Zach Selwyn

Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.

  • New album available TODAY! CLick and download – ! Enjoy!!!

    Skywriting

     

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  • Zachariah’s new song explores the corporate logo marketing travesty that all of us 90’s kids endure every time we see a Nirvana or Ramones shirt for sale in Target or Wal-Mart. Back in 1992 I had to go to the concert to buy a $30 shirt. Now the logo is on onesies.

    DOWNLOAD SONG HERE! – https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/nirvana-t-shirt-single/id1035706248

    dave grohl kurt cobain nirvana Ramones Zach Selwyn Zachariah t shirt

  • Bill-Walton-1  Recently, on social media and my website, I have made no secret of my modern return into the world of competitive basketball. I play full court four days a week at the Hollywood YMCA and recently entered a Three-on-Three tournament against other fathers at elementary schools, which I happened to have won. (My proudest athletic achievement in my life to date – not counting the time I took Colton – the star 7-year-old pitcher – DEEP in a father-son Little League game last summer…)

    -5
    Ray, me and James – LCS 3 on 3 Dad Champions

    I have re-discovered a love for the game I haven’t had sine 1993 and I’m actually a better player now than I have ever been.

    Throughout my life and into high school, basketball was everything. As a 6’2” inch eighth grader, I was groomed by my coach to become the next great Arizona Wildcats big man. Unfortunately, I haven’t grown an inch since eighth grade. I switched to the wing, where I lacked certain skills, but was still able to hold my own mainly because I was actually grabbing the rim with ease and in top physical shape. However, around age 18, I discovered the usual pitfalls – Weed, beer and women – and decided that since I had no chance, or interest in walking on my college team, I would hang up my Air Jordan XII’s and I only stepped on the court a handful of times over the ensuing decade.

    -8
    The author (circa 1992) on the left just before discovering cannabis.

    A few years ago, however, I was listening to UCLA great and fellow Grateful Dead-Head Bill Walton broadcast an Arizona- Oregon basketball game, when something he said struck me deep inside. After he spent a few minutes comparing some obscure 1970’s Bob Dylan song to the Oregon Ducks’ fast-break technique, he discussed his history of injuries he attained while playing. At the end of this sidebar, Bill Walton claimed to have broken his nose 13 times.

    “That’s what happens when you play defense with your face,” he exclaimed.

    He also mentioned his surgically fused ankles, incinerated spine, broken wrists, 36 surgeries and broken leg – all suffered on the basketball court. Walton’s lifelong injuries, along with his 1978–1979 year-long protest of the Portland Trail Blazers unethical treatment of his injuries, gave him the record of missing the most games during an NBA playing career, when taking into account the number of years he was officially listed as a player on a team roster. He spoke of how debilitating it became to walk and I researched even deeper to see that Walton once even contemplated suicide due to severe depression from debilitating back pain.

    However, Walton then made a comment that made his life on the disabled list seem even more surreal… He observed a certain move power forward Solomon Hill had made and remarked, “That is a move to study – for those of you who are still lucky enough to play basketball…”

    Lucky? How could 13 broken noses and suicidal thoughts be considered lucky? I felt that I was lucky to have quit basketball with my original nose still in place. What was Walton talking about?

    Attempting to find out, the next day I dusted off some 10-year-old shoes and made my first trip to a court in what was nearly five or six years. I checked out a basketball at the YMCA that looked as if it had spent a good majority of its life underwater, and went to shoot around. It took me awhile, but eventually I was making short jump shots and working on my cardiovascular fitness while running up and down the gymnasium floor. Some of my old spin moves came back to me, and I put up a couple of nice finger rolls and hit some three pointers. It actually felt amazing.

    -1About an hour later, a few guys asked me if I wanted to play “21” with them, but I declined, afraid of shooting 9 air balls and getting embarrassed. Instead, I continued to work on some post moves and drives and watched them from the corner of my eye. They were laughing, having fun and playing just above the level where I was – which made me think I might have hung in there if I had accepted their challenge. Instead, I returned my ball and went home and told myself I’d be back the next day.

    I did come back the next day. And the next. I ran that court nearly every other day for months until I was actually joining the games of 21 and winning a good majority of the time. For the first time in over a decade, I was having a lot of fun playing basketball. I soon found myself in the full court games and now, three years later, found myself coming home and discussing the games with my wife as if I was playing in the NBA Finals. It became an obsession to the point where if I missed a lay-up during a game, I got depressed for the rest of the day. Still, it drove me to come back again, improve and remedy the situation.

    -4
    My shrink had me draw a self portrait of what made me happy. Statistics are “close enough…”

    My wife thought I was nuts. Every time I would bring up my day on the court, she would roll her eyes and remind me that I’m more Kevin Arnold than I am Kevin Durant. She also warned me to be careful, to which I reminded her that I was playing against a bunch of guys in their 30’s and that I was in better shape than most of them.

    And then, about six months ago, I got smashed in the nose by a teenager who lowered his shoulder into me on a penetration. My nose now cracks in both directions when I try to move it, but I luckily avoided a full break. Then, a couple weeks later I was slightly concussed after being run under by a guy who was pissed that I was outplaying him. I ended up sitting out two days nursing my brain – which luckily was not permanently damaged. In December, I took an elbow to the bridge of my nose, which caused it to bleed profusely all over the court and earned me 75 “likes” on Instagram.

    -3
    Blood on the basketball court. 75 “likes” on Instagram

    In February, I jammed my left thumb so hard during a rebound that I am still having trouble operating the zippers on my jeans. Then I jammed my right pointer and ring finger in consecutive games. I’m consistently fighting shin splints and a bone spur. Finally, last week, I discovered that I have bursitis in my right shoulder and that I might not be able to play for three weeks or so. This will be my first trip to the disabled list in my athletic career. And I’m a month away from 40. According to my dad, the injuries will now just start piling up. In short, I am about to enter my Bill Walton years. Now, my family is giving me all kinds of advice.

    “Maybe think about not playing anymore,” my mother offered. “You know, you’re no spring chicken.”

    I hung up on her.

    “A spin class is much better on your body,” my dad suggested. I simply sent him pictures of my three-on-three trophy and told him I’d be back on the court in a month.

    “Don’t do anything stupid, you don’t want to really hurt yourself,” my wife told me.

    I rolled my eyes and studied Russell Westbrook highlights like it was important game film.

    During the past week, I have found myself watching Bill Walton again. I guess recently there have been petitions to remove him from the Pac-12 broadcast booth, which upsets me entirely. Sure, he can go on tangents about the time Bob Weir and him spoke Arabic to camels in the Egyptian desert, but his unique and loveable qualities are what make him a treasure in the booth. He’s not a cookie-cutter color guy. He’s quotable and full of basketball wisdom. In fact, he may be my favorite college basketball announcer working today. Not only does he know the game, he makes it fun. I know he seems like he might be high or severely “out-there” once in awhile, but his love for the game is like nobody’s I’ve ever heard before. Not only that, his passion for the game is what got me playing basketball again.

    Rock & Pop - Grateful Dead - Bob Weir - #fl_0108
    Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead in Egypt ’76

    Without Bill Walton, I’d still be jogging three miles on a treadmill. Not competing and not getting any sense of accomplishment.

    For that, I thank you Mr. Walton. For inspiring me to lace up my sneakers that early morning three and a half years ago and return to the sport of my youth.

    Bill-Walton
    Walton at the height of his game resembling the lead singer of My Morning Jacket. (1978)

    The evening after I won the three-on-three “Dads” championship, my wife said I had a “glow” about me. I knew what she was talking about, because I felt it. It was a sense of invincibility and achievement. I felt young again. Above the rim. It brought to mind a famous Bill Walton quote I had read years ago when he said, “You don’t win championships by being normal, by being average…”

    I may have only defeated a bunch of dads in a Saturday pick-up tournament, but for those of us who are just hanging onto the final glimpses of what we might be able to accomplish as men, it was as if I won an NBA Championship.

    Now if you excuse me, I have to go ice my shoulder. I’m planning on returning to the court earlier than expected…

    -6
    The LCS “3 on 3” basketball trophies I won. My proudest athletic achievement to date.

    Buy Zach’s BOOK at amazon.com!

    http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Will-Get-You-Nowhere/dp/0983723737/ref=la_B00QL0F634_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427556976&sr=1-1

    **UPDATE!** Read Bill Walton’s email to ZACH below following the publication of this essay!!

    Bill.Walton <bill.walton@billwalton.com
    to me
    all good things in all good time

    here we go—-forward, furthur,
    good everything forever, BW,
    and please don’t play defense with your face, there’s no future in that

    BUY ZACH'S BOOK at AMAZON.COM!

    READ SOME WALTON-ISMs HERE : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bill_walton.html

    announcing Basketball. March Madness Bill Simmons Bill Walton Chuck Palhuinak ESPN essays funny Grantland hoops humor NBA UCLA Zach Selwyn

  • In the late 90’s I was lucky enough to sleep with a Playboy
    Centerfold. For the sake of this story, let’s call her “Miss July.” She
    wasn’t the current centerfold by any means, in fact her issue had
    already been off the racks for nearly seven years at the time of our
    tryst, but she had been a popular Playmate in the 90’s… and one that I
    had admired for years. For some reason, the planets aligned and she
    and I shared a three-night fling at our respected apartments doing all
    we could to pretend that we had anything in common outside of our bed
    sheets.

    Following our little hook up, I rifled through a used bookstore for
    her back issue, buying at least six copies to give to my high school
    friends. I called nearly every guy I knew to share in my glory and
    walked on air for a good three months after our encounter, knowing
    that I had achieved one of the ultimate male fantasies. I even sent a
    back issue to my dad. After all, Playboy was my bible growing up and
    bedding one of the world’s most beautiful women suddenly made me feel
    like I could accomplish anything in my life.
    Last week, while walking through a grocery store with my 10-year-old
    son, I ran into Miss July in the produce section. At first, I stopped
    and stared at her, like every man in the store had been doing since
    she walked in the vicinity. She was still gorgeous and shapely and
    wearing an outfit that only a Playmate can get away with.
    Her breasts were still high and on display. He hair still blonde and
    bountiful, with ringlets cascading beneath her shoulders – as if she
    was currently in the middle of a photo shoot. I ogled for a minute,
    before coming to the realization that she was, indeed, Miss July. My
    Miss July. The girl I had slept with all those years ago. I hadn’t
    thought of her in so long, I assumed she had moved to the other side
    of the country where I would never see her again.

    And now here she was fondling a pair of avocados.

    44db37438d3358678714a52d6f5ae34e

    “Why are you staring at that girl?” My son asked, snapping me out of
    the coma my 40-year-old mind had drifted into.

    “Oh, I think I know her,” I said, secretly hoping that he might
    recognize her beauty and high-five me after we left the grocery store.

    “Cool,” he responded. “Can I play on your phone?”

    I gathered my thoughts and strolled around to the coffee aisle. I
    wasn’t sure if I was going to say hello to her, afraid that she would
    think I was some stalker from her Playmate days. I also didn’t want
    her to blurt out something stupid, like “Oh my GOD! You were that guy
    I slept with in the 90’s!” Worst of all, I thought, she wouldn’t
    remember me at all. I let my son pick out some cereal as I mulled over
    my next move.

    Like most happily married men, I still harbor the memories of my
    single years when one-night stands were so daring and fun and
    whimsical. After all these years, they hold a nostalgic place in my
    heart as something fantastic and perfect – when in reality they were
    normally panic-riddled and led to health concerns and loneliness.
    My week with Miss July began at a nightclub in Hollywood. She was
    gorgeous, fending off the masses with her icy stare and constantly
    turning down drinks from potential suitors clamoring to be in her
    airspace. I had no idea she was a Playmate at the time, but she
    certainly had the look. She was dressed to the nines in a fur jacket
    and sipping on a vodka drink when my friends dared me to go speak to
    her. As I was in my cups, I waltzed directly up to her and began
    rubbing her jacket.

    “Interesting. A New Zealand back country field rabbit coat… Very
    rare,” I said.

    She laughed and stared me deep in the eyes.

    “Are you on ecstasy?”  She replied.

    “No,” I exclaimed. “Not at all… why?

    “Normally when I wear this coat out a bunch of druggies just want to pet it.”

    I laughed and thought of a quick comeback.

    “I’d rather pet you,” I blurted out confidently.

    She actually laughed and wrote her number down on a bar napkin. I told
    her I’d call her and I did – the next day – breaking any rules which I
    had learned from popular movies like Swingers. She was surprised to
    hear from me. We made plans to go out to a Casa Vega, a Mexican
    restaurant in the valley for margaritas the following night. When she
    cancelled on me two hours beforehand, I thought I was doomed. When I
    asked her why she had to cancel, however, my eyes lit up.

    “I have to fly to Iowa for a Playboy convention in the morning, I’m so
    sorry,” she said.

    “Why? Do you sell advertising for them or something?” I inquired.

    “No, silly – I was Miss July a few years ago! I thought you knew…”

    I didn’t know. Now I did. I immediately called my friends and sang
    them J. Giels Band lyrics through the receiver. Yes. My baby was a
    centerfold.

    Playboy Playmates

    A week later, we hit Casa Vega. At one point she went outside
    to smoke and I let her go alone. (I was trying to quit at the time).
    When a guy at the bar saw this, he motioned to me and said, “Dude, you don’t let a girl that hot out of your sight for any amount of time.”

    I ignored him, assuming she would brush off any potential creeps and
    return back to our bar stool where we’d finish our drinks and continue
    our evening. After 20 minutes, however, I began to grow nervous.
    I went out to the smoking section, and sure enough, there they were:
    MEN. All kinds… Guys who had intended to come inside for dinner but
    were so mesmerized by her beauty that they decided to hang outside a
    little longer. Guys who didn’t even smoke were bumming cigarettes from
    her and chain smoking. One guy even flipped her a business card and
    said, “I scout for Playboy, if you ever want to be in the magazine,
    let me know…”

    She laughed and to my surprise grabbed me by the arm. All the men’s
    faces dropped as they saw this 23-year-old kid with a Strokes haircut
    coyly slip his hand around the top of her waist. Dejected, the guys
    all walked inside with their heads down, preparing to settle for
    baskets of chips and salsa and not the ravishing creature who I was
    lucky enough to be spending the night with.

    We went to another bar and then went to my place. Two nights later, I
    joined her at her place. We went out once more, on a Saturday, but she
    got swept up in a crowd of famous actors and I stood around waiting
    for her to return to me, feeling like the unpopular kid in junior high
    who can’t muster up the balls to ask a girl to dance. Eventually, when
    she began partaking in their bottle service vodka, I grew frustrated,
    knowing my time was up. Without even saying good-bye, I grabbed my
    jacket and made a quick exit, calling my buddies to meet me for a
    heartbreak beer at Coach and Horses, my old favorite dive bar.

    “So what if it’s over?” My buddy said. “You were with a Playmate!”

    “Yeah dude, my last hook up was with the hostess at Yankee Doodles in
    Agoura Hills,” said another.

    As the drinks flowed, my confidence returned and I quickly got over
    the fling with the help of some good friends. The next day Miss July
    and I exchanged a few phone messages, but never reconnected.
    Even though it was over, I was still waking on air, feeling as if I
    had done all I could and was now exuding an air of confidence that
    nobody could touch. I even kept two of her back issues for myself. One
    to put on the coffee table, and one to put in a pristine cellophane
    folder where it would remain intact on my bookshelf until the end of
    my days… It still sits there today.

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    As I rounded the bread aisle, I saw her again. As luck would have it,
    we were approaching the check out line at the same time, inspecting our carts and reaching into our wallets for ATM cards. I purposefully took the spot in line directly behind her and noticed as she unloaded
    an unusual amount of dog food onto the conveyor belt. She also bought butter, apples, avocados, bananas, Kombucha and a pre-made tray of
    sushi. I was still staring. My 10-year-old took advantage of my distant
    gaze and slipped two packs of M & M’s into my cart. I didn’t care. I
    had butterflies in my stomach as if I was back in that Hollywood
    nightclub 17 years earlier… But then it hit me: I was married. I was
    standing with my child. I had no reason to not say something. If
    anything, I thought, it would extend the memory a few more years. I
    decided to go in for the kill.

    “Is your name Taylor? (Not her real name)” I asked.

    She looked up at me and smiled.

    “Yeah, who are you?”

    “My name is Zach,” I said. “Not sure if you remember me, but we sort
    of dated about 17 years ago… we met at a nightclub and went to Casa
    Vega…?”

    She looked me over, perplexed.

    “Were you that drummer?” She asked.

    “No, but I play music…”

    “Oh, you were the guy who knew Green Day!”

    “No,” I said.

    “Oh. Did you know Quentin?”

    “Nope,” I responded, realizing that I was barely a flicker of memory
    in her mind all these years later – whereas she had held the top spot
    in my gallery of former flames for close to two decades. I was a bit
    embarrassed.

    “Oh, wait!” She said. “Did you used to have long curly hair? And you
    lived on Harper Avenue and you played me Crash into Me by Dave
    Matthews Band on your guitar?”

    The cashier chuckled.

    “Uhh, yeah, that was me,” I said, blushing.

    26288a71d9878f6519c7ca018a8dca5d-36296
    23-years-old with a Strokes haircut…

    She hugged me as if we were long lost siblings. I felt my wobbly arms
    go around her body once more, immediately wondering what would have
    happened if I hadn’t been so stubborn at that bar all those years ago.

    My chest pressed against hers and for a brief moment I was 23 again,
    stupidly running around Hollywood with a group of horny friends
    worrying about nothing but a 10 a.m. commercial audition and where I
    was going to be drinking that night. She pulled away and paid for her
    groceries and stood behind the bag boy waiting for me to pay and
    rejoin her. When I did, we caught up briefly and I introduced her to
    my son… who seemed to not have any interest in this beautiful woman
    that his dad was talking to.

    As it turns out, Miss July still did Playmate conventions. She was
    living in the valley, had been married for a year but was divorced and
    was raising her 3 small dogs, Gucci, Dorito and Mr. Farts-A-Lot. She
    didn’t go out anymore, was disappointed with Tinder and loved
    The Big Bang Theory. I felt like she was reciting her “Turn-On” list
    from her Centerfold interview page – but had updated it as a
    middle-aged woman.

    We exchanged numbers and she remarked on how handsome my son was. I
    told her I’d invite her out to see my band if we ever played again and
    I watched her speed off in her Prius. I thought back to the nights we
    had shared together and then looked back at my son, blissfully playing
    on my phone, seemingly unaware of what had transpired between his father and
    that mysterious girl in the produce section 17 years earlier.

    As we drove home, he handed me back my phone and stared out the
    window. As I watched his eyes dart around the city, I thought of his
    future and how he was still so young and innocent and had the entire
    world ahead of him. I realized how happy I was to be spending my life
    with my wife, my daughter and him, and not a smelly pug named Mr.
    Farts-a-Lot.

    And then, after a few minutes of driving, he broke the silence.

    “Dad, I wanna learn some Dave Matthews Band songs on guitar,” he said.

    They grow up so fast…

    READ ZACH’S NERDIST STORY “RE-EXAMINING THE NBA DRAFT ID I HAD BEEN SELECTED!”

    https://nerdist.com/re-examining-the-1997-nba-draft-if-i-had-been-selected/

    CVH4QMaI

     

    bukowski david sedaris essay fiction hugh hefner humor Playboy playmate sex short story stories writing Zach Selwyn

  • Buy Zach’s Book “Talent Will Get You Nowhere”Talent

    Available Now on Amazon!

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  • Comedy Comedy Central dong on the whiteboard funny lonelyisland rap sketch SNL TBS Zach Selwyn Zachariah

  • Zach wrote and produced this piece for TBS Digital starring the Sklar Brothers.

    Sklar brothers

  • I could have fucked one of my teachers back in high school. I didn’t. But I could have. She was into me… She told me I made her ‘quiver…’ She said I looked like a movie star. She tried to kiss me. This was 25 years ago… I still think about it.
    Nowadays these stories are everywhere. Open any internet browser and you are greeted by a photo of a young teacher who was recently arrested for seducing their 16-year-old Biology student with marijuana and booze and throwing group sex parties and shit. Their mug shots get splashed all over websites and people everywhere shame these women for fucking underage boys…

    Texas-High-School-Teacher-Arrested-for-Allegedly-Having-Sex-With-Student
    A Texas Teacher recently arrested for having sex with an underage student

    Back in the day you never heard about this type of shit. If you did, it was always a creepy male Phys Ed. teacher who wore New Balance sneakers and sported a filthy Don Mattingly moustache. Now it seems these sex-starved teachers are women who look like Charlize Theron with John and Kate Plus Eight haircuts.

    In the early 90’s, these women didn’t exist.

    Except in my high school.

    118443
    My boyhood hero Don Mattingly definitely had a ‘Molester ‘stache.’

    During my senior year, a really cute teacher’s assistant/college student named Debbie joined my AP English class. She was responsible for grading our shitty essays about the “Grapes of Wrath,” and helped with our teacher Mrs. Kelly’s syllabus… and she also happened to give me ‘fuck me eyes’ nearly every single day.

    One day after school in the parking lot, Debbie caught me by my Dodge Lancer as I was preparing to roll a Mexi-shwag joint to smoke with my boy Adam.

    “Zach, can I talk to you for a second?” She asked.

    At first I thought she was going to criticize my schoolwork or something, but instead she ended up asking me on a date.

    “Look, Zach – so I know you mentioned that you want to be an actor when you are older… and uhmm… Well, Les Miz is coming to the U of A next Saturday and I actually have an extra ticket – so if you want to go…?”

    She smiled at me. The ‘U of A’ was the University of Arizona… and I had been hanging around the campus since I was a kid. I had always noticed the frat guys and the cute girls, but here was one of them actually… hitting on me. Or at least I thought she was. She was confident and she certainly had something none of the high school
    girls I had been dating had… a MAJOR.

    I wasn’t sure if this invite was a come on, but I liked it. I felt invincible and dominant. Typical 17-year-old shit. I nodded my head, told her, ‘sure’ and we made plans to meet around seven at Centennial Hall on the Arizona campus to see the show. She even gave me her phone number just in case I got lost. Cell-phones weren’t a thing yet, but she promised to check her answering machine from a payphone.

    I went back to see Adam.

    “What was that all about, dude?”

    “Dude, I think I might fuck the English T.A.”

    shelley-dufresne-32
    Another cute teacher’s “underage sex” mug shot from 2016.

    I went home and told my mom that I had plans to go out on Saturday night. My mom went ballistic. My mom can read anybody. Especially back then. She immediately began getting suspicious of this woman’s intentions.

    She wanted to know who she was, how old she was, what exactly this teacher wanted with me, etc.

    “Mom, don’t worry, she’s like, 22, and she just knows I want to be an
    actor – that’s it!”

    “Don’t kid yourself, Zach, this woman has ulterior motives… don’t be so naïve.”

    Amazingly, I somehow convinced my mom that this could be my only chance to see Les Miserables, and since my mother is a Broadway Theater geek, she relented at the last minute and let me go. But with a warning…

    “Keep in mind, Zach, you have way too much going for you to
    impregnate a teacher.”

    I ignored her and drove off to meet Debbie at the show.

    Debbie was waiting in front of Centennial Hall as I walked up from the free parking spot I found six blocks away. I had no interest in dropping $4.00 on the valet… although today, that seems completely reasonable. Meanwhile, Debbie had dressed up for the occasion, much differently than her usual school jeans and sweater. She was wearing an above-the-knee dress and a leather tank top with fringes angling from them. This was no high school girl…

    Meanwhile, I wore Banana Republic jeans and my favorite striped shirt from a long extinct mall fashion store called Structure.

    During the show, Debbie ‘accidentally’ grabbed my arm a few times as if we were watching a horror film like Nightmare on Elm Street. The thing was, the show wasn’t that scary… It also wasn’t that good.

    It may have been the touring company, or the Centennial Hall acoustics, but I was lost for most of the performance. About the only thing I remember about it was that I was hiding a massive chubby in my pants and that New York Yankees pitcher Tommy John had a kid who was performing in the show… I thought that was pretty cool. (Taylor John RIP).

    After it wrapped and we stood and applauded, Debbie suggested we walk around the university for a little bit. She actually asked me if I would be interested in getting a beer. I was 17. I rarely drank in high school, but I did have my stepbrother’s fake I.D. He was 5’9”. I was 6’2”. It only worked at one liquor store on Columbus Avenue where the clerk actually believed me when I told him I had,  “A big growth spurt last summer.

    “I could have one, I guess,” I said.

    Debbie smiled and we walked over to U of A Liquors and she bought a six-pack of this relatively new beer called Icehouse.

    icehouse09
    Remember this?

    Growing up in Tucson, you spend a lot of time drinking beer in the washes and deserts hidden off the sides of the streets. She found her little familiar spot where she liked to drink with her college friends and we drank and talked for quite a while… about my Hollywood dreams, our English class and movies we liked. Eventually, near the end of beer number two, she told me that she thought I have “it” and told me that she was confident that I will absolutely make it as a huge movie star.

    She then leaned in and began kissing the side of my neck for roughly four seconds.

    “Woah,” I said, pulling away and hiding my awkwardness behind a weird laugh.

    “I…I…I’m so sorry!” She blurted out. “I thought you wanted this!”

    Debbie turned deep red. My stomach twisted. That sinking feeling in the stomach where you just don’t know what the right words are.

    “Look, I’m only 17, ya know?” I said.

    She wasn’t comfortable. She began rocking back and forth.

    “I’m so stupid, this was – this was so stupid,” she said.

    “No, no, it’s fine – I just – I’m not sure it’s… right,” I said.

    “You’re really sexy, Zach, you know that, right?”

    “Uhmm, Thanks,” I said. “I mean, you’re sexy too but…”

    And then we sat there in silence for close to ten minutes. Those awkward high school silences…

    maxresdefault
    If Debbie had looked like this, the night may have gone differently…

    “Listen,” she said sometime later. “Can we please never tell anybody about this – especially Mrs. Kelly?” She said.

    “I will never tell anybody,” I promised. Another five minutes of silence followed before I suggested it was time to call it a night.

    As we made the walk back to my car, I began to feel somewhat guilty. I was sort of one of those high school make-out kings – the guy who always loved kissing almost more than anything else… I thought, that when we got to my car, I would grab her and kiss her – just to lift our self-esteem and make the night less disappointing and more epic… But when we got back to my Dodge… I just couldn’t do it.

    I looked at her. She seemed confused. She seemed lost, most likely feeling guilty. I told her that Monday morning would be no different than any other day. I told her she shouldn’t worry and that I wouldn’t tell a soul. I thanked her for the ticket to Les Miz and I drove home and masturbated into my pillow.

    25-years later, a big part of me wishes I would’ve had sex with her… This was the pre-internet world. Nobody would have cared. She would have not been able to ‘friend me’ on Facebook or post pictures of us in that wash posing with beers in the Tucson night… There would have been no mug shot… She probably had an apartment nearby the campus and life would have just rolled along so easily back then… My God, it would have been so simple to get away with it and I would have a killer story for my friends when I got to college…

    Alas, the moment faded, much like my movie star dreams… and my adolescent fantasies. That following Monday morning in class was far less awkward for me than it was for her, although we never seemed to even acknowledge one another.

    I recently typed Debbie’s name into Google and found out that she was newly divorced and a mother of three… She was in Scottsdale. She looked old.

    It’s funny how life speeds up and people come and go from your lives – I often think back… What if we had fucked? Maybe she gets pregnant and I have a 26-year-old son in Scottsdale right now? Luckily, I don’t. Life is pretty fucking crazy.

    I never saw Les Miz again.

    I’m not sure if they still make Icehouse beer.

    I haven’t smoked Mexi-shwag in decades.

    But you’re God damned right I got an ‘A’ in Mrs. Kelly’s AP English class…

    Please watch Zach’s NBA2k Vlog from New York City!

    band teacher bukowski comedic funny short story gmail Hyena jude Angelini. hot teachers Justin Bieber Les Miserables Sedaris sex short stories Talent will Get You Nowhere tucson youtube

  • Move over Jimmy Fallon –  Zach informs you about the latest Jingle Punks happenings – Lil Dicky, Hoodie Allen and MORE!

    <p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/110420785″>Featuring Hoodie Allen, Lil Dicky, Meow Mix, and more</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/jinglepunks”>Jingle Punks</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

     

    Hoodie Allen Lil Dicky Meow Mix

  • funny-tinder-profile-chickshorrible-tinder-profiles-0   kern-dergs-tinder 

    My Wife and I Spent a Week on Tinder and it Almost Wrecked Our Marriage * 2015 by Zach Selwyn

    Having been lucky enough to fall in love at the dawn of the internet dating era, I was never able to partake in the highly sexually charged world of apps like Tinder, Plenty O’Fish and Match.com. I have never sexually texted any girl – besides my wife – and certainly will never be able to type in the words Let’s Netflix and chill to anyone – unless all I truly want to do is come home and, well, watch Netflix and chill. My Facebook profile has always said, “married.” I have never “swiped left,” “matched” with anybody or desperately called the It’s Just Lunch girls in any airline in-flight magazine. Some might say I’m extremely lucky. Others can’t believe how much fun I missed out on by not being able to explore the overtly sexual side of the smart phone.

    Last week, while scanning my Facebook page, I noticed an advertisement for a new Jewish dating app called JFIIX that had posted to my page. Not being sure how or why a singles ad would appear on my page, I glanced at it for a brief moment, silently shocked at the pure magnificent beauty of the girl being featured as a lonely Jewish single. She was mesmerizing. Beautiful and stunning with green eyes and perfectly structured face. My first thought was, after years of dating and befriending hundreds of Jewish women – was that Jewish girls do NOT look like that. Not to sound like a jerk, but looking back at the girls in my life – and according to my friends who had experience on JDATE and other apps –very rarely did a Jewish supermodel with eyes like the girl in that photo show up in synagogue.

    JewgirlSure, there are your ScarJo’s and your Mila Kunis’s and of course Bar Rafaeli, but to tell you the truth, the majority of Jewish girls I remember dating in the 90’s did not resemble Scarlett Johannsen – in fact, most of them looked more like David Johannsen.

    So, I had an idea. I was going to write a true, investigative article into the world of online Jewish dating apps – or as some call it, “Jewish Tinder.” I decided to register as a single man in his 30’s on JFIIX with the intention of seeing what type of Jewish women were out there in the dating world today as compared to the swimsuit model featured in the ad. The hard part would be convincing my WIFE to let me do this.

    “I think you’re an idiot,” she said immediately.

    “Why? This is going to be hilarious!” I responded. “I’ll only go on a few dates, get my material and delete my account.”

    “What if I registered on Tinder and went out with a few dudes, would you be cool with that?”

    She had a point. No, I didn’t think I could handle my wife hitting the town with some Los Angeles business owner who might just sweep her off her feet with his Tesla, Clippers tickets and full head of hair. Still, I argued that a Jewish dating site would not offer me any temptation. After all, I was, in general, not attracted to Jewish women. My wife then made me a deal.

    “If you do a week on your Jewish dating site, I get to do a week on Tinder.”

    It was the hall pass agreement for the screen generation. Here we were, two middle-aged married people agreeing to explore the dating world as a social experiment for one week. The goal for me was nothing more than a good story and maybe a few laughs. What transpired was a total nightmare.

    I began by creating my online dating profile. JFIIX uses Facebook as your homepage, so I had to alter nearly every detail on my personal life. I considered naming my profile “Guns ‘N Moses…” but I didn’t. I used a photo from 9 years earlier, described myself as a “working musician” (Only 24% true… half the time) – and listed my religious affiliation as “Casual.” At further glance on the Jewish dating apps, other options to the user are to declare themselves, “Orthodox,” “Reform” and my favorites, “Willing to Convert” and “Not Willing to Convert.” There is also something called “Frum,” which did not stand for “frumpy” but for someone who lives by the strict laws of the Torah.

    Having known plenty of women who have converted to Judaism over the years for marriage, I never made my wife convert because, well, frankly she was raised Athiest and I just didn’t care. Judaism has always been more about a culture than a way of life for me anyway, so I listed myself as ‘Casual’ – which I hoped just revealed that I was happy to sit around the house in sweatpants and watch Woody Allen movies.

    Meanwhile, my wife was busy setting up her Tinder profile in the other room. I heard her giggling as she uploaded a photo. I was immediately losing my mind. I texted my buddy Adam, who is one of those guys who crushes on Tinder, and told him to look out for my wife’s profile. Within an hour he sent me screenshots of her online details, revealing that she had used a past bikini modeling photo, listed herself as ten years younger than she is and put her age-dating window between “21 and 32 years old.” After all, my wife is a little older than me – and when we met, when I was 26, she said, “Funny, ever since I was 18 I have been dating 26-year-olds.”

    Well, now I was 40 and way past her window. Which is maybe why she agreed to do this horrifying but exciting experiment with me in the first place.

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    The kind of cheesedick I imagined asking out my wife

    Once our profiles went online and we were invited to “start searching,” I quickly became aware of the reality of online Jewish singles. Most of them were better looking than I had expected, and I initially matched with one reformed girl named Sadie who was only on my feed because we both liked The Allman Brothers Band. A second match came an hour later when a fairly cute girl named Heather approved my photo and said I looked like a rock star. One half-Asian girl who said she, “loved Jewish guys,” said she was simply looking for a good time. It was then that the Jewish guilt kicked in pretty harshly. I felt like I was in a brothel or some lascivious red light district. I felt like I was betraying my kids, my wife my existence. I hated myself. I quickly signed off and decided to pull the rip cord on this entire story.

    And then my wife got asked out on a date.

    “You’re not going, “ I screamed.

    “Bullshit I’m not,” she said. “This was your stupid idea… You go out with your Jewish girls and I’ll go out with Dante.”

    “Dante? His name is Dante?” I exclaimed. “You can’t go out with a Dante!”

    “Sorry, you’re watching the kids Saturday and I’m going out to dinner at some place called Craig’s.”

    She slammed the door and left me in the living room, gutted. I was a pile of nerves. Lord knows what type of animal this Dante was. Date rapist, swindler… talent agent. It was as if I was awaiting some horny high school guy to take out my daughter and I was a frantic ball of tension and stress. I immediately called Adam to find out what to expect.

    “Do you know anyone named Dante?” I asked.

    “No, why?”

    “Because he’s taking my wife out on a date Saturday night.”

    Adam did not know Dante, but he knew of the bar Craig’s. According to Adam, Craig’s was a scene, full of beautiful people, celebrities and rich guys who have trophy girls on their arms everywhere.

    He described it as, “the kind of place that David Spade brings a Playmate to.”

    Oh crap.

    worst-tinder-profile-pics-1-2-s-307x512
    How I imagined ‘Dante.’

    I asked Adam if he would spy on my wife this coming Saturday, hanging in the bar and stealing glances her way to make sure nothing creepy was going on. I even offered to cover his dinner and drinks if he did it. He agreed.

    Meanwhile, the next few days, I didn’t sign onto JFIIX at all. I spent my time in the gym, getting my aggressions out and dreading the Saturday night when my wife would Uber to the restaurant to meet Dante, who at this point, I had decided was either African American or Greek – based on the hundreds of Google searches I made for “Dante- images.” The one rule I made was that he could not pick her up at our house, and she agreed. However, the anxiety-ridden toll of this experiment was already hanging over my head pretty heavy. It wasn’t as if I expected my wife to sleep with this guy, but I worried about someone we knew seeing them or Dante’s reaction when my wife informed him that she is married and has two children.

    I decided to get back on JFIIX. Amazingly, 29 girls had requested a chat. Maybe it was the photo I was using. One of them was named Perla, and she claimed to be new in town from the Ukraine. I broke down and sent her a message. She asked for more photos. I uploaded a few more. I was feeling ashamed and guilty and almost began searching for apartments to rent in Koreatown following what was to be my impending divorce.

    worst-tinder-profile-pics-1-3-s-307x512
    I really hoped Perla didn’t look like this.

    Perla wanted to get a coffee. She uploaded an attractive photo of herself in a bikini standing near the Dead Sea in Israel and I suddenly found myself typing, “Have you ever been to the Bourgeois Pig on Franklin Avenue?”

    It was on. Saturday morning I was meeting Perla for a latte in the darkest coffee shop I could think of. My wife ignored me as I dressed myself conservatively and strolled out the door to go on the first date I have been in since 2001.

    Perla looked a little different than her photos. For one, her long black dress covered what appeared to be an increasing paunch in the stomach area. Not that I’m some David Beckham-like specimen, but at least I didn’t post a photo of myself with Photo-shopped abs. Perla had played me. She was at least five years older than her listed age of 33, her hair was wiry and curly and had stray greys everywhere. After ordering two coffees and a muffin, Perla revealed that she was recently divorced and had two kids. One was named “Absalom,” which meant “Father of Peace” in Hebrew, and the other was “Raananah” which meant, “Unspoiled.” She said she was pretty religious and ultimately wanted five children. She also mentioned she was working on a children’s book. I told her I was a touring rock star with lots of girlfriends and that I was due back on the road in three days to open up for My Morning Jacket. That sealed it. The rest of the date was pretty much silent and I shook her hand good-bye, promising to call her soon.

    Meanwhile, back home, my wife was hours away from her date with Dante. It was then that Adam called me and told me that he had a hot date that night and that there was no way he could spy for me that night. Crushed, I begged him to make it work. He told me to relax and I went home and started drinking.

    My wife took off at 7:30, as I was bathing the kids. Before she left, I instructed them to say in their cutest voices, “We love you mommy,” and it was a success. The last thing I wanted my wife to have on her mind before submitting to a stranger’s bedroom was the angelic voices of her kids saying good-bye.

    After they went to bed, I paced the house like a maniac. One bottle of red wine led to some beers and eventually I was passed out drunk on my couch with the baseball playoffs on in the background. When I was startled awake by a fire engine, it was 11:30. She still wasn’t home.

    I called Adam, who was out in the valley with his Tinder date. He said not to worry… he said Craig’s was a late night place anyway. I called Craig’s, and asked if a beautiful woman was making out with “a Greek or African-American man at the bar.” They put me on hold and never returned. I frantically texted my wife and got no response. I went to bed. At around 12:45 the door opened and my wife ascended the stairs, skipped brushing her teeth and passed out.

    “How was Dante?” I asked the following morning.

    “A perfect gentleman,” she responded.

    “What did you do?”

    “Not much,” she replied. “He took me to dinner at Craig’s, where I ran into Tony Halvarr – remember him from my acting class? And then we had a glass of wine at the bar with these hilarious guys who were in town training for the US Olympic volleyball team – then we went to some club – oh my God I can’t believe I even went to this place – where it was that model Amber Rose’s birthday celebration… She used to be married to Wiz Khalifa – and then some DJ – DJ Premiere? Do you know who he is?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Anyway, he was spinning. Then there was a fight and then we left because the bottle service was waaaay too expensive and I noticed it was 11 so I came home.”

    “No – you came home at 12:45,” I said.

    “Oh, really? Wow! Whatever the case, it was nice to feel 25 again! He’s super cool – 25 – and sells edibles for a THC company. He wants me to go to some basketball games with him this year, so we might keep in touch… Amber Rose was really nice by the way!”

    Amber-Rose-Booty
    My wife’s new friend, the extremely talented Amber Rose.

    The rest of the day was full of uncomfortable silences and me inaudibly moping around the house. I had nobody to blame but myself. As per our agreement, my wife and I deleted our respective accounts and agreed to never do something like this again.

    What I derived from this social media experiment is that there are a lot more men than women trolling for quick hook-ups and conquests on these apps, and unless you can find a stunning photograph of yourself in a bathing suit, you can almost forget being asked out by anybody. Then again, this is Los Angeles, the most image-conscience town in the world. Perhaps out there in America, say in Des Moines or Peoria, there are actually decent people looking for significant others and not relying on a 10-year-old photo to stir their loins into a sexual frenzy. These apps might be effective for folks out there who can’t find the time for dating or casual meet and greets. If you are currently finding love and interesting conversation through dating apps like Tinder, JFIIX, Zoosk, Christian Mingle or even the fascinating Farmers Only – I can only wish you the best of luck.

    And if you get sick of looking for love in all the wrong places, you can always move to Los Angeles. I know where Amber Rose is having her birthday party next year…

    Buy Zach’s Book “Talent Will Get You Nowhere” at Amazon.com!

    TWGYNSlidehttp://www.amazon.com/Talent-Will-Get-You-Nowhere/dp/0983723737

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Tag: essays

Surviving a Cruise Ship with no Booze, no Internet and a Two-Star Restaurant…

  • May 17, 2018
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Hero · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer

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

Confused?

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

Ehhh, not so much.

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

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

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

“Excuse me?” I replied.

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

“And where can I jump overboard?”

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

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

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

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The view during ‘Dry Dock.’

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

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

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

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

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Enjoying my 5th Branzino dish of the week…

 

 

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Common Mistake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

And just like that, my trip was saved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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10 Euros got you a trim.

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

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

“The morgue?” I cringed. “For what?”

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

Jesus Christ.

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

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

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

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

“Fuck that, Ill just take SMILF.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah explained it further.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He then excused himself and went to the shoilet…

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

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

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Fist Fights, Norovirus and Alcohol Poisoning: My 36 Hours at the Great Wolf Lodge

  • April 7, 2018
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Hero · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer · Uncategorized

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

 

WATCH ZACH’S NEW SERIES “ONE MINUTE MUSIC MINUTE” at OLE TV! @oletvofficial

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The Story of My Hippie Nanny Who Used to Hide Weed for Me Around the House

  • February 18, 2018
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Hero · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer · Uncategorized

By Zach Selwyn

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

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I would have totally dated this girl back in college.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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My 1995 hippie dream.

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

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“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.

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Our ceiling

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

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

“Ya think?”

Stupidly, I checked beneath the candle for some weed.

There was nothing.

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

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

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

Lucky bastard… He was living my hippie dream…

 

Preview an upcoming song from Zach’s new album!

 

 

 

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Read Zach’s New Short Story: “I Told My Brother I Believe That Aliens Created Us – and Now We Don’t Speak Anymore.”

  • August 22, 2017
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer

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I spent 30 minutes yesterday explaining to my brother that a deep part of me believes in the theory that our entire human race is the result of aliens coming down and impregnating chimpanzees with alien DNA.

“Oh my God you’re an idiot,” he told me.

“What? Why?” I responded.

He took a deep breath and went into a perfectly believable explanation about how we we’re once all neanderthals, apes, chimpanzees, et al. and how we have evolved over thousands of years. He cited scientific evidence, showed me websites of evolution and perfectly explained Darwin’s theory.

“But” I said, “What if were all wrong?”

Nervously, my brother laughed, even going as far as to point out that we once produced, wrote and directed a parody song about creationism vs. evolutionism for Comedy Central years ago… It was a burn on the actor Kirk Cameron who had recently gone on a TV show and produced a banana – which he claimed was “an Athiest’s nightmare – and proof that we were all created by a higher being.”

The video went viral and Kirk Cameron sent us hate mail.

My brother was confused at how I went from evolutionary hippie evolutionist to alien-worshipping creationist.

“Look man,”” I said. “I’m not saying I’m anti-religious, or that I even believe what I’m saying – I just really have started to think that aliens founded our planet and possibly created humans out of the lifeforms that were here before us… dig?”

Complete silence.

My only explanation for these new beliefs is that I watch WAY too much of the TV show Ancient Aliens on the History Channel.  Ever see this show? It’s the most convincing TV program of all time. It will have you convinced that the Pyramids are intergalactic phone booths, the spiritual symbols of Peru are prayerbooks to “those who came from above” and that Fenway Park was originally designed as an “Alien Toilet.”

Plus, once you see how many “flying discs from the sky” are featured in Renaissance art pieces, you are forced to start to think a little differently… And I wasn’t saying I believed in creationism, I was simply quoting the self-proclaimed “Ancient Astronaut Theorists” from Ancient Aliens.

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Giorgio A. Tsoukalos has warped my mind forever.

My brother demanded that I join him on a walk with his dog. I tried once again to explain myself, using the dog as an example of an entirely different creature that we do not know where it came from. He shook his head in disappointment. We changed the subject to the next morning’s Total Solar Eclipse, which was scheduled to mesmerize Americans and clog Instagram feeds the following day, August 21, 2017.

“So what’s your plan for the eclipse?” He asked. “Are you planning on making a cardboard sign that says ‘Take me With You?’”

I laughed and we called it a night.

The following morning we awoke and went to Hermosa Beach. Avid Boogie-boarders, we decided to ride some waves before the solar eclipse began – which was approximately at 9:08 a.m. with the sun being totally obscured at 10:18 a.m. It was in the water that morning when we noticed a few other local swimmers paddling around watching us ride a few waves. Then a few more came. Eventually, over 20 swimmers had gathered in the early morning ocean. Funny, we thought. It’s never this crowded…

A partial annular solar eclipse is seen

“These are total eclipse waves, am I right?” A heavy-set woman paddling nearby muttered to a long-haired surfer a few feet over.

“Fully,” the surfer responded. “Crazy sets all morning… best waves of my life.”

“I’m Artemis,” she offered.

“I’m Jonas… I wonder if the eclipse will freak out the dolphins.”

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Artemis looked a lot like this…

My brother and I looked at each other.

“Excuse me,” I yelled over in Artemis’ direction. “Do you really think that the eclipse will affect the waves?”

It was then that Artemis turned towards us and revealed that she was wearing a pair of “eclipse glasses.” Yeah, the ones your friends bought online for $300 to stare at the sun safely for ten minutes. I had mistook them for goggles.

“Absolutely,” she said. “In ancient Germanic text, the Moon God ‘Mani’ claims that a total solar eclipse will affect everything it controls, from the waves of the sea to the female menstraul cycle…. In fact, I’m heavily menstruating right now.”

“We gotta get out of the ocean,” I told my brother.

We walked back to our spot on the beach and watched as my kids ran around chasing sand crabs.

As the eclipse came and went, and our social media feeds were overrun with kids looking into cereal boxes, people posting photos of themselves looking at the sky and our President staring directly into the fucking thing itself, it dawned on me that everybody was hoping to see something amazing. Of course, most people were underwhelmed, but some folks were hoping for a sign – a symbol from another world, perhaps. A trans-galactic message from space. Everybody was looking for an explanation…

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People looking to the eclipse for answers…

“Look,” I told my brother. “Can you just maybe give me the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maaaaybe, we don’t know how we got here and that human experimentation by extra-terrestrials is a possibility?”

As he uploaded a picture of the eclipse that he somehow took through a set of binoculars, he shook his head.

“No.”

“Haven’t you ever seen that TV special about aliens abducting pregnant women and creating ‘hybrids?’ You know, my kids could be half Pleiadian or even half Reptilian!”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the ‘Humanzee’ experiment?”

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“Zach,” he said. “When you come back to planet Earth, let me know. Until then, why don’t you go talk to Artemis in the ocean, maybe she’ll have some answers.”

He left on a run, and I stood on the beach alone, staring out into the sea.

Artemis had long left for the day, but Jonas was still out there, riding some of the best waves of his life…

 

COME SEE ZACH TAPE HIS PODCAST LIVE! THIS SUNDAY at 7pm!

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Read Zach’s new short story: “Someone Gave me a Fleshlight and it Changed my Life…”

  • May 3, 2017
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Hero · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer · Uncategorized

*Warning – the following story contains sexually graphic and disgusting situations

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My wife recently bought a $300 vibrator. It’s called a stingray. It pulsates. It’s waterproof. And it does everything but make sandwiches. My wife swears by it and they have a special relationship that extends beyond the bedroom. This throbbing beast has been brought up consistently at dinner conversations since she purchased it… I believe she even told her mother about it, as if she was introducing her to her new boyfriend.

Women have been celebrating the vibrator for hundreds of years… It’s universally acceptable and widely acknowledged that most sexually healthy females have some sort of throbbing stunt penis hiding beneath a pile of T-shirts in their dresser drawers.

However, if I came home one day with a $300 sex toy, it would be considered taboo. Men who do this sort of stuff have long been labeled as perverts and sexual deviants. And, men don’t really discuss masturbation details over wine and pasta at a group dinner.

But why?

Maybe men and sex toys do not go together because most men are seemingly easier to please. After all, all we need is a magazine, a free hand and some “me time.”

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The famous Australian man caught “beating it” at work in 2013

I have never used a sex toy on myself. I am not saying that I haven’t been intrigued by the molds of “Jenna Haze’s Pussy and Asshole” that I have seen for sale at an adult store, but shelling out hundreds of dollars for a rubber vagina has never been high on my priority list. Plus.” Real Dolls” are like, five grand. Plus, in humble my opinion, nothing could really beat the time-honored tradition of good old fashioned jerking-off.

But then someone sent me a free “Fleshlight.”

Holy shit.

I had heard about the Fleshlight forever. It was an early podcast sponsor and was the rage of the Adult Video Awards when I covered them for a TV show back in 2007. But still, I had never tried one, and I wasn’t exactly running out to make a purchase without knowing that it would be worth it… Then again, it’s not exactly the type of thing you borrow from a buddy…

Opening the box, I was amazed to find that there are like, 25 different types of Fleshlight models ranging from any body orafice to Jenna Haze to an actual weird blue ALIEN vagina that I assume is supposed to make you feel like you are fucking Neytiri, Zoe Saldana’s character from Avatar…

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You can choose the between Jenna Haze model…

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And the strange blue “Alien” option…

You are able to choose from a bevy of porn star clitoral replicas and adjust the suction level by twisting the back of the casing. It came with lube (necessary to simulate female wetness) and a cleaning cloth. It also had extensive directions about how to “wash your sleeve of remaining fluids” once you were done with it. This was a no-nonsense operation.

I settled in one day after work before my wife and kids had come home from baseball practice. I opened up my Fleshlight and examined it. This particular model was not a signature porn star version, it was a “Stamina Training Unit” – meaning it was supposed to help you train to maintain an erection longer should you ever have a real life sexual encounter… This was the “elliptical” of Fleshlights.

My first touch of the thing was unsettling. I felt weird. Deviant. I was fondling with an artificial body part. You know those weird people you see on TV who dig up corpses and have sex with them? For a second I wondered if I had stooped to their level.

Until I inserted myself.

It had been 15 years since I had felt any sexual pleasure with anyone other than my wife. I’m not sure how, but I suddenly became engorged and remained rock hard for the next seven minutes of thrusting, adjusting my technique, rhythm and stroke to this Fleshlight as if I was trying to give it an orgasm. Throughout this blissful and pure rubber sexual adventure, I felt as giddy as a 15-year-old learning how to unhook a bra strap in high school. It was something new and exciting…

As I approached climax, I was wondering if it was a customary rule to finish inside the device – or if the recommended method was to jizz onto any nearby available tube sock. While deciding to pull myself out from the sensual erotic vagina, I grabbed and looked at the manual… It did not offer any “jizz directions.”

I found myself climaxing into the sleeve. I immediately doubled over onto my bed as if I was 17 again and in the back of my Dodge Lancer. I was feeling pretty satisfied.

And that’s when the guilt settled in.

I had a large device on my penis. I had just cum into it and I was immediately dreading the moment when my son or wife would walk in. I began wondering if I had somehow caught an STD from the Fleshlight. Worst of all, I had to eventually pull out… which was a feeling that was so hauntingly real, that it reminded me of all the dorm rooms I had left at two in the morning in college after drunken sex romps… In my mind, I felt like I had somehow cheated on my wife with a Pi Beta Phi sophomore.
My friend Mark, who works in virtual reality calmed my fears when I called and told him that I was not feeling very good following the encounter.

“Dude, I’ve gone through, like – six Fleshlights!,” he said. “I get one every year… I had the Jesse Jayne model last year, bruh, that shit was nice! You should change them every six months or so.”

Woah, six Fleshlights? The Jesse Jayne model? Change them every six months? Obviously I was not living up to my masturbatory potential.

“Wait til you see this virtual reality shit we’re coming out with in a few years,” Mark explained. “Dude, you’ll be able to fuck Jessica Biel on a beach while Justin Timberlake is tied up to a nearby palm tree, crying.”

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Virtual Reality porn is about to change out lives…

“Are you serious?” I responded.

“Dude, sex is about to go so virtual, we’re gonna all turn into a world of jizz monkeys shooting 9 to 10 loads a day.”

“Dude, in the future you’ll be able to fuck Jessica Biel on a beach while Justin Timberlake is tied up to a nearby palm tree, crying,” my friend Mark told me.

I did some research. If Mark’s prediction, and the internet is correct, the world will enter the virtual porn sex space in the next few years. People will put on their devices and set up a “scene” where they can have sex with a digital female while they pleasure themselves physically. At first, the sex models will be outrageously priced and unaffordable, but eventually, both men and women will all be pounding away at any number of virtual lovers through the power of visual stimulation.

That’s on some Westworld level shit right there.

Feeling less guilty about my Fleshlight encounter, I read the manual about how to clean it out. I learned that Fleshlight makes a special soap that I would now have to buy if I wanted it to stay in pristine condition. I would also have to double up on my lubrication as the sample pack they included was quite small. And then there is the washing of it.  Running warm water through a fake vagina isn’t the most comforting part about using a Fleshlight, but it’s a necessary one if you want to keep it in good condition.

It’s like cleaning your bar-be-cue after every use.

When my wife got home, I shared my experience with her and she actually was proud of me. She told me that she thought men should be able to experience the heightened pleasure of something other than just your hand once in a while. Hearing this got me thinking…

“Well, look,” I said. “Pretty soon there’s gonna be a virtual reality device where I can have sex with Jessica Biel on a beach, can I get that too?”

“Sure, if I can get one where I bang DeAndre Jordan,” she responded.

“Oh, uhmm, let me think about it,” I responded.

I went upstairs and hid my Fleshlight beneath some t-shirts in my dresser…

103015_DeAndre
DeAndre Jordan’s “O-Face.”

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Read Zach’s New Short Story “Cyberstalking My High School Crush.”

  • November 28, 2016
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer

Like most of us, I have Googled ex-girlfriends from high school and college to see what they look like now. I’ve found most of them online, to no immediate fanfare – (Other than finding out one girl I made out with in high school is now a grandmother…) – but nobody has captured my social media imagination more than a girl I once dated in 1991 named Jenny Herren.

I have spent the better part of two decades wondering what happened to this girl. I have hunted Linked in, Google images, Myspace and Facebook hoping to see if Jenny was still beautiful, single and yes, even alive. (When I came across an obituary of a Jenny Herren in Houston last year, I was relieved to see that the woman was 89-years-old).

In today’s world, where the Government can track you every time you visit collegeorgy.com, it might seem impossible, but I was convinced that Jenny Herren had no digital footprint.

And then my sister alerted me that she had found her.

stalking

Jenny truly blossomed into my boner jam around 1991 when we randomly sat next to each other at a movie theater, watching the film If Looks Could Kill starring Richard Grieco. The film was so terrible, we mocked and heckled it together like we were boyfriend and girlfriend on a regular date. I was sprung, and within a week I had made her a romantic mixtape featuring my “closer songs” (Chris Isaak, Sting, Dire Straits) and had asked her out to the mall the following weekend.

if_looks_could_kill_movie_poster
If Looks Could Kill – the film that started it all

The mall was fun, but I couldn’t get a read on her, so I took it as a sign to not present her the mixtape just yet. It burned a hole in my pocket. I dropped her off without so much as a kiss and went home and scribbled three pages into my journal about her sense of humor, her laugh and – well – her incredible tits.

A week later at a high school football game, I carefully planned a casual interaction with Jenny by the snack bar. When I saw her, I dreamed we’d be heavy petting beneath the bleachers by the end of the third quarter. Instead, our mutual friend Tanya Brightly cock-blocked me by taking Jenny away and leaving me with my hands dug way deep into the pockets of my Guess jeans.

Finally, I got the second date I was looking for. It was a month later and I had it all planned. I would get some weed from my stepbrother, take her to see Hot Shots at the $1.00 theater and then close the deal in the abandoned church parking lot at the top of Swan Road – a notorious make-out spot overlooking the city where horny teenagers tried to get past second base.

The movie was hilarious, and things were going great. We stopped and got ice cream bars at a Circle K and made our way to the church. I lit the pipe and passed it. I became horribly paranoid. We looked out at the city. Silence. There was that perfect awkward teenage feeling arising between us… I lightly brushed my hand against hers and grabbed it. I pulled her in and we kissed… Soft and beautiful, alone beneath the Tucson sky, awash in the possibilities of what lay out in the real world ahead… I was 16 and in heaven… And then a hesher dude named Paul Humphries shined a flashlight on us from his pick-up truck.

“GET SOME, SELWYN!” He yelled, blinding both of us in the process.

“Fuck you, Paul,” I screamed back. When I turned back around, I noticed that Jenny had walked away.

“I think you should take me home,” she said. “It’s getting late.”

unknown
Urban Dictionary definition of a “hesher.”

On the ride home, Jenny said she didn’t think we should hang out anymore. She said she wasn’t sure why, but that something didn’t feel right. I tried every move in the book to get her to reconsider, but when I finally dropped her off, she took off running inside and I have not seen her since our high school graduation night… Until my sister found her Facebook page.

“Her name is now Jennifer Klein,” my sister informed me. “Married a guy named Mark Klein. Air Force instructor. They live in San Diego and don’t have any kids as far as I can tell.”

My sister should have been a private investigator.

I immediately began cyberstalking Jennifer Klein like a tween looking for “Shirtless Zayn Malik” pictures. I wanted to know everything. I was hoping she’d be open to a conversation – and maybe she could shed some light on our night together all those years ago.

Meanwhile, my wife was in the other room asking me what I was doing.

“Writing,” I responded, feeling guilty that I was busy looking up a girl I had made out with 25- years prior.

Many of my friends have spent hours digging into online profiles of exes, looking for something that proves that there was a reason it never worked out between them. My buddy’s wife found her ex-boyfriend on Facebook, posting about how great it felt to “finally be out of prison.” My other friend’s ex had nine children and was divorced twice. In fact, the majority of people I know have revealed how stoked they were to find their exes all out of shape, full of grey hair and still living in their hometowns.

Amazingly, Jennifer hadn’t aged at all. Her profile picture was taken in a bikini in Mexico, where she posted that she had been “marlin fishing” for a week straight. She posed holding a Corona. She was tan, supple and looked terrific. I added her as a friend and awaited a response.

When she did not accept my friend request a week later, I wondered why. I felt as nervous as I did the night I had watched her running into her house. I felt like a fucking teenager again.

Meanwhile, I got out my old high school journal. The one that I had kept since I was 14. I re-read the page from my date with Jenny – and I felt like a complete horny moron. I had written the following:

October 16, 1991 – I kissed her! After packing a bowl of dirty Mexi-schwag that my stepbrother traded me for a Van Halen CD, we made out at the church. (My old hookup spot – where I macked on Marni Thomas last year in my dad’s Jeep!) My hair looked good… like Luke Perry! But then that dumb hesher Paul ruined everything. Shit. I hope she calls me back I really want to feel those heaving melons.

 

5-25
Tucson’s Finest Mexi-Shwag circa ’91

 And then:

October 23, 1991 – I have called Jenny 15 times and she has not returned my calls. I don’t know why. Do I suck? Am I ugly? Maybe she just hasn’t been getting my phone calls?

 And finally:

November 3rd, 1991 – I heard she told Tanya to tell me to back off and that she might get a restraining order. What the hell did I do? I feel like a creep… I just wish she’d give me a chance… Man. I’m so pissed. Luckily, this weekend is Adam’s party and there is some freshman girl named Daisy who said she thought I was cute. Shit, I’m almost 17 – ! I’m so old!!!

 After three weeks or not hearing a response from Jenny, I re-checked her page. She had been there, alright, obviously ignoring my friend request. I reached out one last time, this time just posting something on her wall – something that I thought would be funny. I wrote:

Hey – I still have a mix tape I made you in 1991 – Any chance you want it? 

mixtape91
The Mixtape I Made and Never Got to Give to Jenny

Jennifer Klein never responded. But, the next day, a familiar person did. It was Tanya Brightly, who had commented on my post. She added the following: Unbelievable… 25 years later and Zach still doesn’t get the hint.

I was mortified. I had been lusting after this girl for a quarter century, and Tanya Brightly was STILL cock-blocking me.

I issued a response, including a photo of me and my family – saying that I was not a stalker – but just reaching out as an old friend who was trying to hold on to whatever memories I retained from my youth. I also asked Jenny if she remembered our night at the church.

Finally, Jennifer Klein wrote me a message.

Hi Zach – long time – I’m married to a guy in the Air Force – no kids to speak of – congratulations your family looks beautiful. Re: that night at the church… I have no memory of it. Sorry! Oh, I’d love to hear that mixtape!

 I haven’t sent her the mixtape yet. I think I’ll let her wait around for me this time…

Ed. Note: Zach has since been blocked from Jennifer Klein’s Facebook feed.

WATCH ZACH’S MUSIC VIDEO “DONG ON THE WHITEBOARD!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Read Zach’s New Short Story, “I Owe You, Bill Walton…”

  • March 28, 2015
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Hero · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer

Bill-Walton-1  Recently, on social media and my website, I have made no secret of my modern return into the world of competitive basketball. I play full court four days a week at the Hollywood YMCA and recently entered a Three-on-Three tournament against other fathers at elementary schools, which I happened to have won. (My proudest athletic achievement in my life to date – not counting the time I took Colton – the star 7-year-old pitcher – DEEP in a father-son Little League game last summer…)

-5
Ray, me and James – LCS 3 on 3 Dad Champions

I have re-discovered a love for the game I haven’t had sine 1993 and I’m actually a better player now than I have ever been.

Throughout my life and into high school, basketball was everything. As a 6’2” inch eighth grader, I was groomed by my coach to become the next great Arizona Wildcats big man. Unfortunately, I haven’t grown an inch since eighth grade. I switched to the wing, where I lacked certain skills, but was still able to hold my own mainly because I was actually grabbing the rim with ease and in top physical shape. However, around age 18, I discovered the usual pitfalls – Weed, beer and women – and decided that since I had no chance, or interest in walking on my college team, I would hang up my Air Jordan XII’s and I only stepped on the court a handful of times over the ensuing decade.

-8
The author (circa 1992) on the left just before discovering cannabis.

A few years ago, however, I was listening to UCLA great and fellow Grateful Dead-Head Bill Walton broadcast an Arizona- Oregon basketball game, when something he said struck me deep inside. After he spent a few minutes comparing some obscure 1970’s Bob Dylan song to the Oregon Ducks’ fast-break technique, he discussed his history of injuries he attained while playing. At the end of this sidebar, Bill Walton claimed to have broken his nose 13 times.

“That’s what happens when you play defense with your face,” he exclaimed.

He also mentioned his surgically fused ankles, incinerated spine, broken wrists, 36 surgeries and broken leg – all suffered on the basketball court. Walton’s lifelong injuries, along with his 1978–1979 year-long protest of the Portland Trail Blazers unethical treatment of his injuries, gave him the record of missing the most games during an NBA playing career, when taking into account the number of years he was officially listed as a player on a team roster. He spoke of how debilitating it became to walk and I researched even deeper to see that Walton once even contemplated suicide due to severe depression from debilitating back pain.

However, Walton then made a comment that made his life on the disabled list seem even more surreal… He observed a certain move power forward Solomon Hill had made and remarked, “That is a move to study – for those of you who are still lucky enough to play basketball…”

Lucky? How could 13 broken noses and suicidal thoughts be considered lucky? I felt that I was lucky to have quit basketball with my original nose still in place. What was Walton talking about?

Attempting to find out, the next day I dusted off some 10-year-old shoes and made my first trip to a court in what was nearly five or six years. I checked out a basketball at the YMCA that looked as if it had spent a good majority of its life underwater, and went to shoot around. It took me awhile, but eventually I was making short jump shots and working on my cardiovascular fitness while running up and down the gymnasium floor. Some of my old spin moves came back to me, and I put up a couple of nice finger rolls and hit some three pointers. It actually felt amazing.

-1About an hour later, a few guys asked me if I wanted to play “21” with them, but I declined, afraid of shooting 9 air balls and getting embarrassed. Instead, I continued to work on some post moves and drives and watched them from the corner of my eye. They were laughing, having fun and playing just above the level where I was – which made me think I might have hung in there if I had accepted their challenge. Instead, I returned my ball and went home and told myself I’d be back the next day.

I did come back the next day. And the next. I ran that court nearly every other day for months until I was actually joining the games of 21 and winning a good majority of the time. For the first time in over a decade, I was having a lot of fun playing basketball. I soon found myself in the full court games and now, three years later, found myself coming home and discussing the games with my wife as if I was playing in the NBA Finals. It became an obsession to the point where if I missed a lay-up during a game, I got depressed for the rest of the day. Still, it drove me to come back again, improve and remedy the situation.

-4
My shrink had me draw a self portrait of what made me happy. Statistics are “close enough…”

My wife thought I was nuts. Every time I would bring up my day on the court, she would roll her eyes and remind me that I’m more Kevin Arnold than I am Kevin Durant. She also warned me to be careful, to which I reminded her that I was playing against a bunch of guys in their 30’s and that I was in better shape than most of them.

And then, about six months ago, I got smashed in the nose by a teenager who lowered his shoulder into me on a penetration. My nose now cracks in both directions when I try to move it, but I luckily avoided a full break. Then, a couple weeks later I was slightly concussed after being run under by a guy who was pissed that I was outplaying him. I ended up sitting out two days nursing my brain – which luckily was not permanently damaged. In December, I took an elbow to the bridge of my nose, which caused it to bleed profusely all over the court and earned me 75 “likes” on Instagram.

-3
Blood on the basketball court. 75 “likes” on Instagram

In February, I jammed my left thumb so hard during a rebound that I am still having trouble operating the zippers on my jeans. Then I jammed my right pointer and ring finger in consecutive games. I’m consistently fighting shin splints and a bone spur. Finally, last week, I discovered that I have bursitis in my right shoulder and that I might not be able to play for three weeks or so. This will be my first trip to the disabled list in my athletic career. And I’m a month away from 40. According to my dad, the injuries will now just start piling up. In short, I am about to enter my Bill Walton years. Now, my family is giving me all kinds of advice.

“Maybe think about not playing anymore,” my mother offered. “You know, you’re no spring chicken.”

I hung up on her.

“A spin class is much better on your body,” my dad suggested. I simply sent him pictures of my three-on-three trophy and told him I’d be back on the court in a month.

“Don’t do anything stupid, you don’t want to really hurt yourself,” my wife told me.

I rolled my eyes and studied Russell Westbrook highlights like it was important game film.

During the past week, I have found myself watching Bill Walton again. I guess recently there have been petitions to remove him from the Pac-12 broadcast booth, which upsets me entirely. Sure, he can go on tangents about the time Bob Weir and him spoke Arabic to camels in the Egyptian desert, but his unique and loveable qualities are what make him a treasure in the booth. He’s not a cookie-cutter color guy. He’s quotable and full of basketball wisdom. In fact, he may be my favorite college basketball announcer working today. Not only does he know the game, he makes it fun. I know he seems like he might be high or severely “out-there” once in awhile, but his love for the game is like nobody’s I’ve ever heard before. Not only that, his passion for the game is what got me playing basketball again.

Rock & Pop - Grateful Dead - Bob Weir - #fl_0108
Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead in Egypt ’76

Without Bill Walton, I’d still be jogging three miles on a treadmill. Not competing and not getting any sense of accomplishment.

For that, I thank you Mr. Walton. For inspiring me to lace up my sneakers that early morning three and a half years ago and return to the sport of my youth.

Bill-Walton
Walton at the height of his game resembling the lead singer of My Morning Jacket. (1978)

The evening after I won the three-on-three “Dads” championship, my wife said I had a “glow” about me. I knew what she was talking about, because I felt it. It was a sense of invincibility and achievement. I felt young again. Above the rim. It brought to mind a famous Bill Walton quote I had read years ago when he said, “You don’t win championships by being normal, by being average…”

I may have only defeated a bunch of dads in a Saturday pick-up tournament, but for those of us who are just hanging onto the final glimpses of what we might be able to accomplish as men, it was as if I won an NBA Championship.

Now if you excuse me, I have to go ice my shoulder. I’m planning on returning to the court earlier than expected…

-6
The LCS “3 on 3” basketball trophies I won. My proudest athletic achievement to date.

Buy Zach’s BOOK at amazon.com!

http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Will-Get-You-Nowhere/dp/0983723737/ref=la_B00QL0F634_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427556976&sr=1-1

**UPDATE!** Read Bill Walton’s email to ZACH below following the publication of this essay!!

Bill.Walton <bill.walton@billwalton.com
to me
all good things in all good time

here we go—-forward, furthur,
good everything forever, BW,
and please don’t play defense with your face, there’s no future in that

BUY ZACH'S BOOK at AMAZON.COM!

READ SOME WALTON-ISMs HERE : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bill_walton.html

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I Took My 92-Year-Old Grandma to the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs…

  • August 2, 2014
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer · Uncategorized
G4
My Grandma and her dog ‘Lucky,’ passed out at 7:15. Me, ready to party.

My grandmother is 92. She has spent the last 37 years in Tucson, Arizona, trying to remember why she agreed to move there in the first place. In reality, she knows it was to spend more time around her grandchildren, exhaust her retirement in a peaceful community with plenty of golf courses for her late husband to play and to relish the clean, crisp desert air that draws so many retirees from colder, more polluted climates. However, now at 92, she just wishes she had never left New Jersey.

Whatever the case, New Jersey was a long time ago. And now, for the first time in her life, she is reaching an age when she is losing her motor skills and abilities to function on a daily level, which is absolutely heartbreaking. Still, she manages to make us laugh daily. To my family’s amusement, she has kept herself satiated these past three or four years with a voracious diet of nitrate-rich foods, like Oscar Meyer hot dogs, Kraft singles and garlic bologna. Whenever my brother or sister confront her about her less-than-healthy food consumption, she always responds with the same comment:

“What – do I wanna live to be 120? It’s ENOUGH already!”

OscarMayer
Screw health. My grandmas fridge is packed with stuff like this

I always suggest to my grandmother that as long as she is at it, she should take up smoking or heavy drinking, to which she responds, “Ehh, I’d forget where I left my cigarette and burn the house down.”

Born in 1922, Florence Lazar (Who would not let me reveal her middle name – which she hates), has always been the sharpest woman I have ever known. Quick, hilarious and witty, she turned her unique view of the world into a way of life that my entire family has admired for as long as we can remember. As recently as 2011, she was starring in a web series my brother and I put together called “NJ LADY” based on her hilarious commentary on the world that has changed so much around her. She riffed on Justin Bieber’s voice, thumbed through an old photo album telling us who was “dead” and who had affairs with girls in their offices and she even tried medical marijuana. Had her life served her differently, she would have been a Betty White-type of performer. (See marijuana ep below!)

It is only now, at 92, that she has started closing the curtain on an otherwise adventurous and charming life, somehow forgetting things that took place mere moments earlier or even where she might be at any given time. It is why she has gladly volunteered to splurge on weekly beach house rentals for her family every summer for the past five years, as long as one thing is made clear: Someone has to fly out to Tucson and drive her and her overweight lap dog “Lucky” to California for the celebration. After all, flying has become too much of a burden, and the dog, more importantly, must have a comfortable seat if it is to ever travel across state lines.

My mother often books these annual trips for our family at my grandma’s request. Usually, after seeing the price of the beach house rental, my mother will ask my grandma if she is sure about dropping such a large amount of money. My grandmother’s response?

“Who cares, I’m only spending your inheritance!”

Earlier this year, my mother phoned me about coming out to Tucson to drive my grandmother out for our weekly family summertime beach vacation in Malibu. Always willing to travel through the desert, I volunteered my services and in July, flew out to meet my grandmother and mom for the nearly eight-hour jaunt through the cacti and blue skies that separate my home state with my adopted one. There was only one issue: My grandma didn’t want to drive all the way through to California. After all, ‘Lucky’ needed a break to run around, do his business and get a good night’s sleep. Plus, some room service (My grandma’s favorite thing in the world) was definitely going to be necessary following a long drive. Going all the way to L.A. was out… That meant my mother, grandma and I needed a place to stay. I started searching online. At first, I recommended a $93 dollar-a-night Motel 8 I found in Blythe, California, situated directly on the border of Arizona and California.

However, my grandmother had other plans.

“I want to stay in Palm Springs.”

My first thought was to find a kitschy, Sinatra-like desert oasis in Palm Springs for all of us to crash in before making it out to the Pacific Ocean the following day. I even looked into the fanciest hotels online, but couldn’t get behind $350 dollar Friday night rates for queen-sized bedrooms that didn’t even allow pets. In fact, a lot of places were not pet-friendly or were booked for some weekend party happening in town, so my mother and I eventually decided to get a room at a small, renovated former Howard Johnson at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains. I had read about it before, and had heard that it was, ‘cute.’ Still, the price was somewhat affordable and the rooms looked cozy. So, my mom, 92-year-old grandmother and myself decided to book a room on a Friday night at the trendy hipster flophouse known as the ACE HOTEL.

ace-hotel-palm-springs-wedding-photos-01
I wish this place was around when I was 25

I had no idea what to expect. At $230 a night, I was hoping for a classy, somewhat peaceful confine full of working professionals and possibly a “Rat Pack” tribute concert in the Sammy Davis, jr. Hall at 9:00 p.m. Instead, it was the exact opposite.

My grandmother’s first shriek of terror occurred when I couldn’t find a handicapped parking spot near the check in. She does have a handicap parking pass, mainly as a way to alleviate the 15-minute shuffle she makes to a doorway, but this afternoon, there were no spots available. A Red SUV happened to be parked in the lone handicapped spot that afternoon and carried a vanity license plate reading “I SPIN.” I suddenly found myself praying that it didn’t belong to some DJ setting up his pre-programmed music for a set in the bar that evening. When I saw a 20-something blonde guy with short sides and a backward black Mitchell and Ness OKC Thunder hat, I knew he was, in fact, the entertainment for the evening.

As I helped my grandmother across the parking lot, I took it to myself to yell out at the wannabe Tiesto for his mercenary act of swiping the only handicapped spot in the hotel.

“Thanks for parking in the handicap spot, guy,” I yelled.

Perhaps my grandmother’s presence was what made him shudder for a second, but in my mind he was not apologetic, just shocked to see a senior citizen check into the hotel. He had a look on his face that we were breaking the unwritten Friday night rules of the Ace Hotel stating that nobody over 40 was allowed inside.

“Oh, my bad man… didn’t know you were, ya know, with an old lady,” he said.

“Yeah, thanks brother,” I snarled.

dj-pauly-d
Not the DJ for the night, but close…

Even though I hated him for the comment, he was right. Most of the packs of hotel guests walking around the grounds looked to be about 25-30 and in great shape. Many had committed to body-covering tattoos and strange piercings and even though it was only 3:00 in the afternoon, numerous amounts of open containers. In fact, everyone was shirtless and partying. If you analyzed the crew I was rolling with, I had my 68-year-old aging hippie of a mother, my 92-year-old grandma and me, who at 39 was still the third oldest person at the hotel that evening. It would only get worse.

During check in, the young girl working the front desk presented us with three pink VIP Poolside wristbands that would guarantee we could skip the line and get into the raging party that went on until 2:00 in the morning that night. I put my wristband on, as did my mom. I gave the other one to my grandma, hoping for a funny, ironic photograph, but she just tucked it in her purse.

“What is this, a hospital bracelet?” She said. “Did somebody have a heart attack?”

After receiving a terribly sophomoric explanation of the hotel layout, I gathered the luggage from the car and dragged it around the bend and up the flight of stairs to the second floor room we had been assigned. My grandmother was horror-struck that there was no elevator.

“Where are we, a military base?” My grandma asked as we settled into our room full of funky artwork and an old vinyl record player. I recalled the episode of Portlandia when they check into the fictional “Deuce Hotel” and the obnoxiously hip staff hand the guests turntables and vintage typewriters. Still, somewhat intrigued by a night away from my own family, I was looking forward to throwing on a swimsuit and hitting the pool for a few beers before eating.

And then my grandma decided that we should have dinner at 5:00. At first, this idea seemed fine since we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. The reality check came five minutes later, when I realized that we were the only three people in the restaurant.

And then the 23-year-old waitress opened with, “Are you guys here for lunch or dinner?”

“What do you think we’re here for?” my grandma responded.

“Well, about 10 people just left breakfast, so I have no idea,” she said.

“Who eats breakfast at 9:00 at night?” My grandma said.

“Grandma, it’s 5:03,” I said.

“Do they have hot dogs?” My grandma asked.

They didn’t. Instead, we all ordered red wine and chicken with potatoes. To the Ace Hotel’s credit, the restaurant, which resembled an old rotted out Denny’s that Sonny Bono probably nursed a hangover or two in, was delicious.

“Welp, it’s 6, I’m ready for bed,” my grandma said.

“Mom, it’s 6!” My mother said. “You don’t go to bed this early at home!”

“Lucky needs to make,” my grandma explained. “Zach, walk Lucky for me, make sure he makes.”

I escorted my grandmother upstairs, and took Lucky for a walk. I decided to check out the hotel, which was actually a pretty incredible and alluring place. I strolled past a swimming pool full of drunken weekend partyers waist deep in 80-degree water and margaritas. I passed a random acoustic guitar in the lobby where a guy who looked like a band member from MGMT strummed an acoustic cover of the band Fun’s “We Are Young” for an adoring crowd of beauties straight out of the Ace Hotel brochure. I overheard a bachelor party dressed like characters from Fletch discuss how hot the UCSB girls were they met at the pool. It made me feel young and old at the same time. Young, because I still felt like I could hang with these people as if it were 1996 and I was at some party hotel in Europe, but mainly old because I guaranteed that I was the only man at the hotel that night who was traveling with a woman in her 90’s and who had a Propecia prescription.

The party that afternoon. My grandma didn't show off her tramp stamp.
The party that afternoon. My grandma didn’t show off her tramp stamp.

“The dog has made,” I announced as I re-entered the hotel room where my grandma was already snuggled up in the covers, ready for bed. She thanked me and turned over, summoning Lucky up to her arms for their nightly bedtime routine.
“C’mon Luck,” she said. On cue, Lucky jumped on the bed and licked her face. My mom and I smiled before watching as my grandma slowly drifted off into sleep. We looked at the clock. It was 7:02.

“Let’s go sell her VIP wristband,” I said to my mom.

“Let’s at least go explore the hotel and have a glass of wine,” my mom said.

The bar next to the hotel pool was crawling with casualties of the afternoon. Sunburns, yawns and weary eyes accompanied the faces of the patrons who had spent the past six hours wading in the water hoping for some miraculous Penthouse letter to present itself. Others had changed into jeans and more comfortable clothes for the evening festivities, which, as predicted, include the “DJ STYLINGS” of the same dildo who had taken up the valet parking spot from my grandmother earlier in the day.

I overheard some guys drinking at the bar exclaim, “This DJ is sick, he plays everything.”

My mom and I talked to some strangers and took notes that the two bartenders seemed to continuously skip over us in favor of younger, hotter clientele clad in bikinis and bandanas. I snarked to my mother that, “you’d think they would serve one of us who actually look like we may have jobs.”

That garnered a severe stare-down from the Gosling-wannabe behind the bar who then poured us two shots of bottom shelf tequila.

“On the house,” he said.

My mom and I both tipped him a dollar and took the shots outside where we both promptly tossed them into the pool.

Returning back to the room, we found my grandmother packing her things, preparing to depart the Ace Hotel altogether.

“What time are we leaving,” She asked.

“Not until tomorrow,” I told her. “It’s only 11:30.”

“You know, Grandpa and I once stayed in a hotel like this, full of nudity and all these people shaking their you know what’s,” she said. “Back in Florida. Bunch of idiots if you ask me. Zach, can you call room service and see if they have any garlic bologna?”

“I called earlier, grandma, they don’t.”

“What kind of place are we staying in anyway? Who ever heard of such a place that doesn’t serve hot dogs or garlic bologna?”

“Mom, we’re not at the circus,” my mother said.

Finally, my grandmother and mom went to bed and I decided to take one last round of the bar scene adjacent to the pool. I mainly stayed to myself, avoiding any unnecessary conversation with the Fireball-swilling patrons dancing to Jason DeRulo. After another 9-dollar beer, I made my way upstairs, folding a 27-dollar bar tab for three beers into my wallet and harboring a feeling that perhaps my grandma was correct…

“Bunch of idiots if you ask me.”

The continuous partying and noise echoing from the room downstairs was enough for my grandmother to lodge a formal complaint against the Ace Hotel, which led to an extremely uncomfortable late-night phone call between my mother and the front desk. Ultimately, as my family is often able to do, we scored 50 dollars off of our bill and a free breakfast, which included toast and coffee that was delivered to the room by a waiter who looked like he was rattling off the final twitches of a cocaine bender.

The money we saved led us to the Cabazon Outlet stores just five miles outside of Palm Springs, where my grandmother bought essentially the same purse at three different stores as my mother tried hard to stop her from spending any more cash. As my grandma shrugged her off and tossed her loot into the mechanized wheelchair we had picked up in the parking garage, she mumbled under her breath a familiar phrase that was beginning to discomfit my mom:

“Who cares, I’m just spending your inheritance.”

As we continued on through the Cabazon Outlet stores, my mom and I looked at each other as if there was nothing we could do about the situation. It was only then that my grandma entered a Michael Kors outlet for yet another look at another purse and uttered the following request:

“Zach, walk Lucky for me, be sure he makes.”

dessert hills premium outlets
The Cabazon Outlet Stores. Heaven on Earth for Jewish mothers and grandmas

I took Lucky out into the parking lot and stared down the road at the San Jacinto Mountains overlooking the Ace Hotel. I doubted they would ever play host to anyone over 90 again. They would certainly never host my grandmother again. As the dog did his business, I reached into my grandmother’s purse for a plastic bag to pick it up with. It was only then that I came across the unused pink wristband that allowed all access to the Ace Hotel pool area for the entire afternoon.

I approached a crew of young women, impossibly sexy and in their early 20’s, giddily perusing the outlets for brand name discounts. I found the cutest and sexiest one, made eye contact with her and pressed the pink wristband in her hand. Feeling pretty good about the move, I hustled Lucky back into the shopping area, imagining how the crew of hot girls must be feeling to have a handsome man like me give their gorgeous leader a VIP all day bracelet to the Ace Hotel.

Instead, as I walked away, I overheard one of them comment under her breath:

“Eww, what did that old guy just hand you?”

I vowed to never return to the Ace Hotel again.

G3
My Grandma, finally relaxing in Malibu, Summer 2014
G2
Pondering the ‘idiots’ paddle boarding in the choppy waves…

 

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Zach Publishes Short Story/Essay Collection! “Talent Will Get You Nowhere”

  • April 11, 2014
  • by zachselwyn
  • · The Writer

Loyal readers of this blog…  Thank you for your years of support – especially in regards to the SHORT STORY writing. We have  compiled many of the essays you have read (And many you have not read) into Zach’s first ever published collection of stories for sale as a PAPERBACK . (Kindle coming soon!)

If you would like a signed copy of the book, please contact z@zachariahmusic.com –

Please take a moment to check out “Talent Will Get You Nowhere”

Talent

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE BOOK!

Zach will be reading aloud from the book throughout the summer- new DATES to be announced shortly!

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Read Zach’s New Short Story! “War Stories, My Stepfather & a Sony Discman”

  • November 18, 2013
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Short Story · The Writer

War Stories, My Stepfather and a Sony Discman. (Part 1)

The first time I got caught drinking, my mother thought that my stepfather, a man named Steven Fishco, should have a talk with me. After all, at the time, he had been sober for eight years and was one of Tucson, Arizona’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation counselors, working for recovery places like Sierra Tucson where rich people would spend ungodly amounts of money to send their troubled kids. Celebrities showed up as well, along with spoiled debutantes, trust-fund babies and occasionally, politicians. In the circles of rehab, Fishco was simply known as “the Fish” and he treasured the moniker as if he was a member of some secret Government Navy S.E.A.L.S. operation and that was his codename.

Fish 1989
The Fish & His Beloved Mets Poster – 1988

Always wanting to know who had a serious drinking and alcohol problem, I would probe Fish for information on whatever ex-Major League baseball player or fading Hollywood star was enrolled in his rehab program. Unfortunately, he was a stickler for the rules and he never revealed his counselor-patient confidentiality agreement. Considering that Sierra Tucson cost roughly $45,000 a month, I’m sure many rock stars and celebrities were happy that some 14-year-old wasn’t running around junior high telling his friends about the time everybody’s favorite singer mainlined a jug of gasoline and copulated with a stuffed giraffe. Therefore, when Fish would tell us some funny stories about troubled Hollywood types and celebrities, he would mask their identities and I was always left guessing who the “serious dope fiend singer from that one band you like” was.

Because of the alcoholic horror stories, and the fact that Fish’s own mind was ruined from years of intravenous drug use and cocaine, I avoided drinking and smoking for most of high school. My friends accepted it and I occasionally lied to people to seem like I had been caught drinking and couldn’t afford to be grounded again, etc. Most everybody accepted this as my way in life. I would often quote Fish and his unique sayings that kept me away from drugs over the years. My favorite being, “Cocaine is an expensive way to get nervous.”

In the spring of 1992, At 16, I skipped school with some buddies and some cute girls to go wander around Sabino Canyon. Now that I’m much older and more environmentally aware, I recognize the canyon as a natural, beautiful Tucson national park and quite possibly the most serene place I can think of on earth. However, back in high school, it was simply a secluded place to drink, meet girls and bury empty cases of Budweiser cans in the desert as to not leave any evidence behind. (Sorry National Park Service.)

The day we skipped school was known on campus as “Senior Ditch Day,” and even though I wasn’t quite yet a senior, I knew that they were somewhat cool with me tagging along because I not only owned a Sony Discman, but because I liked to DJ parties with tapes, CD’s and my boom box. So, I loaded up the 50 CD’s I owned at the time along with my 75 cassingles and drove to go drink in the desert with a bunch of turtle-necked mullet-heads who listened to MC Hammer and loved Minitruckin’ Magazine. (For a rare few years in my high school, lowered mini trucks, turtlenecks and tight Z. Cavaricci pants were the only things that mattered to a select group of cool kids. “Minitruckin” was the art of buying a shitty truck, lowering it to the ground and spending thousands of dollars on paint, rims and 12-inch woofers to blast DJ Quik while spinning your ride around a parking lot.)

MiniTruck_Mullet
Courtesy of Mulletsgalore.com

Of course, one of the seniors immediately took over my system. As soon as I loaded up the music in the desert and set up my stereo to play an endless mix of Naughty by Nature and Metallica, a guy named Adam Lancer decided that he was going to DJ and that I was going to be forced fed beer while teaching him how to seamlessly mix songs. Never wanting anybody to touch my equipment, I was reluctant at first but eventually gave in to him because, well, he was a cool senior with a killer set of Oakley sunglasses and the hottest girlfriend on campus. Admittedly, trying to feel cool, I tried to match him drink for drink. Needless to say, I soon found myself giggling and slurring, while confidently trying to brush my hand up against senior girl Heather Tyrtanna’s butt in her tight, stonewashed Guess Jeans. When she didn’t seem to mind, I kept doing it and eventually let Adam Lancer have full control of my boom box. As one beer turned into six, I suddenly developed an insane confidence to convince Heather to take a private walk with me in the desert where we made out (and dry-humped) for 15 minutes. That beautiful moment was all I needed to realize that all those years I avoided drinking were a complete waste of time.

The party was broken up about an hour later when two cops ran up on the desert gathering and the kids scattered like roadrunners. As the dozen or so lowered 1991 Isuzu pick ups high-tailed it out of the parking lot, I was left gathering my CD’s and tapes and watching Heather Tyrtanna run off with senior Miguel Arroyo in his 1990 Honda CRX. A bit drunk and confused, I was able to pull off a decent straight man when the cops asked me what I was doing in the middle of the desert on a school day. After a few questions and a lot of probing, I told them I was 22 years old.

“You don’t look 22, you got ID on you?” One cop asked.

“I don’t have it right now,” I slurred.

When they asked me what I was doing with a bunch of stereo equipment, I thought of the best lie I could possibly come up with.

“I’m actually an employee of Desert DJ’s,” I said. “A bunch of kids hired me to play this party… for 50 bucks.”

Desert DJ’s was the company that had DJ’d my Bar Mitzvah.

“Young man, are you intoxicated?” The cop prodded.

“Of course not,” I said.

I then proceeded to knock all of my music into the sand and fall down.

Having a patrol car escort you home at age 16 is a pretty traumatic experience for a high school kid. Especially since I had a backpack full of CD’s and severe penile chaffing from grinding my crotch up against Heather’s jeans for 15 minutes. When they pulled up into the driveway, my mother ran outside hysterically screaming. Once the cops calmed her down, she watched as I slumped my way inside the house and proceeded to projectile vomit all over the bathroom. Amazingly, my mother tried to convince the policemen that I was an Ivy-League bound honor student and that a “Minor in Possession” ticket would ruin my future. Somehow, they believed her.

20 minutes later, my mom brought me some water and told me to go to bed before warning me that we would have a serious talk when I woke up. The policeman left and the last thing I remember my mom saying before I drifted off into the dark abyss of my first ever drinking hangover was, “Where the fuck is your car?”

When I woke up at 6:00 that night, Fish was standing in my room.

“Yo Z!” He exclaimed. “Tied one on this morning, hey baby?”

As I scrambled my throbbing thoughts and felt the dry contact lenses cracking in my bloodshot eyes, I asked him what had happened. He simply dangled my car keys in my face and said, “Get up, mom wants me to take you to get your car.”

The ride back towards Sabino Canyon only took about 15 minutes from my house. As I became increasingly aware of the rawness I had inflected on my private parts attempting to grind Heather’s zipper open, Fish tried in his own unique way to scare me away from the perils of drugs and alcohol.

“So, how many beers did you slam this morning?” He asked, sounding like a one of my buddies and less than a parental figure.

“I think 5 or six,” I said.

“What a PUSSY, man! What are you a lightweight?”

As I opened the window for some fresh air, I was suddenly aware that Fish was not going to lecture me on the perils of drinking. Instead, he began relaying to me story after story about his 20 years in the trenches of inebriation. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they call these tales “War Stories.” Apparently Fish was the KING. He told me that every single patient at Sierra Tucson loved him and his war stories.

Like how in college when he took three consecutive spring breaks to Colombia. Not the District of Colombia, but Colombia, South America.

“Bought three grams of coke and two ‘party girls’ for me and my buddy Larry Goldbeer… Man, first time I had a semi automatic rifle pulled on me!”

“The first time?” I asked, gingerly.

Another great story involved seeing Jimi Hendrix on LSD n 1967. And then there was the drinking with Jim Morrison, the spliff rolling with Bob Marley and the three straight days he spent shooting junk with James Taylor on Martha’s Vineyard. I suddenly came to the conclusion that this wiry-haired man-child from New Jersey, who I had lived with for ten years and only bonded with over baseball and reggae music, was the coolest person I had ever met.

“Now listen Z,” he said, suddenly getting serious. “The key is moderation. Now me? I got no way to control myself. Once the bottle cap is twisted off, you might as well consider the bottle finished – once I won a rum drinking contest at Club Hedonism in Jamaica and fell asleep in the ocean.”

“How did you survive?”

“Some native chick I was banging saved my life man… Threw me in my hotel room and I woke up 3 days later.”

Although the threat of upsetting my mother and father was still the top priority on why I would probably never drink again, the stories Fish was churning out made it seem that the only way I was ever going to have any adventures at all was to begin a lifelong relationship with drugs and alcohol. I mean, at 16, my life was pretty simple. Go to school. Go to basketball practice. Masturbate. Go to Jewish youth group. Masturbate again. Watch Beverly Hills 90210. Maybe masturbate during Beverly Hills 90210… I needed some new escapades.

As we pulled into the parking lot of Sabino Canyon, I noticed my 1988 Dodge still parked by the entrance of the park. Fish pulled his car next to it and we talked for a minute about what drugs I had seen at school. Truth was, I had only seen a few hesher kids smoke pot once or twice. I heard that other kids did it, but in early 1992, weed wasn’t exactly everyone’s drug of choice. Of course, six weeks later The Chronic by Dr. Dre came out and everybody I knew suddenly began smoking dirt brown Mexican mota and fastening wooden pipes during Shop Class.

“Let me tell you one last story,” Fish said, solemnly looking out towards the Santa Catalina Mountains.

“1980, man, I went to visit my buddy Gary Guccinelli in Houston. We decided to do some coke and go to the Astrodome with his dad who had season tix… Of course we drank in the car before the game and then when we got there, we started smoking reefer up in the upper deck because the place was fucking EMPTY, man.”

All I could envision was the horrible Houston Astros uniforms on my 1980 Topps Nolan Ryan baseball card. He pressed on.

“Anyway, we went down to his dad’s seats man and then we just started drinking whatever we could find… Mainly beer, but you know it was a combo platter for me with all the dope and the blow and whatever… Anyway, Gary’s dad was kinda senile, so he gets up and starts walking up the row of seats, so Gary goes to follow him. I stayed in the seats because I was waaaay too sayonara baby, you know? Next thing I know, I’m yelling out at Cesar Cedeno (The Astros talented multi-tooled player who was at the end of his career in 1980) about when he killed his girlfriend when they were fucking blotto drunk, man. So Cedeno keeps looking back at me, and finally points his finger at me and next thing I know, two cops have me around the neck and are escorting me out of the stadium.”

56-cesar-cedeno
Fish’s arch enemy – the man who had him locked up – Cesar Cedeno

“Wait, who killed Cesar Cedeno’s girlfriend?” I asked.

“In like 1973 he and some chick he was screwing were playing Russian Roulette and the girl was shot and killed and Cedeno got off,” he explained.

“So what happened after you were taken out of the stadium?”

“Bottom line was, I WASN’T taken out of the stadium, man… I got thrown in Astrodome Jail!”

            “Astrodome Jail?”

         Apparently, the Houston Astrodome had a jail for drunk and disorderly fans during the 1970’s. Fish was taken there and thrown into a cell with 3 other rowdy men who had been detained for various reasons. I asked him who the other prisoners were.

“2 drunken Indians and some 70-year-old guy who pissed on himself during the 3rd inning,” he said. “Anyway, Gary and his dad ended up leaving the game and I had to take a taxi back to their house 5 hours later and when I got there Gary had called my mom in New Jersey and told her that I was missing. Of course my mother told him it was the 5th time I had been reported missing that year so she didn’t get too worried. Meanwhile, Gary’s dad went to sleep and I told Gary my story about being locked up for five innings in the Astrodome.”

“Wow,” I said. “Was that when you decided to get sober?”

“Are you kidding me? Gary and I took his dad’s car and went to a bar until six in the morning!”

I decided to show Fish where the party had taken place, but Sabino Canyon was closed for the evening and we were asked to leave by the Park Ranger. I got in my car and followed Fish home, doing my best to not go even one mile above the speed limit. When we got back, my mom asked me if we had spoken about the incident. She said she hoped I had learned my lesson and I told her that I had before thanking her for getting the cops to not issue me a MIP ticket. We hugged and I crawled into bed to sleep the rest of my hangover off. After slathering my genitalia with gobs of Neosporin.

guess
Guess Jeans similar to the ones that annihilated my crotch in the early 90’s

The next morning, I went to gather a few CD’s for my drive to school. It was then that I first realized that not only was my Sony Discman missing, but so were at least 5 of my perfectly alphabetized and organized CD’s. I could not find “OPP” by Naughty by Nature, LL COOL J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out,” “Nevermind” by Nirvana, Color Me Badd’s “CMB” and, oddly enough, “The Soul Cages” by Sting.

Later at school, I noticed that Adam Lancer was walking around the hallway with my Discman. Assuming that he had my CD’s as well, I knew I would have to confront him and get my stuff back. Of course, when I approached him in between 2nd and 3rd period and asked for my Discman back, he said, “Don’t you remember giving this to me when you were wasted?”

The 60 pound Discman I cherished in 1992
The 60 pound Discman I cherished in 1992

I didn’t. However, based on my minor blackout, I couldn’t be sure if he was lying. Still, I knew I had to get my stuff back. What would follow over the next week were some of the most humiliating events of my life. However, at the end of it all, through a carefully calculated game plan that included falsifying Government documents, blackmail and a web of deceit, I would suddenly have the reputation as the craziest partier in my junior class…

…TO BE CONTINUED

*Zach’s First Collection of Short Stories and Essays, “Talent Will Get You Nowhere” will be published in Early 2014 by DIRT CITY PRESS!*

-1

Please Keep watching GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS UNLEASHED! on TRUtv – 8pm Thursdays!

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