill, pressing it into my palm and stared directly into my eyes.

    “Told you so,” she said.

    That night I didn’t finish cleaning up. I was too wiped out. I left the majority of my once valuable wardrobe out for whoever in the neighborhood wanted it. A few things disappeared, which I didn’t even care about. It might be cool to see the neighborhood homeless guy wearing my old Blues Traveler T-shirt.

    The next morning I threw all the remaining crap into my car and drove it directly to the Out of the Closet Thrift Store. I shoved it into a filthy back room along with thousands of other donations. As we unloaded all the boxes and unsold clothes and books and toys, they asked me if I thought the huge haul of stuff was worth more than $500. After all, a big donation would serve as a great tax write-off at the end of the year. Unaware of this little loophole, I figured that, yes – this crap was definitely worth more than $500.

    They gave me a slip to present to my tax preparer and I drove home, satisfied that I had at least made a donation that would help me out financially.

    As for my bankroll, I finally had the chance to count my earnings at the end of the sale. For nine hours of bargaining, labor and sweating under 100-degree weather, I had made a grand total of $47.

    Somewhere up in heaven, my grandma was shaking her head in disappointment…

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    Somehow, Wham! Fantastic, Donna Summer and the Jane Fonda workout vinyl did not sell.

    DOWNLOAD ZACH’S NEW SONG: NIRVANA T-SHIRT!

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    Comedy first person essays funny gaming humor short stories star wars vintage clothing vinyl wii yard sales Zach Selwyn
  • In these scary times, we all need a little sports and a little humopr to get us by – Zach has been hired by theoddsfactory.com/runthetable to host a comedic sports trivia show EVERY DAY!!! 2pm EASTERN/ 11 am PST.

    You can win $100! – Test your sports knowledge and LAUGH!

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  • Zach breaks down the crowd, the Seattle Mariners and Lenny Kravitz’ penis.

    Live from August 4, 2015…

    420 country-rock Eminem freestyle rap I got Robbed Music poulsbo slippery pig Zach Selwyn Zachariah and the Lobos Riders
  • Zach is excited to announce he has published his first crime mystery novel, “Austin Translation.”

    Set in Austin, Texas during the summer of 2020, true crime podcaster Rob Stoner finds himself set up for the murder of a young girl. Now, using his amateur sleuthing skills, he has to clear his name, find the killer and save his marriage all during a global pandemic.

    Please download on Amazon.com – Physical signed copies will be available for purchase upon request for $10.00 in the near future.

    (c) 2020 Desert Hobo Press

    All rights Reserved

    austin humor Kinky Friedman mystery Novel Selwyn true crime
  •  

    Antonio Brown? Punching refs? Mitch McGary going all 420? You’re on blast with Zach and his TBS web series “Out of Control Athletes of the Week.”

    Antonio Brown Comedy funny humor improv MLB NBA NFL Steelers Westbrook Zach Selwyn
  • Check out our write up in Entertainment Weekly today! And PLZ go and SUBSCRIBE and give us a 5 star rating!!!

    Anna Faris producing new comedy podcast ‘Missi & Zach Might Bang!’

    Anna Faris producing new comedy podcast Missi & Zach Might Bang!

    CRISTINA EVERETT@CRISTINAEVERETT

    Anna Faris is expanding her presence in the podcast world.

    The Mom star and host of Anna Faris is Unqualified has launched a new podcast featuring Gone Girl actress Missi Pyle and actor-musician Zach Selwyn. Titled Missi and Zach Might Bang!, the new show is a fun mix of celebrity interviews and improv and is being executive produced by Faris and her Unqualified co-host/producer, Sim Sarna.

    “[Missi and Zach] have spent their careers navigating Hollywood as actors and musicians, and now they are taking their multitude of talents and launching their podcast,” according to the show’s press release, which adds that it will feature “an array of improvisational songs, stories, laughter, and the immortal question… Will they ever bang?”

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  • Zach’s new weekly series “NBA RAPDATE” turns it up a notch this week… check it!

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  • By Zach Selwyn

    My wife and I once hired a hippie nanny named Sioux who hid little bags of weed for me around our house. I remember the day we interviewed her – she was about 19, naturally slender with long blonde hair and she was wearing a skirt that looked like it was stitched out of the AIDS quilt… She had on Birkenstocks. She smelled like lavender. She was gorgeous. My first thought was, “I would have totally dated this girl back in college.”

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    I would have totally dated this girl back in college.

    When you’ve been married as long as my wife and I have, the best way to say you think somebody is attractive is to say that you would have dated ‘back in college.’
    Of course, I told my wife this very fact.
    “Well keep your hippie dick in your jorts,” she responded.

    I laughed. I love my wife. Meanwhile, after a few conversations, I was sold on Sioux to become our nanny for our then five and two-year-old kids… but my wife wasn’t so into it.

    “I don’t know – she seems flighty,” she remarked.

    “Cmon, what’s the worst that can happen?” I asked. “She gets high and eats all of our ice cream?”

    My wife agreed, mainly because we had a wedding that Saturday night and our other go-to nannies were already busy.

    “If she fucks up, that’s on you,” she said.

    She didn’t fuck up. At least that first night. In fact, when we came back from the wedding a little buzzed from the wine, we stayed up late with her and talked about the kids, how hard it was to meet guys in Los Angeles and eventually, she secretly told me that she hid a tiny bag of weed for me underneath the sage candle she had lit to ward off bad spirits on the coffee table. As she left, I thanked her and imagined that if she was my age in 1995, we would have been one of those hippie power couples that I was always jealous of at Phish concerts.

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    My 1995 hippie dream.

    The second time Sioux babysat, I casually came downstairs wearing my old Grateful Dead 1992 Spring Tour shirt. She went ape shit. Told me it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen. I immediately felt like Phil from Modern Family, pretending that I didn’t even know I had the shirt on… even though I had been calculating the move since the week before. From the corner of my eye I saw my wife shaking her head while watching my pathetic attempt to connect with Sioux over a t-shirt.

    grateful-dead-spring-tour-1992-reonegro-vintage-concert-rare-t-shirt-xl-3c6197b4da3b7f90b81571a1af5625aa
    “Nice shirt, babe,” she said.

    “I guess I’ll go get ready,” I added before running upstairs to change.

    When I came back downstairs, Sioux had prepared some food for the kids (all macrobiotic) and smiled one of those young hippie smiles at me – as if we were college sophomores peaking during a Run Like an Antelope solo. My wife smiled at me. I smiled at my wife. She smiled at Sioux. I kissed my kids. Sioux leaned in and hugged Wendy. They separated. The kids ate. My wife watched me as I leaned in and hugged Sioux. As I did, I stupidly whispered a single word into her ear…

    “Candle?”

    Sioux smiled. My wife looked confused. I brought myself out of this fantasy hippie love triangle and said, “OK, bath at 7:15 and bed by eight.”

    My wife and I walked outside to catch our Lyft.

    In our ride to the birthday party that night, my wife cleared her throat and calmly asked me exactly what “candle” meant.

    I told her.

    “Last time she babysat, Sioux left me a part of a joint underneath the candle on the coffee table and I smoked it.”

    “Oh great, so she’s high around our kids?”

    “Well, I mean… so what? Sometimes I’m high around our kids.”

    “This is her last night babysitting,” my wife said.

    I could understand her frustration. It wasn’t because Sioux was this macrame Goddess with rings on her fingers and bells on her shoes… but face it – if your nanny was sneaking joints around your two-year-old daughter, you might think about getting rid of her too.

    Still, I argued that we had nothing to worry about and that by the time we returned home, we would be thrilled to find our kids in bed and that maybe we could even split the little bag of weed I was expecting to find underneath the sage candle on our coffee table.

    Until we got back around 11:45 p.m.

    As it turns out, Sioux had started a bath for the kids upstairs… and forgot that she began running it. She turned on the water and then came downstairs to get the kids and somehow got distracted… By what, nobody knows – food? A text? A documentary on YouTube about the benefits of Dr. Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar? Whatever the case, she suddenly remembered that the bath was on just as drops of water began seeping through our living room ceiling and landing on the floor. The puddle stain on the roof was large and substantial and we knew we were looking at some serious water damage and mold repair.

    Sioux was in shambles.

    water-damage
    Our ceiling

    As she tried to explain how she forgot to turn off the water, we examined the damage and quickly lost the hippie buzz we had all generated earlier. I informed Sioux that we would pay her for her time, but that we fully expected her to be responsible for the damages once we had the roof inspected. She agreed and left, her head hung low, embarrassed and ashamed.

    “OK, so she was probably high and forgot about the bath,” I said.

    “Ya think?”

    Stupidly, I checked beneath the candle for some weed.

    There was nothing.

    The damage came to over 1000 dollars. Sioux was broke and we felt bad charging her, so she offered to babysit for free until she could pay us back. Amazingly in Los Angeles, that’s only like, five nights of work…

    However, my wife and I chose to not use her again.

    The last I saw on Facebook she was living in Oregon with a Spanish guy named Pau.

    Lucky bastard… He was living my hippie dream…

     

    Preview an upcoming song from Zach’s new album!

     

     

     

    dad blog essays funny hippie girls hot hippies humor mom blog nanny national lampoon parenting short stories Zach Selwyn
  • Aquaman-Movie-Seven-Seas-Tribes-1

    11 years ago I covered a $659.48 bill in a Vancouver bar because Jason Momoa had conveniently, “left his wallet at home.”

    Aquaman owes me some cash.

    All of these Aquaman billboards that are towering all over the country have had me nostalgic for a night, back in 2007, when I had spent the night drinking and hanging out with a young actor named Jason Momoa who was playing “Ronon Dex” on a TV show called Stargate Atlantis.

    I had met Jason because I had made and performed a viral “Stargate Atlantis rap video” about how much of a superfan of the TV show I was… (even though I had never seen an episode). The producers then offered me a small role as “Scientist #2” on an upcoming episode of the program and they even flew me up to Vancouver to act in a scene. We also scheduled a “Set visit” for the TV show I was currently on called Attack of the Show.

    This whole thing started when my friend Jane, a veteran TV producer, was asked by the Stargate universe to create them a “viral video” for the internet.

    This was during a small period of time when TV/Film companies were hiring producers to try and capture lightning in a bottle for the masses by shooting high quality videos that seemed cheap, affordable and easy to digest online… This was WAY before influencers, SoundCloud rappers and Instagram stories… This was before everybody had an iPhone and a high quality camera in their pockets and garage band on their laptops. If you had musical talent and were willing to work for next to nothing, you could get a million views and the respect of the industry in about a week.

    I had recently performed and produced a series of comedic rap videos for Attack of the Show – which led to Jane calling me to do a song about Stargate Atlantis as they attempted to develop their online brand.

    “Have you ever seen the show?” Jane asked me on the phone one afternoon.

    “No, but that won’t matter,” I responded. “Send me the DVD’s and I’ll write a song tonight.”

    Her messenger delivered the DVD’s that afternoon. I watched six episodes. By 11 p.m. that night I had written an entire rap song about how much I loved Stargate Atlantis and how, as an actor, my dream was to be on an episode of the show…

    Two days later we recorded the rap song with a music producer named Terrace Martin. Yeah, the same Terrace Martin who rolls with Kendrick Lamar. You know that song “Damn?” THAT TERRACE MARTIN. The man is a hip-hop legend. However, back in 2007 he was just another guy trying to make it, like we all were… and his resume included some indie rappers and a couple of songs with Snoop Dogg.

    Here’s the Stargate Atlantis song and video we shot while making it…

    After this song and video went “nerd viral,” which meant that all the Stargate Atlantis fans went crazy analyzing the lyrics and anointing me the “King of Stargate rap music” – I began receiving hundred of emails and MySpace requests from Stargate fans across the world. They all had names like “Wraith Woman #2” and “Daedulus Dude” and were asking me for my address so they could send me things like Stargate collector’s plates and shit. (I still have these). It was crazy. The fans rivaled Trekkies or the disciples of the Star Wars Universe. I had suddenly been accepted into the tight circles of Stargate fanatics.

    The video was spreading and an executive producer on the show  held a cast and crew screening and made me an instant celebrity amongst the cast, grips and writers of the show. It was INSANE. A week later they flew me up to Vancouver to play my small role, put me up in a hotel and even PAID me… These are the type of jobs that RARELY come along…

    Anyway, I first met Jason Momoa on set the day of my scene, and I watched him train incessantly for some tricky fighting sequence. I interviewed him along with the rest of the cast for my set visit and got along well with everybody. What stood out to me most about Jason was that, whereas the rest of the cast had big, beautiful trailers… Jason had an AirStream trailer from the 1960’s. The other cast had couches, but Jason had removed his and fastened in a hammock instead. The dude was definitely living a different life as a TV star.

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    After interviewing him, we started talking music and went back to his Airstream where he showed me his 1940’s Gibson acoustic guitar that was worth about $5,000. I played it in awe and dreamt of the day I could play a character like his – a “Satedan,” a member of civilization from the Pegasus Gallery on my own bad ass science fiction TV show… Instead, on the episode that day I was simply playing “Scientist #2,” a character who contracts some disease and had a few throw away lines to Dr. Mckay (played by the hilarious David Hewlett).

    By the way, I still get occasional 13 cent residual check in the mail from this role…

    After my scene was shot, Jason casually mentioned that he had a day off the next day and wanted to know if I had any interest in getting some beers that night.

    “Sure, man,” I said.

    That evening we met at the hotel and proceeded to ambush the nightclubs of Vancouver. At first, we met some of his friends for drinks where the bartender refused to charge him anything. A few beers in and we headed over to a dinner spot where a bunch of his friends joined us. The drinks and food flowed and I was amazed at how many people stopped and paid their respects to Jason and his impressive dreadlocks. He was a big time celebrity in town… I just thought he was a cool guy. Then, around 11 p.m. the bill came.

    We all sort of stared at it for a long time. And then Jason picked it up. He looked at it, leaned over to me and whispered in my ear.

    “Dude, I left my wallet at my place, can you cover this?” He said

    “Uhhh, pay me back?” I said, rather scared to look at the total.

    “Yeah man, we’ll go to my apartment. I have cash.”

    And so, just like that, I put my card down and bought Jason Momoa and his friends a $659.48 dinner.

    And then we went to the bar and I bought some more beers. And then some more. And then we stopped at a liquor store on the way home where I picked up some Stella Artois to take back to his place.

    I was about $750.00 in the hole at this point.

    Momoa’s apartment was sort of like his trailer. He had decorated it with a bunch of his homemade leather furniture, was definitely not a fan of pre-fabricated food and he immediately put on the incredible Tom Waits CD Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards.

    We drank a few beers and talked about Hollywood, his girlfriend Lisa Bonet and how he had dreams of becoming a “Warrior” in the movies or something… I told him how my dream was to play the Greek Theater in Los Angeles someday. We went back and forth about how the wolf was his spirit animal and mine was the eagle. He showed me his screenplay, which was wrapped in a handmade leather-bound notebook of some sort – and I gave him my band’s new CD Alcoholiday, which he told me he liked. He then gave me a copy of a terrific book called “Hobo” by Eddy Joe Cotton (A MUST READ) and we toasted to our dreams until the early morning.

    Around 3 a.m. I called a cab and my night out with Jason Momoa had come to a drunken, blurry end. I stumbled back to my hotel room at the Sutton Place and got into bed… It was then that I realized SHIT. I forgot to ask him for the money from dinner.

    The next day my wife called and asked me if I had spent $750.00 on our card, as she was getting “fraud alerts” from the bank.

    “Yeah, it’s a long story,” I said. “But I made a cool new friend!”

    A few weeks later, the British TV station SKY 1 contacted me about using my Stargate song as a promo to hype the upcoming new season of the show. I agreed and it opened up a brand new fan base across the pond. To this day, the ASCAP residual checks I got from that usage are above and beyond any financial success I have ever experienced.

    And somewhere, on an old hard drive of mine, exist about 25 photos of me and Jason hanging on set… in the bars and among the barflies of Vancouver back in 2007. There is also a segment we produced for Attack of the Show on a DVD buried somewhere in my garage, but I ain’t trying to go dig that shit out either… If you have it, internet, feel free to post it.

    Screen Shot 2018-12-10 at 10.55.29 AM.png
    The author on set with Momoa 2007…

    Jason and I stayed in touch for a few years, texting songs and book recommendations to each other, but once he got more and more successful, our texts stopped and we both fell into busier work and fatherhood. Now, as I see him staring at me from the stage of Saturday Night Live – or from behind his massive Trident on an Aquaman billboard, I feel like he finally became the “warrior” he had told me he wanted to become.

    As for me, I haven’t played the Greek Theater yet… But, when I make it there, I’ll perform any song you want to hear…

    Even the Stargate Atlantis song…

    2007 acting Aquaman Attack of the Show David Hewlett essay funny G4TV Jason Momoa Kendrick Lamar money Music SNL stargate Stargate Atlantis terrace martin Vancouver Zach Selwyn
  • IMG_4819

    48 hours into a nine-day cruise on the Baltic Sea, I successfully traded a first season DVD of the TV show SMILF for a bottle of French wine.

    Confused?

    About two weeks ago, my friend Dan asked me to help punch up some scripts for a new live music/theatrical show he was producing on the Lightdream Cruise Line – a ship that is the size of some small cities – with 4000 passengers aboard and over 1200 staff members… Always one for an adventure, I took the gig, fondly recalling the last time I was on a cruise back in high school… I bathed in crystal blue waters, ate unlimited five star food, seduced beautiful women and sipped tropical cocktails by the pool… I was hoping this would be the same thing.

    Ehhh, not so much.

    cruiseshipsmain

    Following a 17-hour travel day, Dan, the show’s producer Mark and I boarded the ship in Brest, France. Following our long trip, I was craving a glass of red wine and some Netflix. We met our cruise liasion, Sarah, and she gave us the lay of the land…

    “So where’s like, the best bar on the ship?” I asked.

    “Oh honey, there’s no alcohol until we reach Copenhagen in four days,” she said.

    “Excuse me?” I replied.

    “Yep. And all the restaurants are closed. Oh, and be aware that there’s no internet or facilities open now… This is called ‘Dry Dock.’”

    “And where can I jump overboard?”

    As I contemplated learning how to make “toilet merlot” in my cabin, I got the rundown on what exactly “Dry-Dock” is.

    “Dry-Dock” is when the ship is being refurbished, rebuilt and cleaned. For weeks, it is in a state of disrepair and thousands of contractors from over 50 countries tear up carpets, put up stages and gather for their three meals a day in the makeshift dining room. People are monitored, allowed 45 minute meal windows, told to avoid sexual contact, can be kicked off board if they have weapons or contraband and nobody is allowed off the ship once they are on…

    Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s because it sounds exactly like prison.

    IMG_4225
    The view during ‘Dry Dock.’

    If I was going to write a Yelp review about the makeshift dining room where we were forced to eat, I would describe it as “Just a cut below Cracker Barrel…with all the ambience of a shopping mall Red Robin.”

    Still, it was our only option and Dan, Mark and I became  our own little prison gang, talking under our breaths about Broadway shows and musical theater as massive Scottish, Irish and Croatian guys cursed in their own languages, swallowed gallons of coffee and made us feel like we had to kick one of their asses to establish our dominance in the jail yard…

    “I guarantee you we’re the only guys in this dining room right now discussing The Greatest Showman,” Mark said.

    The food was constantly recycled and turned into a “new dish” the following day. For instance, the leftover “Breaded Chicken and Peppers” from the night before suddenly showed up again the next morning in the “Breaded Chicken Veggie Scramble.” At one point, I counted four meals in a row featuring a fish called branzino.

    IMG_4766
    Enjoying my 5th Branzino dish of the week…

     

     

    IMG_4255
    Common Mistake

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    One day in the slop line, I chatted up one particularly nice Irish pipe-fitter named Lochlin as we were served what was being passed off as “Lamb Stew.”

    “Hey man – where’s the booze on this ship?” I whispered. “Somebody’s gotta have something?”

    “Booze? You gotta cohme to Deck One,” he replied in a thick brogue. “We smahggled in everything… booze, dihrty mags, DVD’s.”

    And just like that, my trip was saved.

    “Wait – why do you have DVDs?” I inquired.

    “Shite – with no intehrnet – DVD’s are our only fohrm of entertainment. They’re in high demahnd… Unless you have a thumb drive with pornahgraphy on it – that’s what everybady wants.”

    He wasn’t lying. As it turns out, thumb drives with porn on them were traded among the contractors like cigarettes at Riker’s Island. If I could only download my weekly browsing history on Redtube.com, I’d be a very rich man.

    “So how much are DVD’s worth?” I asked.

    “Depends,” he said. “I just traded seahson one of Stranger Things for four pahcks of smokes… it was fookin’ brahlliant.”

    It was then that I remembered I had a few DVD’s with me in my backpack. With any luck, I’d have something valuable on me… I also had a thumb drive that, if I recalled correctly, had Toy Story 3 on it from a family trip a few years back. I ran to my cabin to assess my stash.

    In my bag, I had brought DVD’s of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Why I had this I have no idea.) Major League and Major League 2 (Research for a baseball comedy I was writing) and the first season DVD screener of the Showtime TV show SMILF – about a single mom who dates the wrong guys in Boston. It didn’t look very good, but the actress was hot. (I was sent the screener by the Emmy nominating committee, fyi).

    I then checked my thumb drive, for Toy Story 3. It was gone. The only thing on it was my latest acting “demo reel.”

    That night, Dan and I went downstairs to Deck One to see if we could get our hands on anything… a sip of wine, a beer… something to take away the endless jet lag and long nights of rehearsal.

    Lochlin vouched for us – and the DVD’s were thrown on a table. About nine guys came and glanced at them, seeing if any of these films seemed appealing. Sadly, nobody was interested in Benjamin Button or the Major League movies.

    “The Benjamin Button movie is too sad and we all fookin hate bahseball,” Lochlin informed me.

    SMILF however, had some people intrigued. They wanted to know if the girl got naked, had any sex scenes, if it was funny, etc. I told them I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t watched it yet, but a small bidding war began.

     

    9e8226482e5cb624318c353731c71164
    My SMILF DVD’s started a crew-wide bidding war

    One guy offered up a German porn magazine and two Heinekens. A Croatian guy said he had two packs of cigarettes and homemade Rakia – some type of homemade alcohol. Finally, Lochlin offered me a bottle of Bordeaux he had paid a Phillipino busboy 5 euros to smuggle on.

    Lochlin took me to the bowels of the ship. These were the DiCaprio cabins from Titanic and the party going on down there was exactly what you think it would be. A guy was DJ-ing off a laptop, people were dancing and drinking… and there was even a guy giving makeshift haircuts using what I would refer to as my “pube clippers.”

    IMG_4476
    10 Euros got you a trim.

    In Lochlin’s room, he showed me how he and four other guys slept in the same room and shared a “Shoilet” – which is a combination of a shower and a toilet. I looked in the bathroom and nearly had a panic attack. These guys were living like pirates in the 1700’s but without barrels of rum, wenches and chests of gold.

    He also told me the ship’s morgue was only two doors down the hall.

    “The morgue?” I cringed. “For what?”

    “About ten fuckers a year die on this ship,” he said. “Someone will prahbably die before we set sail tomorrow.”

    Jesus Christ.

    I urgently prodded Lochlin to produce the wine and I swiftly stuck it in my bag. I also noticed a couple of other bottles in his room as well. With two more days until Copenhagen, I offered up my thumb drive for another one.

    “OK, look my friend – I’m actually an actor – on this drive is a three minute demo reel of a bunch of TV shows and movies I’ve been in… it aint much, but maybe worth at least a glass of wine?”

    “Hmmm, “he said, actually contemplating the trade. “What mowvies have you been in?”

    “Uhmm… A couple Disney shows, a Jim Gaffigan movie … I dunno – nothing you’ve probably ever seen…”

    “Fuck that, Ill just take SMILF.”

    I handed it over to him, and with that, I had my hands on a mediocre bottle of French Bordeaux.

    Dan, Mark and I savored every pour of that wine that evening. As we giddily went off to bed, hoping to finally have a decent night’s sleep, we passed three contractors casually walking from the top deck somehow holding six beers in their hands.

    “Woah, what the fuck?” Dan said. “Where’d you guys get that?”

    “At the contractor bar upstairs,” the guy said.

    What? A contractor bar? We ran up and caught the last five minutes of a ship regulated “pop-up bar” for the workers. It had been here the whole time and nobody had told us. As it turns out, all of the ship contractors were allowed to come to this bar for a two hour drink window… It was like when the caddies are allowed an hour in the swimming pool in Caddyshack.

    Beers were $1.00 and a mini bottle of wine was $1.75. Mark bought the entire bar a round for $14.50.

    IMG_4477
    $1.75 for a Mini Bottle of merlot? HELL YEAH.

    The following night we were back up with the contractors, who were amazed that a couple of Americans had actually gone down to Deck One and made a wine deal with a Irish guy. One guy from Warsaw informed me that I had been ripped off. He would have given me three bottles of wine for SMILF.

    We finally sailed towards Copenhagen and I was reminded of how beautiful the world can be outside of Los Angeles. The contractors left and the passengers got onboard and the drinks flowed and a lot of overweight older couples explored the ship and bought things that nobody in their right mind should ever buy.

    At an onboard art auction, I watched two 75-year-old women violently bid on a 72 x 36 painting of a unicorn walking through Times Square… The lucky winner paid $2875 dollars for it.

    Meanwhile, the cruise sailed on. We helped establish the flow and structure of the show. After a few days, you start to learn a lot from cruise employees. Most of them are on board for nine months at a time, and many of them are running from some dark, hidden past. It’s almost like the porn industry mixed with hotel management… Which often leads to bad decisions.

    Sarah explained it further.

    “Everybody sleeps together at first,” she said. “But then you realize you’re gonna have to see them every day for nine months. One night you have sex, the next day you’re fighting over the last box of Frosted Flakes in the buffet.”

    “So I’m guessing you’ve stopped sailing your boat in company waters?” I joked.

    “No way,” she said. “I banged a sushi chef last year.”

    Another thing about cruise employees is that they are obviously extremely removed from current pop culture. At one point, Sarah told me that her favorite film of the past five years was “That amazing Ben Affleck move The Accountant.”

    “You have to get off this ship,” I said.

    The final night of the cruise and our show was up and running. I had befriended a bunch of new people and watched the show come together. One of the stage directors actually told me that I’d make a great cruise employee as I enjoyed talking to everybody and having a good time.

    “I’m flattered, man – but I gotta get back to my family,” I said.

    “Oh, you’re one of them…” he said with a sense of disappointment.

    I had just been “Family Shamed” by a cruise ship employee.

    He apologized for the way he reacted and just said he didn’t know a lot of people who were married with children. I told him not to worry about it and we wrapped up the show for the night.

    He then excused himself and went to the shoilet…

    MIGHT BANG IS COMING BACK! DOWNLOAD THE NICOLE SULLIVAN LIVE BONUS EPISODE BELOW!

    missi-zach-logo

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/missi-and-zach-might-bang/id1217686743?mt=2&i=1000411754247

    baltic sea broadway bukowski cruise ship david sedaris essays funny humor humor writing hunter s. thompson short stories tom wolfe Zach Selwyn
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New Poster for Knoxville, June 24 is here! W/ J Lalonde and Billy Wayne Davis!

  • June 1, 2010
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Uncategorized

Knoxville show! June 24! Zach Selwyn live at Latitude 35J LaLonde, Billy Wayne Davis and me in Knoxville!
Come see us in Knoxville, y'all!

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