Zach Selwyn

Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.

  • By Zach Selwyn

    I can vividly picture the scene taking place on a Newark, New Jersey street corner in 1922… Prohibition is hanging heavily over every boarded up bar and single family household on the block. The streets are full of the penniless, making bedding out of old jackets on the grey and crunchy dirty sidewalk snow. Children are wrapping up nightly stick ball games to return home for dinner as the streets darken with denizens of the nightlife and small time hoods…

    And then suddenly, out of the darkness, trotting up in a horse-drawn buggy, appears Rabbi Levi Zalman, who is suddenly swarmed by scores of men from these homes looking to procure the finest bottle of bootleg wine they can get their hands on. Money is exchanged, prayers are said and the men race home to their families. With every sale, Rabbi Zalman mutters, “Baruch Hashem.” (Blessed be the name of the lord). When it’s all over, Rabbi Zalman rides away a very rich man…

    Of course, Rabbi Levi Zalman is not a Rabbi at all. In fact, he is Jack Joseph Brauer, an out-of-work shoe peddler from East Jersey City who has just unloaded his Government-relegated weekly supply of booze for a shade over $5,000.

    He is also my great-great grandfather. This was his “congregation.”

    Ratified in 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution – which is America’s only Amendment to later be repealed – federally prohibited the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol. Of course, this was one of our biggest failures in our short history, and led to the golden age of organized crime, corruption and sheer madness across the country.

    Doing some research (And I am not the first to report this – just giving you some background) Jewish households were allowed a certain amount of wine per household per year. To top that off, if you were a Rabbi, and you lead any type of “congregation” (12 members or more) you were allowed to get as much wine as you wanted for religious purposes at any time you desired… So guess what happened? A lot of “new Rabbis” suddenly started showed up.

    “There were fake Rabbis everywhere,” my grandmother told me years ago before she died. “If you knew 12 people, that was a congregation… why do you think so many people started converting to Judaism during the 20’s? FOR BOOZE.”

    So, when Jack Brauer’s shoe business got hit with hard times in the early 1920’s, he bought some religious robes, sported a fake beard and marched up to the proper Governmental distribution center and bought as much alcohol as he needed… He flipped it in two days and kicked off a successful six-year-run as the biggest “Rabbi Bootlegger” in Newark, New Jersey.

    A few years later, when the American Jewish Committee began cracking down on the large number of fake Rabbi’s, my great-great grandfather Jack was NOT on the suspected fraud list. In fact, he continued to support his family until 1931, just before the Amendment was repealed. How? He had the third largest congregation in New Jersey at the time. (Even though it was 95 percent FAKE.)

    Now, according to the three part documentary Prohibition by Ken Burns, other religions had these loopholes as well. In fact, Priests were ALSO able to purchase liquor for religious ceremonies. Of course, the government could actually reference records to determine if someone claiming to be a Priest actually was a Priest. But Rabbis? There was NO WAY OF TELLING WHO WAS A RABBI.

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    Starting to see why I’m obsessed with this stuff…

    According to writer Daniel Okrent, “Rabbis were suddenly showing up everywhere. Irish Rabbis, Black Rabbis…” Nobody ever doubted their religious claims.

    As is turns out, my grandmother was correct. In the 1920’s, Jewish congregations increased in membership by like, 75 percent. In short? BOOTLEG LIQUOR BUILT MODERN DAY JUDAISM. In fact, I don’t think you can reference a time in history when more NEW Jews suddenly showed up out of the woodwork to embrace Judaism in our nation’s history. No wonder we say prayers over the wine…

    A few years ago, my grandmother Florence passed away. Readers of my stories should be familiar with our adventures together in her later years, which included a trip to the Ace Hotel, smoking medical marijuana and leafing through her old photo albums so she could announce who was presently, “Dead.” When she passed, it was a sad moment, and a week later, our family went through her home to get rid of old useless items…(My grandfather’s 5000 VHS tapes of classic movies) and save valuable ones… (My grandma had always claimed that she had hidden “thousands of dollars in cash” all over the house and that it was our job to find it when she died.)

    Of course, knowing this, we tore open her home like Jesse Pinkman looking for hidden cash in that drug dealer’s condo in the film El Camino…

    My mom and I found some money, but the “thousands of dollars” my grandma promised turned out to be something more like 220 bucks. We also uncovered a lot of jewelry and a stamp collection valued at about $39. So, if you’re the new couple that bought the place? If you ever find some ungodly wad of $100 dollar bills in a crawl space, hit me up…

    Aside for a few of my grandma’s stray Vicodin, which I squirreled away in a jacket pocket, the only other item in the home that really intrigued me was my grandmother’s birth certificate. On it was listed her parent’s names and occupations – (Ruth Brauer-Kaplan – housewife. Jacob Kaplan- Dentist) – as well as her GRANDPARENT’s names and occupations… What intrigued me was the job description as reported to the state of New Jersey by JACK JOSEPH BRAUER –

    His job: RABBI.

    “Wow so Grandma’s story was true?” I asked my Uncle Steve who was helping my mom go through Florence’s old belongings.

    “Yes indeed,” he answered.

    “So was he really a Rabbi?” I asked.

    “Do you know what a ‘Rabbi’ was back then?”

    “I’m guessing a bootlegger?”

    “It’s great getting to know your family, isn’t it?”

    I went into the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of wine. I toasted my grandma on her final journey and raised my glass up to Jack Joseph Brauer – my great-great grandfather who kept so many families buzzed during the dark years of Prohibition…

    “Baruch Hashem,” I said.

    STREAM ZACH’S NEW SONG “Red Fuckin Wine” NOW!

    Bar Mitzvah Bootlegger Comedy funny hebrew humor Jewish liquor Prohibition Rabbi Wine Zach Selwyn
  • IMG_2659By Zach Selwyn

    Yesterday, while nursing a mild hangover brought on by my reckless quarantine red wine intake, I found myself fondling myself in the middle of a 14-person ZOOM business meeting.

    Ohhh boy. Hang on… Let’s analyze this for what it is…

    The team I am currently working with was all in pajamas, hats and glasses – sporting unkempt beards and yelling at their kids to stop interrupting their video calls. Our hair had been laid to waste by weeks of barber shop closure. The ladies passed on their morning makeup and contact lenses for more natural headbands and eyeglasses… Others had pets jumping around living rooms and husbands yelling about burnt toast from other rooms… and one guy did not mute his video microphone when he yelled, “FUCK OFF I’M ON THE PHONE” at his six-year-old.

    I understand. These are tough times.

    Anyway, as we were discussing a podcast I am currently working on for our company – I noticed that for a good majority of the meeting I had been sort of… playing with my penis beneath the camera lens.

    Yeah. Not sure why I was doing it, it was just one of those “personal moments” where I probably was up way too early, taking advantage of my comfortable sweatpants and recovering from some weird dream where I fantasized about maybe LEAVING my house during the day… I wasn’t focused on the meeting at all, in fact I was muted (thankfully) and just sort of having one of those “moments” that I’m sure we have all had recently… I wouldn’t call it a weakness, necessarily – it’s just a need to FEEL SOMETHING.

    After realizing what I was doing, I quickly discontinued my Zoom video stream claiming I had a “parent-teacher conference” and did 25 push-ups.

    During this quarantine, like most fathers, I have two kids in my house fighting over bandwidth and laptops and TV and all I want to do is watch The Last Dance on ESPN and drink until I pass out and somehow do some sort of coherent podcast episode the next day.

    Whatever the case, those preceding paragraphs you just read were all I have managed to come up in regards to my short stories… The thing is – I am not that concerned. Why? Well, look… I used to be a pretty prolific short story writer. I have published (Online) over 250 stores since about 2001. But recently, I just haven’t felt the passion… I mean, I HAVE been writing, but it’s not like I really have any actual ‘put together’ or ‘completed’ short stories as of yet… but in my mind they are coming. At least I think they are… Well, maybe.

    What I have really been writing somewhat prolifically are TITLES to stories I would love to write should this quarantine ever end …and I ever feel like putting the written word out to the public again.

    Now, my old writing professors would have asked me why I haven’t been writing and finishing these short stories… Of course they would have been asking me that question in the 90’s when people still paid for the written word… But the answer is mainly – for one – that nobody cares or gives a shit about anything but survival right now. Also? in reality, every time I post a new story it hits the internet and about 500-1000 people read it. Maybe 40 of those readers comment on it and tell me how great it is and then nothing happens until I get a cease and desist lawsuit threatening to sue me for $900 because I used a photo of a mushroom that I borrowed off of Google Images in a blog post. (Yes, this is true. A company tracked me down, demanded $900 and threatened further legal proceedings for using an image of a fucking image that some Danish photographer took in the first in 1998. )

    This was before quarantine, when I had maybe $750 in the bank. I never paid the company. I’m now guessing that Covid-19 furloughed those cockroaches back to the unemployment line where they now search for answers to explain to the Government how they worked as Soul Sucking Jizz Stains for living… and now they need a bail out.

    They’re probably asking for $20 million, like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse received. (By the way – maybe Ruth’s Chris will spend some of that money to change the horrible name of their restaurant. I mean what is a “Ruth’s Chris?” It sounds like a toothless kid asking for her teeth back on Christmas Day. “All I want for Ruth’s Chris is my Two Front Teeth…“)

    Screen Shot 2020-04-28 at 7.00.05 PM
    I discuss this more on my podcast “Audio Up News Network”

    Look, I consider myself very lucky. In my life – writing has actually worked for me on occasion. I recently optioned one of my short stories as a screenplay to a pretty fantastic independent film company… but in the end it ended up resulting in two years of work on a film that never got made, which is really what you hear in Hollywood all the time, but I’m not upset about that- I’ve been in this business a long time. I mean listen… The first script I wrote in college was called Wedding Crashers. It had been read by a lot of people, but when the Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn film came out I had my first taste of “What-the-fuck-is-this-town?”

    Another time, a website that published first person essays offered me $250 for a story about the Great Wolf Lodge that I still feel is the funniest thing I have ever written … The thing was, they told me to cut 400 words out of it. I told them to fuck off and retained my rights to the story. By the way? A grand total of 47 people commented on that post.

    But fuck it, it’s a new world, a new normal… whatever the fuck this is. I’ve been busy writing scripts for podcast comedies, jokes for projects and animated sitcoms that may never see the light of day. But, as I said – I have also been writing titles for a book of QUARANTINE ESSAYS…
    ‘
    And as of today – here is my working list of titles.

    ENJOY

    …And Other Quarantine Essays by ZACH SELWYN

    “I Thought I had Enough Booze for Three Weeks… I Said on Day Four.”

    “I Dunno, a Wife Swap Might Not be the WORST Idea, and other Reasons I’m Sleeping on the Couch…”

    “Don’t Trim Your Toenails While Inebriated.”

    “My Conspiracy Theory Friend Explains it All”

    “My son is 13. We had “the talk.” It wasn’t about sex or pregnancy…. It was about “How to hide your porn history using private browsing.” #NewNormal”

    “Divorce on Pause… One Friend’s Living Hell Awaiting a Legal Separation”

    “Why am I Googling My Exes?”

    “Finding’ a Jerkin Window… an Impossible Task”

    “I’m Committing Suicide, Dad… And Other Things I heard When the WiFi went Out.”

    “Fuck if I get Sick. I’m Going to the Store for Beer and Easter Candy… One Dad’s Adventure.”

    “Alexa, Play Anything but Ed Sheeran.”

    “My Kid Goes to School on the Same Laptop I Googled ‘Hot Girl Gets Blasted by Stepdad’ on Yesterday.”

    and finally:

    “Yeah, it’s a Breakfast Beer… Big Deal…”

    Oh…. By the way. I’m Repped by WME.

    Reach out if you’re interested in reading the rest of my essay collection…

  • Zach Selwyn has begun hosting a comedic “Real Fake News” Podcast for www.Audioup.com called AUDIO UP NEWS NETWORK or AUNN. Download EVERYWHERE and SUBSCRIBE!

    Screen Shot 2020-04-28 at 7.00.05 PM

    Secondly, Zach is working on the script for Warner Brothers COuntry Artis UNCLE DRANK’s new Podcast. Follow him on IG @uncle_drank

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    CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE for more!

    Audio Up Audio Up News Network Colbert country music daily show fake news Fallon funny Jingle Punks Kimmel SNL Trevor Noah Uncle Drank Warner Brothers Records 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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    My wife and I received an Air BNB request online two weeks ago… It read as follows:

    We’re five guys from Germany who don’t do drugs. We are excited to visit LA and really enjoy clubs and West Hollywood.

    “What do you think, babe?” My wife asked me. “Should we accept their request?”

    “I dunno,” I responded. “Five guys? Clubs? West Hollywood? Sounds like we’re inviting a bunch of Europeans over for a Bacchanalian orgy.”

    “You’re an idiot,” she said. “They seem nice AND they said they don’t do drugs.”

    “When you have to tell people you don’t do drugs, it means you definitely do drugs.”

    “I’m approving them. We can always charge them if they mess anything up.”

    I don’t know if I am the only one whose mind works like this, but when I hear that a crew of 25-year-old German dudes want to “go to clubs and enjoy West Hollywood,” I immediately think of that scene in Wolf of Wall Street when Jordan Belfort waltzes into his apartment early from a business trip and finds 25 guys sucking each other off on his $50,000 couches.

    When you “Air BNB” your house out, you can’t help but formulate some concerns. We have rented to people of all sexual orientations and we are not bothered by any of it, however, in the six years that we have been doing this, I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that at some point, two strangers from Idaho fucked in our bed the night after they took their kids to Universal Studios.

    My wife and I have been Air BNB’ing as long as it has been approved in Los Angeles. We own our house, travel often and don’t stress out when a family of four comes to LA and wants to rent our place for the week. We are often out of town during these times and for years most of our vacations have pretty much been paid for.

    When we first began doing this, we rented our place to some younger twenty-somethings and their abhorrent treatment of our property became a serious issue. One six-person rock band from Brooklyn decided that our couch cushions would make fine ashtrays. Following another rental, three bachelorettes from Colorado accidentally left two dildos in my 9-year-old son’s bedroom.

    After that, we decided that our home would be rented to families only.

    But then we had the request from the five guys from Germany. Since we were going to be out of town that week and we didn’t have any other requests, it seemed like a safe option. Not only that, but the money we would get for the week would sure help us pay some badly overdue bills.

    “Fine,” I told my wife. “But if our place gets wrecked that’s on you.”

    We traveled to Tucson to visit my mom for a week and asked our dear friend Lauren to help check them in as they arrived. She called us that night with some interesting news.

    “They seem sweet,” she said. “It’s weird though… all of them shave their legs.”

    “Told ya, they’re male escorts,” I blurted.

    “Shut up… maybe they’re like, on a swim team or something,” my wife offered.

    “Well, they’re all in their early to mid 20’s,” Lauren relayed. “Good looking guys… but they are using one of your potted plants to put their cigarettes out in.”

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    I envisioned this happening in my bathroom

    500 miles away, I decided to just let it be. There wasn’t much to worry about. I had hidden my guitars in the basement, my vinyl collection was labeled off-limits (A 6-year-old had ruined a treasured Dire Straits LP I had left on the turntable a couple of years earlier) and we had a grand total of $32.16 in cash in the house. My wife’s jewelry was locked away in her closet and about the only valuable thing in our home was a shoe San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker had given me about 13 years ago… So what if they shaved their legs and smoked? Outta sight outta mind… We spent the week in Tucson hanging with my mom.

    When we got back to our house on Saturday night, we anticipated the place would appear like it always does post Air BNB… Most people do their best to tidy up, take out trash, re-set furniture and clean out their leftovers from the fridge.

    Upon entering our house, the first thing I noticed was that the entire place smelled like Axe Body Spray. Like, the entire house. Every room, every hallway, every bathroom… It had a post 9-keg fraternity party eminence to it.

     

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    My entire house smelled like this guy

    When a toilet paper roll was finished, rather than replace the roll on the dispenser, they managed to just toss the empty cylinder behind the toilet.

    We pride our house on our “Kids Art Wall” where we encourage guests to add to the collection. Over the years, dozens of kids have contributed drawings to the wall and it’s a fantastic little abstract collection of developing artistic minds across the world.

    Needless to say, these guys didn’t add anything to the art wall.

    They also did not bother to turn off any light in the house.

    Nor did they take out the trash… at all. In our backyard, stuffed in about 25 paper grocery bags, resided the ruins of their week… hundreds of beer bottles, countless empty boxes of cigarettes, discarded Red Bull cans and bottles of Starbucks Double Shot Cappuccinos. There were over a dozen empty pizza boxes from three different delivery joints nearby and nine discarded Jack Daniel’s bottles… Not to mention the new cigarette butt succulent plant they had crafted. Maybe they didn’t do drugs, but these guys fucking partied.

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    Birds-Eye View of our new planter

    According to my calculations… and to the grocery store receipts I found in one of the random trash bags, these guys lived on beer, cigarettes, pizza, energy drinks and coffee for five days. That was it. There was NO sign anywhere that a single meal other than pizza had been consumed. There was, however, one ominous item listed on a grocery store receipt from Thursday: MAYONNAISE.

    “What do you think they bought mayonnaise for?” I yelled to my wife across the house.

    “Uggh, there are shaved pubes in the sink!” she responded.

    As I went around the house opening every window to air it out, I could only imagine what kind of debauchery these Euro-bros got into in our house. Was there any freaky sex? Any late night drug use? Did they jack-off in every room? After finding a piece of pizza jammed  in our pool filter, my wife panicked, called our cleaning lady and told her she would have to work a double shift the next day. After finding an empty carton of cigarettes that said “Smoking Kills” on the floor of my daughter’s room, we decided to sleep on the floor in the one room where we do not allow renters to use rather than in our own beds.

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    My daughter’s room. Morning.

    The next morning, the Axe Body Spray scent was still lingering. We had taken out the trash and emptied the fridge, but our cleaning lady had the hardest job. When she was done for the day, she mentioned that these five guys had managed to use 32 bath towels during their five day stay. 32 fucking towels. When I was 25-years-old, I owned ONE bath towel that I washed like every six weeks! Who the fuck did these guys think they were?

    I decided that a quick internet search on these guys might alleviate my concerns. The kid who had booked the place and had been responsible for the payment was listed as simply a “coach” in Munich. Not sure what kind… Soccer coach? Life coach? Sober coach? (Doubtful). Whatever the case, I checked out his Twitter account and he had recently tweeted about his upcoming trip to the United States. It read as follows:

    Me and the boys are going to Hollywood to parteeeey with movie stars! Then VEGAS BABY VEGAS! What happens in Vegas STAYS in VEGAS!!!

    After realizing that this guy was still quoting Vince Vaughn from Swingers, a 20-year-old film, I felt a small bond with him. He had probably tried to find a decent place in LA to rent, but was met with rejection after rejection by worried homeowners like myself. He was 25 and just looking to party with movie stars and now he was apparently in Las Vegas, most likely contracting that new un-treatable strain of gonorrhea I keep seeing on billboards all over town.

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    Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea is here!

    After a few days, the house felt like home again and my son and daughter fell into their summer routines of Fortnite, swimming and staying up until 11. I thought of this strange world we were subjecting them to… After all, not many kids are forced to leave their houses for Air BNB renters every few weeks. Still, maybe the constant travel and new experiences will teach them more about the world and someday they’ll thank us for forcing them into the car for 8-hour road trips to Arizona… Maybe someday my son and his good friends will go desecrate a family’s house in Germany with their own beer bottles, cigarettes and sink pubes. If anything, these are experiences that not every kid gets to have.

    I put my kids to bed and brushed my teeth. My wife and I agreed to watch a new Netflix show and I drank some water. Happy to be back in my bed, I finally felt relaxed for the first time in a week…

    And then I found a used condom in the drawer of my bedside table…

    ZACH SELWYN’S HOUSE IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ON AIR BNB… FOR RESPECTABLE FAMILIES ONLY.

    Watch Zach interview BOB DYLAN!

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  • HACIENDA is streaming everywhere. Here is a music video for the song “When I Return (I Promise You)” – GO stream or download! (CDs coming soon!)

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Zach & Ry$er return w/ a new NBA Rapdate! 

  • March 3, 2017
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Uncategorized

Check out this father son rap battle …https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=M_rxNPhWcPE

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