Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.
Zach recently began shooting a multi-episode series for History Chanel – where Zach travels deep into the heart of America to find the most unique and unusual people, jobs, locations and history he can find! Produced by Bullet Point Films, expect the series to premiere on TV and online in late 2017 or early 2018! Here’s a sneak peak of Zach at Rhinebeck Aerodrome in upstate New York and in Grand Teton National Park… Look for him on the road!
When I came down with the rebound and heard my right knee explode and pop, I knew something was horribly wrong… I looked up at the faces of my basketball teammates looking down at me lying on the court writhing in agonizing pain. I somehow managed to verbalize what was going through my mind…
“That’s it, amputate my leg… just cut the fucker off.”
Turns out my injury wasn’t bad enough to turn me into an amputee, but it was bad. Torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Partially torn medical meniscus. Partially torn medial collateral ligament (MCL). If you’re not familiar with this medical terminology, in layman’s terms… I blew out my whole fucking knee.
Before I was given the official medical report by my doctor, I had four days to figure out what the hell I had done to myself. Why? Well, in America, with health care as bad as it is, getting in to see an Orthopedic surgeon for an official diagnosis takes time… Like, a lot of time. Which means, after Googling “knee injuries” over 3000 times, I had to make my own medical diagnosis on myself until a doctor appointment could be set up.
Based on my online research, I had concluded that one of three things had happened to me:
1. I tore my ACL.
2. I tore some other knee ligament.
3. My bones were deteriorating from early onset kidney disease and I would be dead by August.
My father and sister are both doctors, so their advice to use the RICE method, (Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate), helped a lot. They recommended getting crutches to get around, so, I quickly called my friend Scott, another basketball friend who had suffered numerous leg injuries over the years. Sure he had a pair… he said. But they were for people 5’10” and under.
After searching for cheap crutches online, I called the Hollywood Goodwill and was told by an employee that they had a set that they would hold for me. As I limped through the parking lot of the store, praying that they would fit my 6’2” frame, I went over certain decisions in my life that had lead me to this point… Why had I turned down the professional path to pursue this artist life? If I hadn’t, would I be staggering through a Goodwill parking lot in Hollywood on a Thursday afternoon in my pajamas trying to save $15 on crutches if I only had I taken that job at FOX SPORTS all those years ago? What had I done to my life? The last couple months had been tough… Air BNB disavowed my house from renting it out, so my income had been roughly slashed in half. My latest voiceover residual check I had received in the mail was for .08 cents… My only solace of late had been in playing basketball… and now that dream, like my right knee, was CRUSHED.
I felt like I was on the verge of being homeless.
Of course the girl at Goodwill had made a mistake. They had a WALKER, not crutches. It also happened to have a blood stain on it, which is why it was SLASHED to $2.00. I passed.
I went to Walgreens next, where the crutches were at the back of the store. I hobbled all the way in only to find that they were “on sale” for $59.99. Excuse me? 60 bucks? FUCK OFF. I was about to go fasten myself a crutch out of an old tree branch and a bicycle seat when I looked on my phone and noticed that Home Depot sold them… I called, but got no answer. When I showed up, I was told that their crutches were not available in-store. They were online deals only.
“Go to Urgent Care,” my friend Alex told me. “They’ll be able to tell in five seconds if you tore something… and they’ll give you crutches for free.”
Urgent Care it was. I found one with a five star rating on Yelp and went down. I paid my $25 co-pay and was treated by a 20-something female who claimed to be a doctor, although I noticed that her name tag did not say “M.D.” It had a bunch of other letters that I’m sure were placed there to confuse naive patients… Hers said A.P.R.N. C.N.M.
I texted my sister – a doctor down in Newport Beach – to see if this lady was, in fact, a doctor.
ZACH: Hey – What do these abbreviations mean and is she a legit doctor? A.P.R.N. C.N.M.
She wrote back immediately.
AMANDA: NO! That stands for Advanced Practice Registered Nurse – Certified Nursing Midwife – What are you, fucking pregnant? get the hell out of there and see a real doctor!!!
Since I had already paid the $25.00, I stayed. The young “doctor” felt my knee. She moved it around. She stretched it. It actually felt pretty good… And then, she gave me her official diagnosis:
“You did NOT tear anything,” she said. “This is a bad sprain at worst.”
“Really!” I exclaimed. “A bad sprain? Thank you sooo much! If I ever need a midwife, I’m calling YOU!”
She took some X-Rays of my knee, (which I later learned were completely unnecessary for a ligament injury and cost me $125) and I asked them to provide my free crutches. When they explained that they did have crutches – but that they cost $39.99, I bit the bullet and bought them. Finally, upon checkout, the manager told me that I could earn a $5.00 gift card to a Starbucks if I simply gave them a 5-Star Review on YELP.
“Hell yeah!” I said. “You guys made my day.”
I put in the 5-Star review, snagged my gift card and Uber-ed home to elevate my “bad sprain.” Wow, no tear, no surgery, no problem. I was elated and texted everybody I knew that I’d be back on the basketball court within weeks.
And then I got an appointment with a real doctor.
Dr. Weiss was recommended to me by my primary care physician. I had my leg up on his exam table the very next day, confident that he would walk in, slip me an ACE Bandage and wish me happy holidays… Instead, within 30 seconds of looking at my knee, he casually offered the following.
“Wow, you tore the shit out of your ACL… Hopefully you didn’t do too much damage to the other ligamants,” he said.
“Wait, what?!” I reacted. “Tore my ACL? But the Urgent Care said it was a bad sprain…?”
“Well, if by ‘bad sprain’ they mean a ’completely annihilated anterior cruciate ligament,’ then… yes.”
Oh fuck.
Dr. Weiss scheduled an MRI for that afternoon and told me I had wasted my money on X-rays and my entire Urgent Care appointment.
“Lemme guess,” he said. “They offered you a Starbucks gift card?”
Following the MRI, which is when you go inside one of those huge claustrophobic X-Ray machines to examine all of your inner workings, I was back in Dr. Weiss’ office for my evaluation two days later.
He broke down my injury and began planning out my recovery. Since I was set to travel with my family for the holidays, I was concerned I’d be missing out on my trip… He assured me that since my swelling was so immense, I would have to wait at least four weeks for surgery. He then explained how it would work.
“Based on the fact that you’re 44-years-old, I’m gonna replace your ACL with a cadaver ligament.”
“I’m sorry, what? A CADAVER LIGAMENT?”
Doctor Weiss smiled. He went on to explain that younger “athletes” can replace their torn ACL’s with their own ligaments, but for older guys like me, the best option is to take an anterior cruciate ligament from a DEAD BODY and put it into my destroyed knee.
“Can you make the ligament from like some Kenyan distance runner or something?” I joked.
“Haha,” He said. “It’ll most likely be from a car crash victim.”
Wonderful.
Dr. Weiss also told me that 20 years ago, patients my age wouldn’t even be ELIGIBLE for ACL replacement. As if men over 40 were considered beyond repair or something… Luckily, the outlook on knees had changed since the late 90’s.
Eager to get to my rehabilitation, I bought a $300 knee brace from the doctor (Of course, not covered by insurance) and got instructions on how to put it on. After it was affixed, I had the look of a hydraulic half-man/half-Cyborg. I felt like Darth Vader.
“Will I be ever able to play basketball at the level I was playing again?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “But you might want to join an elderly league.”
Limping out of Dr. Weiss’ office on my crutches, the first glimpse of my mortality had hit me. Knees crumble, ankles snap… ligaments are torn. Age is forever out there hunting us down. Luckily, with this type of injury, full recoveries are entirely expected and at worst, I would lose 4-6 months of my life to inactivity.
On the way home, I stopped at Starbucks to spend my $5.00 gift card on a cup of coffee. When I presented it to the cashier, he told me news that at this point, I was not surprised to hear.
“Sorry, sir,” she said. “This card only works at certain Starbucks… Not this one.”
I logged onto Yelp and changed my review…
*Ed Note: Zach is set for ACL replacement surgery in Mid January. Stay tuned!
CHECK OUT/BUY ZACH’S DEBUT NOVEL NOW!
Available Now on Amazon!
Singer-Songwriter Zachariah Selwyn will release his 5th official LP next week, a country-hip hop concept album entitled “Firing Squad.” The record is based on an unreleased scripted western project that Selwyn has been developing for more than a year.
“I guess I wanted to get the music out before the project was done,” Selwyn says. “I know that projects like this sometimes get sidetracked.”
The “Firing Squad” soundtrack features female vocalist Gia Ciambotti (Bruce Springsteen/Joe Walsh) in a starring role, marking the first time the band has used utilized a second lead singer on record.
“Gia is an absolute mesmerizing presence on a microphone,” Selwyn explains. “I keep hoping she joins our band permanently, but the road isn’t that appealing for most of us anymore so for now we’ll keep it in the studio.”
“Firing Squad” also features longstanding band members Dan Wistrom, Bobby Joyner and producer/multi-instrumentalist Jesse Siebenberg. (Lukas Nelson).
I have been a hip-hop fan since the time I was given the first RUN-DMC cassette for my birthday in 1984. I dove into rap music full-fledged and became a true wannabe emcee once the Beastie Boys made white, Jewish rappers cool a couple of years later. I have every great hip-hop classic on vinyl. I stream the newest stuff that comes out within 24 hours of its release and I still get excited when I hear that De La Soul is touring or that there is a Wordstarhiphop video of a “weave snatch” at Drake’s latest pool party.
So, imagine my elation when my boss at my job asked me to work with a one-time super famous gangsta rapper for our website… and even gave me a budget to approach him with.
For the sake of this piece – (and for my safety as a human being) – let’s call this rapper “SEISMIC.” Seismic is one of those rap stars who had a lot of hits in the 90’s, but is now out of the music game altogether. Gangsta rap is all but extinct and even though Seismic has appeared on a few reality shows in the past few years, including one where he attempted to become a professional dog-walker that never aired, I was a lifelong fan and couldn’t wait to work with him.
“What should we get Seismic to do for us?” I asked my boss.
“I think it would be funny to have him read the children’s book Goodnight Moon,” my boss suggested.
The idea was approved and through a connection, I was able to obtain Seismic’s manager’s information. He went strictly by the name “Dope Green.” I dialed up his phone on a Monday morning, hoping to close the deal by the end of the week.
“Who dis?” A terse voice greeted me with.
“Hi, my name is Zach Selwyn from TBS Digital,” I said.
“We already got cable,” the voice said.
“No, no… I’m from TBS – I’m calling about hiring Seismic to do some web stuff for us? Is this Dope Green?”
“Oh shit. Hole up.”
I waited on the other end of the phone for what seemed like an eternity. I was obviously muted, because all I heard was silence. For eight minutes. Finally, Dope Green returned.
“What’s the deal?” He said. I don’t wanna do any talking over the phone, can you come through to our spot? We in a small warehouse by the Burbank Airport…”
I was beginning to feel like I was a molly dealer who had to drive to deliver pills to some video set. I asked my boss if I could leave to go meet Seismic and his crew. He said no.
I told Dope Green that I was not able to leave the office.
“Shit. Let me call you back from my burner phone then.”
A few minutes later, a blocked number rang up my cell phone and I explained that we wanted Seismic to read Goodnight Moon to camera. The entire process would not take more than a minute and we had real money to offer him. Five thousand dollars.
Dope Green laughed.
“You from TBS? Like the network? And you tryin’ to pull off Seismic for five G’s?” He said. “Seismic don’t do shit for less that 50 thousand… And we need crisp hunneds – in a bag. That’s how we do business,” he said.
50 K? To read a children’s book on camera? For a rapper who hadn’t had a hit since Tupac was alive? As excited as I was to work with Seismic, I had no choice but to turn down his demands.
“Sorry, Mr. Green, but 50 grand is way out of our budget,” I replied.
“Go call Ja Rule then,” he said. And hung up.
I started sweating. Not because I was nervous that I wasn’t going to get my job finished, but because I truly felt like there was a chance that Seismic’s manager was going to send some lead pipe carrying mother-fuckers after me. I went back to my boss and asked if we could sweeten the pot a little bit to get him to read the book.
“I guess we could double it,” my boss said.
“What about the ‘crisp hunneds,’” I asked. Can I go to the bank and cash a check or something?
“Are you kidding? Tell him we need a 1099 or W-2. There is no way we’re going to pay him cash in a paper bag… get real, man.”
I went back to Dope Green and informed him that the paper bag idea was out. And that we could get him a little more money, but not Seismic’s going rate. I offered 10K.
Dope Green actually said we could try to work something out. BUT, Seismic had some demands. First, he wanted a development deal with the network. Second, he would have full creative control over his original TV show idea, including handling the directing, casting and production of the 13-episode comedy he had in his head. It was Empire meets Friday. A comedy about an aging rapper (Think Chris Tucker as a Warren G. type) on the road trying to get paid. I asked what some of the storylines would be.
“It’s a rapper trying to deal with thirsty hoes, his baby mamas, his bitch ex-wife and a bunch of kids and shit.”
I never got to meet Seismic. When I informed Mr. Green that I had no power in getting TBS to pony up a development deal for him and his TV idea, he told me that I could forget about getting anyone to read Goodnight Moon. Let alone, a rapper as dope as Seismic. The deal was done.
I walked into my boss’ office and told him that deal had gone away. He was disappointed and shook his head, telling me that I should come up with an alternative personality that could read Goodnight Moon for our website.
“I bet Sisqo is available,” I offered.
My boss laughed and turned me down.
I went back to my desk and put on some RUN-D.M.C…
*Get ready for the podcast launch of “Missi and Zach Might Bang!” Follow on Twitter & Instagram! Instagram @mightbang Twitter @mightbang1
Zach Selwyn 