New episode of “Missi and Zach Might Bang!” With Scott MacArthur from “The Mick” on Fox!

Zachariah & the Lobos Riders are set to release their newest 6 song EP “Cloud Road.” Z details how this surprise record came about…

Cloud Road EP * 2020 By Zachariah & the Lobos Riders

In December of 2019 I blew out my knee playing basketball. I vowed to return to the court within a year and elected for surgery in January of 2020 – Following the surgery came the Norcos. As a decent wine drinker, painkillers were never my thing and I have been able to avoid them after major surgeries – of which I’ve had my share… But this time, things were a little different. Lying in bed, unable to walk or barely get up to use the bathroom, I would play a lot of music and drift off into the spacial tranquility of a few pain pills. At first it was 2, then it became 3 and I was pretty soon out of my bottle… The doctor had told me it would take about three days to not need them anymore, I was on day 11. What came to me during these lost moments was a lot of lyrics about childhood memories, dreams dying, and the main street that I grew up on in Tucson Arizona in the 80’s and 90’s… Cloud Road. The first song is the raw file you hear “Cloud Road Painkiller Freestyle.” That was done in one take off the dome. I quickly understood why so many artists get involved with Vicoden, Percoset etc. These five songs came to me in three days. The sixth was written for the TV show “Breaking Bad” but ultimately not chosen.
CLOUD ROAD (CLICK FOR SAMPLE)

A different approach for me for sure. A nod to my teenage years in Tucson dying to go anywhere… now looking back and realizing I have gone everywhere. What’s next? I need another motivating factor to push me into whatever is next…

PRAY TO THE LORD

Back in high school, my friends and I would drive around all night and break into unlocked cars and steal stuff. We then took the stuff to Zia Records for trade money, Play it Again Sports for cash and second hand shops… One night a few guys broke into my old football coach’s truck and he was watching us from his window. At one point, one of the guys said he saw him flash a gun. We ran. The part about dropping my high school ring at the scene of the crime is based on a separate incident involving a girl’s bedroom when her boyfriend stopped by – but combining these two incidents into this song made sense.

MY MIND GOT MIXED WITH WANDERING

Yeah, where does the motivation go? I think I speak for a lot of young people here when I talk about how we all want to find that one comfortable place but then see something else a little more appealing just around the corner. I wasted a lot off my 20’s looking for something else and not recognizing what was in front of me.

JUST A LITTLE INTERMISSION

Again, painkillers had me rapping to myself a lot. And for some reason I was doing it in a Humpty Hump – Special Ed voice… This is a nod to the 90’s hip-hop I loved – and it’s really just a joke – as most of my rap songs are.

CLOUD ROAD PAINKILLER FREESTYLE

When putting this EP together, I came across this a week before releasing it. It is the seeds that grew into the title track of the record as well as the “Intermission” song. I was rapping into my phone on a galaxy of pain meds… In a studio this might actually be dope.

THE BALLAD OF JESSE PINKMAN

Since I rhymed about Jesse Pinkman in “Intermission,” I felt like this fit on this record as well. I wrote this before a season of breaking Bad and sent to the EP’s, tweeted about. And had a lot of show fans RT it as well. Ultimately, someone heard it and said they did not need any new music. So FUCK THEM. This song deserves to be heard, even if the show hasn’t been on for six years.

“ALEXA PLAY RED FUCKIN WINE!”

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my behind the stage seats

HOW TO SURVIVE A GRATEFUL DEAD SHOW WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR FRIENDS IN THE PARKING LOT * By Zach Selwyn

My old college friend Bernard (Or “Burner – for reasons that don’t need to be explained) called me the day before Father’s Day. He had an extra ticket to the 50^th Anniversary Grateful Dead concert in northern California. I informed my wife that I would be traveling to the show the following Saturday night.

“Haha yeah right,” she said.

“No. I’m going.”

“Stop it. Now, what do you want to do for Father’s Day? Should we meet the Bartons for brunch? Or do you want to have people over to bar-be-cue?”

“I hate the Bartons,” I said. “I want to go to the Grateful Dead.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Well, take your son with you, don’t you think he would enjoy it?”

“Uhhhhhhh….”

I didn’t think that was the brightest idea. The smoke and the dancing and twirling was completely mind-blowing to me when I was at my first show at age 18. Back then I was scared shitless. Too many drugs, too many lost souls… too many people having a lot more fun than I was. I told my wife that I’d rather let my son find his own musical path. (Then again, if he’s following 5 Seconds of Summer around the country in 10 years I may have failed somewhere.) Plus, I told my wife that a 9-year-old boy does not need to see his 40-year-old dad clink Absinthe cups with a dude in hiking shorts who made Silicon Valley millions by inventing the Nook.

“Do NOT drink Absinthe,” she demanded.

“I won’t, I promise.”

Eventually, I got the green light – and I called Burner back and committed to his 70-dollar ticket. Which I soon found was WAY too expensive for my shitty seats behind the stage where just a few songs into the set a man would face-plant and nearly die on the concrete right next to me.

Recent online ticket prices for the Santa Clara shows had settled at $20-$40 depending on where you were seated, way down from the rumored $1500 nearly a month earlier. This was due to the “Soldier Field Panic Purchase” that nearly every Dead Head and ticket scalper had fallen for when their final two shows of this “Fare Thee Well” concert were originally announced… Thinking the tickets to Santa Clara might be listed at the same price as the Chicago shows, folks bought up dozens of seats at face value, only to find themselves losing money when trying to unload the tickets in the parking lot the afternoon of the show. (Steal Your Face Value, anyone?) Even Burner was left with a handful of tickets that he ended up trading for “pieces” (pipes or chillums), 50^th anniversary bandanas, T-shirts and at one point a foot long joint being sold by a spritely blonde nymph out of a giant cardboard box.

$15 super joints from a beautiful blonde girl

Now, a fair amount has already been written about these shows – if you want to hear about the set lists and the fan reactions to Trey Anastasio and the supposed $50,000 “fake rainbow” – go Google that now. This is my personal adventure about smoking a lump of hash with a crazy looking scallywag who was dragging a dirty pet pit bull named “Iko” around on a hemp dog leash – and becoming so cosmically altered, that I managed to lose my friends for the duration of the show long before the first note of Truckin’ was even played.

It was a surreal experience to say the least. When I last saw the Grateful Dead in 1995, the crowd was pretty much the same… just about 20 years younger. But now, those folks have grown up. Gone are the days of living in the Vanagon and hopping from town-to-town. The “Only Users Lose Drugs” shirts I used to fawn over had been replaced by at least 25 men happily wearing a t-shirt reading “Grateful Dad.” (Thank you, honey for not getting me THAT for Father’s Day.)

At least 25 of these shirts at the show.

A vast majority of the well-off crowd could be found eating sushi and sipping wine in the safe “red” parking lot, while the more traditional “Shakedown Street” blue parking lot catered to the jewelry designers, pushers, providers, dealers and, yes, the guys selling veggie burritos. (At $5.00 a steal – considering it was $11.00 for a nitrate-riddled hot dog in the stadium). Bottom line was, it was a very balanced scene. Which is how I went from talking about music with a doctor who lived in Marin County – to witnessing a hippie trade a T-shirt for a Churro – to eventually asking the aforementioned scraggly looking pit bull owner if I could have a hit of his joint.

“It’s hash bro,” he said.

“Nice,” I said.

“Nice,” he responded.

I took a long drag from the tightly rolled spliff. It was licorice-like in flavor… and reminded me of smoking hash on a Eurorail with a Spanish stranger during a train ride from Switzerland to Germany in 1996. I exhaled.

“Nice.” I said again.

“Real nice,” he said and pulled off the joint again.

I stared up at the clouds.

“Nice,” I laughed.

“Totally nice,” he replied.

We stood and watched the sky for a few minutes. I started to realize that for the past ten minutes, I had managed to keep a totally coherent conversation going by merely uttering the word “nice.”

The author, moments after the hash took over…

I shook off my daze and decided to gather myself to find Burner and our other friends and head inside. We were 30 minutes away from the opener and I didn’t want to miss it. I looked back at my hash-providing friend and we shared an ever-knowing look of “I’ll never see you again, but thanks for the time together.” I threw up a peace sign. As I walked away to find my buddies, I heard him utter one final word as a fare thee well to our little session.

“Nice.”

Back on Earth, I was suddenly totally confused. Burner was gone. Swirls of dreadlocks and weathered faces engulfed me. I wasn’t sure if I should head back to the blue lot and skip the show altogether or saunter forth inside all alone. Like a wilderness-trained tracker, I decided I’d take some photos to document the beauty of the signage and the sky and the colorful people and cars all around me. Scrolling through my camera roll a day later, all I can find is a few pictures of the stadium and a wasted girl passed out on a lawn. I definitely could not find my friends. I was high and wandering… but at least I had a ticket to my seat.

This girl was FINISHED before the show even began

Having lost buddies at concerts over the years, I am somewhat used to making friends and surviving. This was certainly not the first time I had been alone at a Grateful Dead show… In fact, at the LA Sports Arena in 1993 I accidentally left the concert mid-song and walked 23 blocks away until I was lost in a Ralph’s parking lot deep in South Central Los Angeles. Luckily, the night cashier slipped me a Fentanyl and called me a taxicab. Once I lost my buddy in Santa Barbara and ended up sleeping in a bush after a Neil Young concert. At the Dead show, however, I wasn’t truly worried, because nowadays we are all lucky enough to have cell phones.

I looked down to text my friends. No service. Of course. No fucking service.

I made my way inside and ogled the crowds flittingly dancing along. Anticipating the first note of the show that would send me into another stratosphere. They started with Truckin’. The place went nuts.

Then the guy next to me almost died. His friends pounded his chest until he sat up and they forced water down his throat. Scared and afraid, I went to get a beer. I met some kind gentlemen in the beer line. We spoke about how awesome the show was that we were missing… by waiting in that beer line. I looked around. A girl next to me made sure to use all 9 pockets of her leather fanny pack. At least three guys purposefully wore cargo shorts to show off the “Jerry Bear” leg tattoos they had done in the 90’s that they were waiting all these years to uncover once again… Finally, a woman carrying a six-month old baby in what seemed like a paper bag attached to her back came dancing through the crowd. The kid’s head bobbled furiously, unstable and terrifying. In Los Angeles, the helicopter moms of Orange County would have screamed, rescued the baby and brought it to the nearest hospital. At the Grateful Dead show, however, grown men laughed and spewed forth dragon breaths of marijuana smoke into the sky as the baby drifted right through the haze. It was absolutely disturbing. I could not imagine my kids in this environment. As much as I would want them to appreciate what the music can do for everybody, the last thing I would want is my kid getting a second hand weed buzz around a group of folks sending wafts of OG Kush into the atmosphere.

A few songs later, I had settled down. It suddenly hit me that I was completely alone and that my conversations with strangers were fun but fleeting. I wasn’t making any new friends… I wasn’t analyzing every note Trey played… The worst part was, I was barely even seeing the show from my seat behind the stage. I watched the majority of it on a big screen. So, I wandered around and decided to talk to the security guard. His name was Reed.

“What’s crazier, a 49ers game, or this?” I asked.

“Well, different crowds, ya know?” He said. “Niners fans drink a few beers and try to look tough. These folks drink 10 beers and dance around like fools!”

“So is this the rowdiest show you’ve ever seen here?” I asked.

“Oh hell no, the worst was the WWE Wrestling event. I broke up about 30 fights, had to throw a guy down some stairs.”

“What’s the weirdest show you’ve ever seen here?”

“Kenny Chesney. Was like a Gay Pride Parade met the deep south.”

He shook my hand and walked off.

A few beers later, I was overwhelmed by hippies praying to the miracle rainbow in the sky yelling out things like “It’s a gift from JERRY GARCIA MAN!” (If you can imagine a bunch of high people reacting to a rainbow at a 50-Year Grateful Dead anniversary show, it’s EXACTLY how you picture it…) The argument that the rainbow has been faked is everywhere online, but in truth, if the Dead had 50K to blow on a holographic rainbow, I would hope they at least should have tried to construct a hologram Jerry Garcia instead. (Shit, I’d have settled for hologram 2Pac.)

As the evening went on, as a way to remember what I was going through, I began dictating voice notes into the “recorder” app on my iphone. These are the translations as best as I could decipher them:

A: I have just spent the last hour hanging with a giraffe

I wasn’t tripping. I had spent an hour hanging with a a giraffe.

B: (Me singing a song idea for my band to record in the future) – “Sunday Ticket, who’s got my Sunday ticket… man are you with it? I wish I could stop and smell the roses – but the elements of elephants are lost among the doses – I suppose it’s the way of the Dead – I suppose it’s the way of the Dead” (Then yelling): “WAY OF THE DEAD!!! MY NEW SONG WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!”

C: Hot dogs, nachos, chicken fingers… hot dogs nachos chicken fingers…

D: What hole have these people been hiding in since 1995?

The last note made sense. A lot of these fans were folks who looked like they never recovered from Jerry Garcia’s death. They had been in exile, awaiting the return of the Grateful Dead for years, sort of like those Japanese soldiers you read about who were trapped on islands with their loaded weapons unaware that the war had ended months earlier.

The highlight of my night came during the song St. Stephen. I had never heard the tune live – nobody really has – and it lifted my spirits high. For five minutes, the long drive alone had been worth it. So had the hash and the lost friends and the $70 seats. I reached high for the sky and let out primal screams of joy and happiness and thought about my kids, my wife, my career, my goals, my dreams my family. I was genuinely ecstatic. I had found my top of the mountain… It was one of those moments that I remembered having as a kid – worshipping this band for slices of perfection like that – when everybody is smiling and nothing can go wrong. A moment of calm and peace I hoped would never end…

Of course, an hour after the show I found myself cursing technology and feeling depressed about having to wait in a two-hour line for an Uber.

I left the venue alone. Got to the hotel alone. I was in bed by 1:00. I woke up before my friends – who had stumbled in at 3:30 – and shook off the cobwebs before beginning the long drive back to L.A. As I listened to the radio and heard reviews of the show it became clear how awesome the evening had been. I re-played to my voice memos and shuffled Dead songs on my iphone the whole drive, wondering how I could call my work and get out of it Monday so that I could stay and watch the second night show instead. Thankfully, I decided one amazing show was enough and I rode down California 5 with Santa Clara and the Grateful Dead in my rear view mirror. As I watched northern California disappear behind the rolling hills, one word came to mind as I smiled and traveled the golden road home…

NICE…

Buy Zach’s FIRST ALBUM “Ghost Signs” on itunes!

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The Worst Cocktail in LA.

By Zach Selwyn

It was a hungover morning. Most of them are hungover mornings, but this one was particularly bad. It was actually quite unbearable. It was 91 degrees outside, but for some reason I was in a good mood based on the fact that it had finally stopped raining in Los Angeles. L.A. had been miserable lately. Not to mention depressing. My gas bill in January had skyrocketed to $1800 and wasn’t looking to get any better. A looming writer’s strike and a desolate media landscape had flattened any creative work available in the city. Shit. Even Disney had laid off 7,000 employees sine January 1st. Not only that, but the rain had destroyed nearly every road in the city and never-ending potholes greeted my car wherever I drove, resulting in more than one flat tire.

Anyway, it was a Friday morning and I had to drop my son in the deep valley for a haircut on his day off from school for “Teacher Organization Day.” I wasn’t sure when “Teacher Organization Day” became a national fucking holiday, but apparently, like four times a school year, teachers needed some time to get their shit together. I guess I understood… I need one of those days like, 25 times a month. I just didn’t particularly love when these days were thrust upon myself as a parent, because you suddenly had to do stuff like catch up on haircuts and Costco shopping and shit like going to the Grove to see films you would never pay for on your own, like Dungeons and Dragons. Meanwhile. My son prefers this one particular valley hairstylist to any scissor-slinging tattooed millennial who works at the Floyd’s Barber Shop 0.8 miles from our house, so I basically have to go 13 miles to Encino with him once every three months. And as you know Encino is a pretty miserable place.

It’s ten times worse it with a bad hangover.

After dropping him off, I had a roughly an hour to kill around the Encino corridor. Looking to curb the uneasiness of the body aches I was fighting from the night before, I Googled local bars and hotels to find any sort of affordable Bloody Mary that might help me open my eyes and face the day a little easier. Not finding much, I walked for a few minutes and quickly realized that I was surrounded by nothing but chain restaurants, weed stores and car dealerships. I was on Ventura Boulevard in Encino. I had nowhere to go. I felt like I had become the man I once swore I would never become: A 47-year-old dad, hungover in the Valley on a Friday morning looking for a drink. This wasn’t rock bottom, but Jesus, it sort of felt like the boat was sinking fast.

And then I spotted the Buca di Beppo. Yes. Buca di Beppo. Anyone who has been here knows this place is basically Olive Garden on HGH. You order a plate of spaghetti and it feeds nine people and you take four pounds home to haunt your fridge for the next month and a half. The leftovers are enough to choke an entire village of starving Albanians.

I was certainly their first customer of the day. The general manager, a goateed gentleman named Rick, who was wearing a tie patterned with a bushel of tomatoes, looked shocked that someone had actually entered the restaurant before noon. He struggled to greet me at the door. When he finally did welcome me inside, I noticed that he his shirt was untucked and one shoelace was untied. He brought me a monstrous menu and informed me that the restaurant was featuring a wine special that day: A glass of Apothic Red Wine was going for only $14.00. I thanked him but chose to not alert him that Apothic Red is a bottle of garbage wine found at Trader Joe’s for roughly $7.99.

Sweet tie bro.

Since the dining room was still being setup for the evening rush, I was seated in the empty bar, where half of the barstools were still turned upside down on the tables. They had sports on, so I knew I could easily kill an hour there… and I asked Rick how the Bloody Mary was.

“It’s amazing,” he said.

That was all I needed to hear.

I asked for a Bloody Mary with Tito’s and “all the fixings they could give me.”

Rick responded by asking me, “Tito’s? – OK – So Vodka or tequila?”

“Uhm Tito’s”

“Oh. So… What is that?”

“It’s a vodka from Austin, Texas dude,” I said perhaps a little too aggressively. “It’s a Bloody Mary.”

That was my first warning. I should’ve walked out then. This guy did not even know that Tito’s was a fucking vodka company?

I gave him a little side eye as he began working on the drink, making sure he was pouring in the right vodka, but unfortunately, he reached for a bottle of some brand called Helix. Helix Vodka? I had never even heard of that shit. But I watched as he incredulously poured it into a glass and then poured in some bullshit pre-packaged Bloody Mary mix from a plastic bottle that looked like it dressed Greek salads on its off-days. He didn’t even MIX the drink. He just dumped it in, and served it to me raw-dog, meaning it was lacking any olives, pickles, celery, salt, Tajin, fucking pepper… and flavor.

“Dude, Yo – do you guys don’t have any garnish whatsoever?” I asked.

“We have Tabasco,” he said.

“Olives?” I asked. “Maybe a peperoncini?”

“Uhm well, we have those but it means I would have to open the salad bar, which isn’t quite open yet.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

I took Rick’s bottle of Tabasco and tried to make this drink taste like… something. Anything but Clamato juice and ice. And it fell flat. This was by far the worst Bloody Mary ever served on American soil. Right there, in Encino, California precisely one week before my birthday in the good year of our lord 2023.

I sat there for a moment as Rick adjusted his tomato tie and folded napkins and I watched some NBA Playoffs highlights suffering through each and every sip of this bullshit drink. It basically tasted like water with hot sauce in it. The ice cubes were so prevalent that I surmounted that there was close to one to two ounces of liquid in the entirety of the glass. The straw was minuscule and sharp in my mouth.

And then I started looking around at the decor.

If you’ve ever been to a Buca di Beppo, you know that they fancy themselves as a classic “Family-Style Italian Restaurant.” That requires that they must decorate the walls with photos of great Italian American stalwarts of recent past, including 200 pictures of Frank Sinatra, at least 50 photos of Joe Dimaggio and a few stills from the movie Goodfellas. In fact, there was one large bar photo of Dimaggio that caught the Yankee Clipper smiling and youthful, at the peak of career, probably in the middle of a 200 hit season. He was grinning so widely, that there is no doubt he just flossed his teeth with Marilyn Monroe’s underwear. For some reason that photo made me happy. I pointed at the picture and then back to Rick, who mind you, was probably in his late 30’s to early 40’s and said, “What do you know about that guy?”

“Oh, Sinatra?” He said.

I almost went Joe Pesci on him and slapped him with his tomato tie.

“That’s NOT fucking Frank Sinatra, that’s Joe fuckin’ Dimaggio,” I said. “Joltin’ Joe Dimaggio.”

“Oh, the baseball player,” Rick responded. “Dodgers?”

If you work at an Italian restaurant and think this guy is Sinatra, you deserve to be fired.

Let me tell you something. If you work in a Buca di Beppo, or ANY Italian establishment that serves a version of a simple red sauce on pasta or a fucking meatball or a basket full of fucking breadsticks, you BETTER know who the fuck Joe Dimaggio is. In New York City, Rick would have been driven to the Hudson River, fitted for some cement shoes and dropped the fuck off the pier. And even the cops would have looked the other way and laughed about it at a bar later that night. But, this was Encino. And Rick was born in 1987 or so. And I was hungover. And unemployed. And bitter. So I leaned back and continued sipping the worst Bloody Mary of all time. A few sips later, I excused myself to the bathroom.

There was a photo of Kirk Gibson above the urinal.

I guess that made sense. Kirk Gibson is an LA hero and that 1988 World Series home run is one of baseball’s grandest moments, but I actually began wondering if Rick even knew who he was. When I returned to the bar, I asked him if he knew who the mustached man above the urinal was. He nodded yes.

“Joe Dimaggio?”

Look. I have nothing against Buca di Beppo. In fact, I have enjoyed many fun nights at this restaurant with family and friends over the years… I’ve murdered bottles of wine and meatballs and large pasta dishes here while singing along to That’s Amore with drunk friends two tables over. But this was ridiculous. My advice is forever avoid the Bloody Mary at all costs, and certainly do not enter any Buca di Beppo before 6:30 PM on any given day. You will leave depressed, disappointed and miserable – and when you face that blazing sunlight outside it will shine in your eyes like God’s high beams, informing you that you have made yet one more mistake in your short, miserable, pathetic life.

I paid Rick the $11.00 for the drink and walked outside, heading to pick up my son from his hair appointment. I was feeling a little better, happy that I at least informed Rick who Joe DiMaggio was, and happy that I was now aware of the catastrophic flavor of Helix Vodka. I walked back up towards the salon and texted my son to see if he was done. He wrote me back pretty quickly and seemed happy with his haircut. I squinted in the sun and read his text aloud:

Dad, can we go see the Dungeons and Dragons movie?

I went back to Buca di Beppo’s and ordered another round…

The Author. Encino, CA. 12;30 pm Friday.

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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!

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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On Tour in the south April 4,5,9,10 May 2,3 9,10 with the ALL NASHVILLE ROADSHOW!!
I had been at the Great Wolf Lodge for roughly an hour when a drunk and angry ex-firefighter threatened to kick my ass at the indoor water park. He was pissed off at me for disrespecting the “sanctity” of the Great Wolf Lodge… I am 100 percent serious. Let me start at the beginning…

Spring Break. These are two of the most beautiful words in the English language… if you are a child. To parents, these words concur up feeling of hopelessness, anguish and despair. And for some reason? Today’s elementary school kids get two whole weeks off for “Spring Break…” TWO WEEKS! When I was a kid we got TWO DAYS. In college we only got a week. And as far as I recall, it wasn’t even a thing in high school.

But sure… the rigorous schedule of counting, handwriting and connect the dots can be so gruesome and torturous for a second grader – that a two-week vacation at the end of March is exactly what the school nurse ordered… So, if you’re like me, you suddenly begin scrambling to find activities for your kids to do during this gratuitous vacation. So, you make plans…

You drop $75.00 to go see shitty movies like Sherlock Gnomes.

You gain 12 pounds by not being able to go to the gym on your regular schedule. And, in some extreme cases, you agree to take your kids to the GREAT WOLF LODGE for two days…

Which is exactly where I found myself last week, riddled with anxiety as I nibbled on a chicken finger ten feet from a wave pool full of screaming children. Praying for death.

Welcome to the 10th Circle of hell.

If you have never heard of a Great Wolf Lodge, let me put it this way… Consider yourself lucky. With 13 locations across the country, the kid-friendly indoor water park is to people like me the end of the fucking world. Known for its indoor water park and “wolf-themed” decor, the franchise has drawn families from far and wide to spend their entire monthly paychecks on shitty food, arcade games and the guarantee that you will contract the Norovirus within three spins in the “Lazy River.”

I mumbled something under my breath as I loaded the car, preparing to journey down to the hotel with my wife, our second grade girl and my very unenthusiastic pre-teen who was pissed because he was missing roughly 48 hours of the video game Fortnite.

The drive down was actually somewhat exciting. I was anticipating the water park summer days of my youth, when I met a cute girl in line at the snack bar, chatted up an 8th grade crush and passed a Sony Walkman around with my buddies listening to Straight Outta Compton. Those days were nothing but innocent and fun… and I was hoping my kids might make some amazing memories of their own…

When we arrived, however, my entire demeanor changed. After looking for a space in the self-parking garage for 30 minutes, I was met with the sudden reality that there were a lot of people here during Spring Break. I mean, a lot of people. Like, thousands. And all of them had kids. Small, sweaty, stinky, gross, fat, weird, uninhibited kids…

My first moment of clarity happened when I was presented with a pair of felt “wolf ears” as I entered the lobby.

“HOWL you doing today!?” A bubbly 20-something dude named Bryan asked.

“PAW-SOME!!!” I responded sarcastically.

“Woah! Someone’s got the Great Wolf spirit!” He screamed. “AWWOOOOOOOO!”

I looked around at the hundred of fathers traipsing through the lobby wearing these ridiculous wolf ears… The looks on their faces all read the same: FAILURE.

There is a certain look a man knows when he runs into another man at a place like the Great Wolf Lodge. It is a look of defeat. Of mediocrity. Of deficiency. Like we all expected to be the dads who take our kids in Hawaii or something, but ended up at the Great Wolf Lodge in Anaheim. I recognized this look on every man’s face I encountered.

We checked in and got to our suite, which we were sharing with another family we knew from from LA. Everyone changed into bathing suits to go hit the indoor water park. A small part of me was hoping it would be a fun day, and after all, as long as they had a jacuzzi I figured I could kill a few hours relaxing and hanging out with strangers.

There was no jacuzzi.

And the water park was massive. And loud. And it smelled like feet.

“Daddy! Come in the lazy river with me!” My daughter squealed.

I took a deep breath and stood up. I took off my shirt and walked over towards the lazy river. The first thing I noticed about the water park was that somehow, I had THE BEST BODY THERE.

In my 42 years, I have never been the “ripped” guy at the pool. Ever. Even when I was 18 I had the beginnings of a dad bod and now, at my age, I had been keeping trim and eating well to the point where at the Great Wolf Lodge in Anaheim, California, I was a SWIMSUIT MODEL. Seriously. I was 30 pounds lighter than the average man. My wife, who has always been in terrific shape looked like Hannah Jeter posing for Sports Illustrated. We were “Anaheim 10’s…” and pretty proud of it.

This was the best body at the water park.

As I strutted around my new Adonis-like physique, I watched as my daughter slowly dipped into the lazy river among what seemed like hundreds of other kids. I put my leg in, noticed it was much colder than I had anticipated, and began walking around the river behind her.

And then some kid’s fleshy leg rubbed up against mine under the water. I froze. It was like in Star Wars when that Dianoga Monster rubs up against Luke in the trash compactor. A gross little bare human leg rubbing against my inner calf. I stopped to gather myself. I felt like a part of the #metoo movement. I was rattled… And then another kid wrapped himself around my chest for support as he floated by… I shuttered. Looking around, I suddenly became keenly aware of little yellow swirls of urine accumulating in certain areas. I also counted three loose Band-Aids and numerous clumps of hair floating in the water. A few more kids hit me with inner tubes as they raced by and finally, when a little girl wiped her snot off of her face and tossed it into the water beside me, my afternoon at the water park was OVER.

“Baby, I’m getting out,” I yelled as she floated down the river.

Her frown broke my heart, but the place was already too much for me. I was done. I had been at the Great Wolf Lodge for less than an hour.

The lazy river… Grabby kids, urine and hair clumps.

After drying off, I noticed the small line of men waiting for beer. I grabbed my “Wolf Band” which had my credit card and room number on it, and bought my first beer of the day. It was 3:30, but if I was going to get through this place, a buzz was certainly needed. Looking around, I noticed that day-drinking was certainly the norm here, like the way it is in airports when people order beers at 7:00 in the morning and nobody thinks twice about it.

After paying, I turned around, noticing three men behind me waiting for drinks. Two of them had “Lakeland County Fire Department” shirts on. The other was shirtless, proudly showing off a fading Tazmanian Devil tattoo from the early 90’s… I toasted the guys with my beer.

“Gentlemen,” I said. “What happened to us? We were all once virile men… with dreams, passions, desires… goals. NOW? We’re on vacation at the fucking Great Wolf Lodge. What the fuck, am I right!!?”

Suddenly, the shirtless man took a threatening step my way and got directly in my face.

“Are you disrespecting the LODGE, bro?” He asked in an accusatory way.

I wasn’t sure if he was serious. I laughed.

“Sounds like you are,” he continued aggressively, the vapor of liquor prominent on his breath. I felt scared. I backpedaled.

“No, man.. I was just, you know – joking-“

I was taken aback. If I said the wrong thing here, there is no doubt in my mind that this guy would start throwing punches. And whereas a pool fight might be the perfect excuse to get banned from the Great Wolf Lodge forever, I decided to lay off. Meanwhile, his friends tried to calm him down.

“Don’t get into another fight, Jim,” his friend told him.

Another fight? Holy shit… this guy Jim was out here kicking dad’s asses all day.

“No, man, I was just joking around, you know…” I mumbled.

“No, I don’t know, bro,” he said. “I’m a retired firefighter… I don’t back down from shit.”

And then, suddenly, there was an extremely loud wolf howl coming from the wave pool – This was the signal to swimmers that a fresh set of waves was about to begin… 200 kids screamed in delight as the call of the wolf echoed through the waterpark.

AWOOOOOOO! AWOOOOOOO!

“Ohhhh shit, what’s that?” I asked the guys.

“That means the waves are starting up…” Jim said. “That’s the call of the Lodge, bro… you better embrace your inner wolf… because like it or not? You made the decision to come here.”

He was right. I could make the most of this experience and embrace my inner wolf… or make myself suffer.

“Hey man, I’m sorry – it’s my first time here… I was just making a bad joke…”

Jim calmed down. His whole demeanor changed and he became aware that he was not in the octagon, but was at the Great Wolf Lodge. If he had wanted to kick my ass, he would have… but my honesty seemed to have chilled him out.

“Screw it,” he said. “Sorry to get up in your face, bro… come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”

Jim and his pals bought me another beer and I returned back to our deck chairs and told the story to my wife and her friend. They weren’t interested. They were concerned about something much more important.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Apparently, another mom had just told my wife that Pink Eye was going around the lodge that weekend… The woman’s two kids had been infected on the water slide and her husband was in the hotel room with his eyes swollen shut.

“Welp, I’m fucking out of here,” I said.

I took my beer upstairs and went to the bar to watch a baseball game. As I walked back through the water park, I began observing a few things.

I never realized how many adults have tattoos of their children’s baby footprints.

I saw 35 of these tattoos.

I had no idea that BIG DOGS Clothing was still a thing. There were also a lot of “Exercise…Eggsercise…Eggs are sides… Eggs are sides for Bacon” t-shirts and ‘water pun’ shirts. Like a picture of a snail holding up a seashell to his face beneath the words “SHELL-FIE!”

Finally, the majority of these adults seemed fine eating garbage for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One dad in line at the snack bar even highly recommended the pork nachos.

I thought we were in Anaheim. Somehow we ended up in Wisconsin.

Upstairs, I found a few other dads watching the Dodgers game. I made some new friends – including a pest control guy from Alhambra and a Target general manager from Riverside. We drank a few beers and talked baseball. As a way to make my new pals laugh, I recognized Bryan, the same guy who had checked me in earlier, eating on his lunch break. I approached him.

“Hey Bryan, quick question… do they have a Great Wolf Glory Hole up in this piece?”

The bar got silent. My new pals hid their laughter. Bryan did not seem amused. Within 30 seconds the bar manager tapped me on the shoulder.

“Just a reminder, sir…” He warned. “This is the Great Wolf Lodge… not the Great Wolf of Wall Street Lodge.”

My afternoon concluded in the arcade, where the kids have given up on video games requiring any sort of skill in favor of games where you spin a wheel,… and win tickets. It’s not even a challenge. It’s just a prize wheel. When I arrived, I found my daughter hoarding what looked like 15,000 prize tickets.

“I’m saving up for the stuffed wolf!” She said. I saw the wolf on the wall. At any CVS store across the country, this dumb little stuffed animal would cost $3.99. My wife told me they had already spent $60.00 trying to win it. I went back to the bar.

These tickets cost us roughly $60.00

That night, after ordering pizza to our room, my wife and I shared some wine as the kids fell asleep. At that moment, we heard a rustling in the hallway. Peeking outside, I noticed two security guards dragging a very drunk man from his room.

“How long has he been drinking today?” They asked his wife, who looked terrified.

“Since brunch, I think,” she said.

“We’ll take him to the first aid area and get him some fluids… We’ll check back in 30 minutes.”

I asked the lady what had happened.

“It’s just my dumb husband… every time we come to this place he gets blackout drunk.”

“That makes two of us,” I said, raising my wine glass.

She shut her door on me.

The next day we were set to check out. I was excited to get home and back outside – as we had been indoors for roughly 18 hours straight. The Great Wolf Lodge is like fucking Vegas in that way. You have no reason to ever leave the place… I started packing and preparing to head back to LA.

“Wanna meet us at the pool?” My wife said.

“We’re not leaving?” I said.

“I figured the kids would want another day at the pool,” she said. “I mean we paid for it.”

And just like that, we did a second day at the water park. At this point I officially gave up. I began day-drinking at 11:00. I howled every time that dumb wolf noise started in the wave pool. I contemplated buying a Great Wolf Lodge t-shirt in the gift shop that was on sale from Halloween (Or as they put it… HOWL-ween…)

Deep down I knew that finally, I had reluctantly embraced my inner wolf.

I looked around the pool again. I was a little bloated from the first day and slightly hungover. I was no longer had the best body there. I was one day into my “Midwest” period.

I went over to our deck chairs and ordered the pork nachos…

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It was around 2:15 in the morning when a hammered single mom of three kids with a very visible C-section scar approached me following my music gig at a place called Peri’s in Marin County, California.

“Hiiii Mr. Talented…” She slurred. “I live two blocks away and my kids are prolly asleep – D-ya wanna come have a drink and smoke and hang ouuuuut?”

I looked this woman over. She was about 40, had a swollen and (possibly) fractured purple ankle and was heavily puffing on an e-cigarette…. From behind, half of her dress had hiked up and lodged itself in her butt, revealing a horrifying leg tattoo of a dragonfly that started mid-thigh and ended probably just above her Va-jayjay.

She also had one dreadlock.

“Uhhh… Well, the thing is…” I stumbled. “I’m married – sooo I don’t think it would be a good idea, ya know?”

“Fuck you! You’re an asshole for leading me on!” she snapped.

Wait, what? Leading her on? How was I leading her on?

A few seconds later, it hit me… When I was performing on stage a few minutes earlier, I recalled saying:

“Who’s the hottie in the back/Nice body, nice rack/

Meet me outside in five – My name is Zach.”

Oops.

Look. If you have ever seen me or my band perform live, I often jokingly flirt with girls in the crowd with improvisational freestyle rap lyrics from the stage… This, however, was one of those rare moments when the girl actually stuck around and thought I was serious… I felt terrible. (Here’s a sample of a freestyle from NYC in 2017)

“Sorry, it was a joke, – like a part of the show??!??!?” I tried to explain to her.

She threw a drink at me, turned around and stopped at the door to say good-bye.

“Your music fucking sucks anyway,” she screamed.

By the way? I never made it home that night. Since I was too drunk to drive, the bartender let me sleep in the back seat of my Prius in the bar’s parking lot…

Did I mention it was a Tuesday?

What the fuck am I doing?

I am 44-years-old. I have two kids and a wife. Most men my age are in bed by 8:30 every night, binge-watching Netflix and thinking about some meeting they have at work the next day with Nancy from H.R.

Not many dudes I know are living like me this summer… touring bars in their mid-40’s trying to sell 20-something kids t-shirts and CD’s of their country hip-hop band that – in most people’s eyes – peaked when they opened for Jason Mraz in 2008…

For the record? On this tour I sold ZERO CD’s.

But let’s go back a few years…

In the 2000’s, every bar I played in was always PACKED. Friends, fans and industry folks lined up outside awaiting new songs – or a 10-minute freestyle rap where I might drop their names into a verse… They bought CD’s and shirts and sang along and I would walk out of the bar with $400 and a thousand business cards… My band played across the country and stayed in fine hotels, sipping top shelf whiskey and partying with rock stars…

But, then came adulthood. People had kids and a lot of my musician friends got real jobs. Some band members moved out of town… Most guys gave up or got into real estate. Even I took a break from it for a while to be around the family and work in the TV business. However, the thrill of performing live was always missing…

So, this past summer I decided that a 9-venue mini music tour of Northern California would be the best thing for my mind, body and soul.

Tour posters from the road…

As the days rolled on, I sort of forgot about the ways of the road… Late nights, uncomfortable beds… bad habits reintroducing themselves… When you’re out driving down I-5 at 9:30 at night – a restaurant like Subway suddenly becomes a solid option. The Yellow American Spirit cigarette suddenly becomes “healthy” decision… Not to mention that most bars where I play like to avoid paying musicians – and instead – offer up FREE DRINKS instead – which ultimately leads to me drinking $4.99 mini bottles of Sutter Home Cabernet – guaranteeing a foggy and painful morning.

Oh, and most bartenders who hear me ask for “the best red wine in the bar” often think I’m joking and laugh in my face.

In all honesty, I quit drinking hard liquor ten years ago…. Waking up in a Super 8 Motel with two lines shaved into your eyebrows like D’Angelo Russell will do that to anybody…

But that’s a whole ‘nother story…

The “Zachariah: Backyard and Wineries” tour began in San Francisco, at a private party where some tech geniuses of the world dug my music and my improv songs about how expensive the city had become… The host had somehow procured 25-plus bottles of the legendary Pliny the Elder beer from Santa Rosa and he was extremely generous with his liquor cabinet. However, as people got more sloshed, a supremely drunk friend of theirs named Kelly demanded I sing Shallow by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga.

“Are you gonna sing it with me?” I asked her.

“Fuck YESSS!” She screamed as the party encouraged her.

A few chords later and she was warbling through the “Wooooaaaah – ohhh – h ohhh ohh ohh oh AWWOWOHHHWHWHWH” section of the song. Let’s just say she didn’t nail it, but it didn’t matter. The vibe and energy was fantastic and I assumed every gig would end up this beautiful and natural.

But the next night I drove up to gig at Peri’s Bar in Marin County. It was certainly a success, but I was definitely under-paid and over-served awful tiny bottles of Sutter Home… (Thus the reason why I slept in a parking lot).

When I woke up in the back seat of my 2008 Prius at six the next morning, having sweat through my clothes on stage the night before, I decided that a shower was indeed in order. I quickly Googled “YMCA Marin County” on my phone and found one 10 miles away where my Hollywood “Family Membership” would let me use their facilities. This is also a practice that HOMELESS people participate in.

I ended up spending 45 minutes in the sauna listening to two men talk about their new tech venture that would “change the dumpling game forever.” After they noticed me listening in, they began whispering and eventually left the sauna altogether, protecting their billion dollar dumpling idea.

A billion dollar dumpling idea? What I derived from this moment was that I am definitely in the wrong business…

That night, I performed at the Lagunitas Tap Room in Petaluma. The venue was amazing and they even offered up cash ($80) for the gig. Plus, per usual, they served me all the beer I could drink. Initially I had planned on having one or two beers because I had to drive to meet my wife and kids up north in Cloverdale once the night ended…

However, after my show, I quickly found myself 8 beers in. Since my head was spinning, I asked my new friend Pete (who booked me there) if he had a better idea than drunk driving to Cloverdale.

“Yeah brother… my buddy Andy has an Airstream in a forest that he rents out – it’s $45 for the night,” he said.

“Uhh… like, HOW in a forest?” I inquired.

“It’s desolate, man… super chill and quiet and you won’t hear anybody’s voice for like, 9 hours straight!” Pete replied.

OK. Look. I enjoy nature. I love converted Airstream trailers. But 9 hours alone in one in nature? Yo, I’m not trying to live that Into the Wild life… I am a social person. I need conversation. Shit, I need some WiFi, ya know?

“I don’t know Pete,” I explained. “I sorta need a bed – I slept in my car last night.”

“They have a killer Aerobed,” Pete said. “I’ve slept there sooo many times, you’ll love it – I’ll even drop you off!”

And with that, Pete took me to a beautiful house with 40 acres of land in the woods, where we knocked on the door and met Pete’s buddy Andy who was extremely tired and reluctantly thrust the trailer keys into my hand. He also passed me a Romancing the Stone-like treasure map explaining how to find the forest Airstream… Pete left and I slugged through the dark forest, absolutely fearing for every second of my life, before coming across what was a beautiful 1950-something converted Airstream “Cabin.”

This was terrifying.

I unlocked the door and went inside. It was about as rustic as you could expect.

There was an Aerobed with a blanket on it…

On the wall hung a calendar from the year 2013…

And there was a shovel in the corner next to a roll of toilet paper beneath a sign that said, “Use Nature’s Facilities.”

Holy shit. What? So no bathroom? Was I gonna have to re-learn the “One-armed tree hang” I had been taught at summer camp as a kid?

I decided to just crash and wake up as early as possible to split.

30 minutes after I went to sleep, I woke up on the floor. The Aerobed had deflated. It was about 45 degrees in the trailer. With no visible air pump nearby, I turned the deflated Aerobed into a pillow and did my best to sleep for the next six hours.

A couple of hours later I woke up to the sound of what must have been two bears humping in the woods… I also swear a mysterious light flashed across the sky and for two hours I panicked about being abducted by aliens and anally probed above the Redwoods. Eventually, around 6:30, I awoke with a stiff neck and took a $20 taxi back to my car at Lagunitas.

Up in Cloverdale I met my family and began thinking that perhaps, the road life was no longer for me… I took the family to the local trampoline park and hit up some small town burger place and I was amazed at how comfortable the safe and respectable family life felt again… For a minute, I almost cancelled my final three gigs…

But, since I can rarely turn down a chance to perform, I decided to carry through on my commitments.

As I was playing the night at an all ages restaurant, the local town drunk “Banjo Bob” (yes, his real name) taught my 13-year-old son how to best hold a pool cue if he was ever to get into a bar fight.

(His advice? Hit the guy with the skinny end, that way if it breaks off – you’re left with the more dangerous thick end of the stick as a weapon.)

To quote my late grandmother: “That’s wonderful?”

The following night, I played at a pretty cool bar in Healdsburg where I ate pizza that a guy had made from an oven that he dragged behind his bicycle… I know what you’re thinking: Bike Pizza? Trust me – It was absolutely delicious.

On the last night, we drove down to San Francisco and the tour ended at a bar in the Marina called Jaxson for a friend’s fundraiser party in the city – where, as I was playing live, a man and woman dry-humped each other on the dance floor in front of me…

Now look, I’m all for dancing, but this was kind of ridiculous… I actually didn’t care. They were wasted and they loved my music and I felt at home for a few minutes with the young Marina area crowd of San Francisco…

Here – watch the video and make your own assumptions:

For the record? That girl dancing did not ask me to come back to her place after the gig.

But the guy did…

“Hi Mr. Talented,” He said… “Wanna come party with me at my place?”

“I’d love to, but, the thing is… I’m married,” I said.

I woke up the next morning in the back seat of my Prius…

ZACH IS NOW BOOKING VENUES FOR HIS SUMMER 2020 TOUR!!

Red Fuckin Wine – New single coming SOON!

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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.”

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.

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.

“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.

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…

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