Zach Selwyn

Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.

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    Back in 1994, just three weeks into a relationship that I swore would last forever, my hippie Phish-loving girlfriend “Rainbeaux” announced that she was, “giving up toilet paper” as a way to preserve the environment.

    “I’m sorry, what?” I responded.

    “Look at the facts,” Rainbeaux said. “Every time we use a pre-fab product like toilet paper, we are destroying not only the rainforest, but the redwoods and like, all the natural resources of our planet… It’s a no-brainer for me.”

    “Well, it’s a boner-killer for me,” I thought to myself.

    If Rainbeaux wasn’t so fascinating and beautiful, I would have run away immediately… Instead, I did my best to question her plan.

    “So… like, what are you gonna use when you…uhh – you know, go to the bathroom?” I asked her, calmly.

    “It’s called Hmong Hill Hemp Cloth from Thailand,” she explained. “A guy who I met on last Phish Tour introduced me to it. It’s made from undernourished plant cloth and hemp fibers and It originated with the Hmong Hill Tribe…and for like 2000 years – their community is like… the healthiest in the world.”

     

     

     

    I nodded my head in solitude, looked into her green eyes – and smiled vacantly.

     

    “Sure, whatever you want,” I said.

    She smiled and went back to drawing octagonal prisms in her sketch book.

    Rainbeaux’s genius “save the planet” idea was to purchase 100 cloth swatches as her permanent toilet paper – and to just simply wash them at a laundromat whenever everything got dirty… I was secretly disgusted by this entire hippie dream of hers, but I went along with it for the time being because, well… she was cute and we were 19-years-old… and that’s just the kind of shit you do at that age… Especially when your “Are you a REAL hippie?” status is in question by a beautiful woman wearing patchouli and a tie-dyed sundress.

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    Not the way to start your day

    So, after I announced that I would support her toilet paper protest, she made me promise her I would give up toilet paper myself.

    I promised her I would.

    A minute later, she told me that I was “a real mystic” and then for the next 30 minutes, we made love listening to her $750 dollar Natural Sound Machine from The Sharper Image.

    Of course, around 3:30 a.m. I woke up and rushed to her dorm’s community bathroom because I had to take a massive crap… And when I was done, I had torn through about a half a roll of Charmin Double Ply…

    “Rainbeaux,” of course, wasn’t her real name. She was born “Hannah Gurlin” and she had grown up rather wealthy in Highland Park, Illinois, beneath the tutelage of a father who encouraged horseback riding as a a hobby and an older brother with a weed connection and a penchant for the Grateful Dead. After turning down offers from multiple respectable schools in the midwest, she had decided to attend UCSB (UC Santa Barbara) as a way to major in creative writing while enjoying the Southern California party lifestyle. We first met at a Big Head Todd and the Monsters concert during our freshman year, in one of those moments when the cute girl next to you singing along to the song Bittersweet made you feel like anything on the planet was possible…
    Our eyes met as we sang together: “We work our way arouuuuund each other… as we tremble and we bleed…”

    These were the deep connections that could make any lovelorn college kid in the 90’s soul fall head over heels.

    After the show, Rainbeaux and I exchanged phone numbers – and we eventually met up again at a Dave Matthews Band show that spring…

    A month later we went to a Phish concert… and that night we ended up sleeping together while listening to Mazzy Star Fade Into You. As we laid in bed, we discussed my theory that “The 90’s were just the 60’s Upside Down…” It seemed real, it seemed perfect and we both thought we had a once in a lifetime connection.

    Of course, no long-lasting relationship that begins at a Big Head Todd concert can ever be expected to last.

    Our relationship peaked when we embarked on an epic five-city West Coast Phish Tour – where we exchanged words of “LOVE” following a post-show Shoreline house party that as I recall, was crawling with ecstasy and Parliament Lights.

    And then, a week later… was when Rainbeaux gave up using toilet paper.

    Rainbeaux was the type of woman that you fell in love with in your 20’s. She had a zest for life, could party with anybody and it didn’t hurt that her dad was always sending her money. (Back then rich trust-fund hippies like this were referred to as “Trustafarians.”) But eventually, the hippie dream, much like it did to our parent’s generation, turned on us.

    My main concern was not flunking out of school. (I wanted to make sure my dad’s tuition checks were going towards something besides my social life).

    Rainbeaux’s main concern was how she would be able to make the type of money her parents made to support her lifestyle… She claimed she was a “writer…” yet she barely wrote anything. I was the one always writing. She could never seem to get anything down on paper… and it became awkward when she becoming jealous when my short stories, as dumb as they were, began appearing in the pages of my local college humor magazine.

    As the used Hmong Hill Hemp Cloth began piling up in a wastebasket near her closet in the dorm room, I stopped wanting to come over. It was … sadly… disgusting. After she noticed that I had not been taking any cloth with me when I went to the bathroom, I came clean and was forced to admit that I was actually guilty of using “pre-fab” toilet paper. She was unhappy. I told her that after spending a few days on the Hmong Hill… I needed to hike back DOWN to reality.

    She cringed, asked me to consider “her feelings” and I told her I didn’t think I could continue following her experiment. A few days later we broke up.

    That was it. College went on. I drifted into my dreams and she did the same. We lost track of each other.

    It had been nearly 20 years since I had been in touch with Rainbeaux, even after doing some embarrassing social media stalking…

    I could never find her… Not online, not on Facebook… I even checked obituaries. There was no sign of Rainbeaux’s or Hannah Gurlin’s existence anywhere.

    Until last week – when DEAD AND COMPANY came to the Hollywood Bowl right by my house here in Los Angeles.

    My brother and another friend, Mark (Who was once arrested for dealing nitrous balloons at a Grateful Dead concert in 1989), had all gone to the Dead and Company show hoping to relive any slice of our youth that had faded as quickly as adulthood had arrived. John Mayer was playing Jerry Garcia’s parts and the band I fell in love with as a kid was playing better than ever.

    Amazingly, Mark revealed to me that he had a fake business license for about five years in the late 80’s that let him pass as a FROZEN YOGURT SHOP OWNER – Basically, he would take his fake yogurt license into a legitimate NITROUS DEALER and procure as big of a nitrous tank as he could, claiming that his “Chocolate/Vanilla Swirl” was super popular and that he needed to buy the max amount of nitrous to get back to Sacramento.

    It worked for a while, but eventually, his drug dealing days caught up with him and Mark was arrested at an early 90’s Grateful Dead show in Irvine. For his crime, he paid a thousand dollars and did 100 hours of community service.

    To this day, he fucking hates frozen yogurt

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    Lotta these dudes in the parking lot

    Anyway, the three of us jumped out of our Lyft around Highland and Hollywood and embraced the free flowing beauty of the “Shakedown Street” parking lot scene where I quickly spent way too much money on a collectible “Arizona Dead Pin” and some $5.00 bootleg t-shirts…

    After vaping and laughing and walking around for a minute, Mark pointed out about 100 plus “balloon dealers” openly distributing the gas on the premises – as if we were at a dental convention and we all needed emergency root canals…

    All of this was shocking, not only because of the notorious Grateful Dead parking lot trouble that has existed in the past – but because when Mark was arrested 20-years-earlier, he had merely sold one balloon and was caught, cuffed and carried out…

    Back then, the cops didn’t believe his story that he owned a Frozen Yogurt shop. Maybe it was because when they asked for the name of it, he replied “IKO IKO FROYO.” (Apparently the cops giggled at this before arresting him).

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    Discarded balloons everywhere

    At the Hollywood Bowl, the cops didn’t seem to give a SHIT about anything going on. I counted 15 nitrous dealers, countless weed dealers, girls offering K, shrooms, molly… there were even makeshift pop-up bars operating on picnic tables where you could buy any mixed drink you wanted. It was insane. About the only thing I didn’t see for sale in that parking lot was a black market kidney.

    And then, through the crowd, I saw RAINBEAUX.

    I wasn’t sure if it was her at first, but I certainly remembered her eyes. Green, maybe a bit grey now, but still gorgeous. I watched her flit about some friends for a second in a yellow sundress before realizing that YES, it was her… the only obvious difference I noticed, was that she now had two little children wrapped around her legs.

    No matter what, when you see an ex-girlfriend with their children, it makes you think about a lot of shit…

    I decided to say hello, and walked up to where she was standing.

    “Are you RAINBEAUX by any chance?” I said to her as she was least expecting a conversation.

    She lit up. She turned around. She stared at me…

    “Oh my God… Zach Selwyn?” She said.

    I felt like Al Pacino in Carlito’s Way when his ex recognizes him after getting out of prison.

    Charlie? Hello Gail…

    “Hi,” I mustered… “I knew that was you.”

    We hugged for a while – one of those “what could have been” hugs… and she quickly introduced me to her kids – Saffron and, her youngest – a kid named… ZACHARY. She said he was not named after me.

    Secretly, I didn’t believe her.

    We hugged again. Deeply. She told me that she hadn’t been “Rainbeaux” for a long time. She was back to being known as… “Hannah.”

    She asked me about everything – especially how my writing was going.

    “Yeah, it’s fine, I guess,” I meekly admitted. “I just post stuff online and write songs and, whatever, it’s a long story.”

    I asked her about her writing career. She said she never had the guts to pursue it. She had been teaching Neo-natal yoga in Poway and was married to a dermatologist.

    “Wow, didn’t expect that,” I said.

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    I thought Rainbeaux would marry a guy like this…

    We rambled on for a moment, talking about what songs we were hoping to hear that night. I was hoping for Estimated Prophet.

    “You know, Estimated was my official battle cry/anthem when I moved to LA – telling all my friends and family not to worry about me,” I said before singing out the lyrics, “California! Preaching on the burning shore…”

    She smiled. “I remember… Do you remember how much I loved that song Bittersweet by Big Head Todd and the Monsters?”

    I stared into her eyes as her daughter ran back up and hugged her.

    “Of course I do,” I said. She smiled.

    After I introduced her to my friends, she said good-bye, scooped up her daughter and began to walk away. As she was 10 feet or so up the sidewalk, I had to ask her one final question that had been bugging me for years…

    “Hey, Hannah…” I said. “Are you still on that ‘Toilet Paper Protest’?”

    She stopped, turned towards me and flashed kind smile before responding…

    “Haha – NO,” she laughed. “I’m going through about, like – a box a half of baby wipes a week.”

    I raised my beer in her direction and nodded my head.

    “Me too.”

    As I watched the concert that night, I thought often of the days I spent with Rainbeaux, and I began to think that I should have brought my own children to the show with me…

    Until some guy behind me passed me a Nitrous balloon and said it would make me feel like “God was licking my ass.”

    I’ll just let my kids have their own experiences…

    STREAM ZACH’S NEW ALBUM “HACIENDA” EVERYWHERE NOW!

    bukowski dead and company fiction Grateful Dead Hot hippie girl humor john mayer Sedaris writing Zach Selwyn
  • The Worst Cocktail in LA.

    By Zach Selwyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Sweet tie bro.

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

    “It’s amazing,” he said. 

    That was all I needed to hear. 

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

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

    “Uhm Tito’s”

    “Oh. So… What is that?”

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

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

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

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

    “We have Tabasco,” he said. 

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

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

    Jesus fucking Christ. 

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

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

    And then I started looking around at the decor. 

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

    “Oh, Sinatra?” He said. 

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

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

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

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

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

    There was a photo of Kirk Gibson above the urinal. 

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

    “Joe Dimaggio?” 

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

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

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

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

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

    STREAM ZACH’S NEW SINGLE NOW!

    Bloody Mary Buca Di Beppo Cocktails Comedy Encino humor Joe Dimaggio Los Angeles Zach Selwyn
  • Zach was a runner up for this legendary reality show and it changed the course of his career. 20 years ago! That hair! That jacket! HOLY FAAACK!
    Dream Job ESPN funny New York City Sportscenter Stuart Scott Times Square topten TVhost Zach Selwyn

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

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  • Bartneders country rock Los Angeles Zach Selwyn Zachariah

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

    Sklar brothers

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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.

    IMG_3423
    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.

    131014_great_wolf_lodge+042-1
    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.

    97ae038c0680f0edf4a08277e944f8bf
    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.

    IMG_3440
    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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    ALL NASHVILLE ROADSHOW America Comedy festivals funny hosting improv live music Nashville redneck dad jewish mother Roadshow Stand up touring Zach Selwyn Zachariah

  • Dir. by Lauren Banuvar

    Cloud Road EP streaming everywhere now!

    Cloud Road Cosmic Country country rock Music Zachariah

  • 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.

    bcf0a139f40c0f0a9724ba7905b8a46d

    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/

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Tag: humor

Read Zach’s New Short Story “When I Was 16 it Took Me 2 Weeks to Figure Out Who Sang “Nights in White Satin.”

  • March 14, 2016
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer

When I was 16, it Took Me Two Weeks to Figure Out Who Sang Nights in White Satin…
By Zach Selwyn

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It was early summer 1991. I was driving around Tucson on another hot day listening to the classic rock station 96.1 KLPX in my ’88 Dodge Lancer when I first heard the tail end of the song Nights in White Satin. The melody was haunting and seemed like the kind of ghostly and sexy voice I could put on a future mix tape for some girl. I didn’t know what a “night in white satin” was or who the band was or why it grabbed me like it did, but when the song finally ended, the radio DJ moaned into the microphone that that song always took him back to “a magical time when love was free and gas was cheap.” (Gas was .99 cents a gallon in 1991, BTW.)

Sadly, the DJ did not finish his tag. He never mentioned who sang the song or what it was called. I assumed it was titled Nights in White Satin. But I had no way of confirming this. There was no space age device or Shazam app in my hand that I could hit and get instant answers from a satellite above that had every solution to every question man has ever pondered. I actually had to do some research.

I wrote the song title down on a Jack-in-the-Box napkin I had in my car and sped home as fast as I could to call the radio station… From my mother’s landline.

Since that was during the “96.1 Days of Summer” promotion when Tucsonans were feverishly competing to win tickets to a Joe Satriani concert taking place at Tucson Raceway Park in July – the line was constantly busy. I could NOT get through. I even called the pop radio station 93.7 to ask the 25-year-old DJ if he knew the answer. His response?

“We don’t have that song, bro.”

I was dying to figure out who sang it. Since my music-obsessed stepfather was at one of his countless rehab centers that did not allow human contact from behind sober walls, I had to ask my friends at school, who were only interested in Nirvana, Digital Underground and the Black Crowes at the time. Nobody knew. Only one buddy had even heard the song.

And he swore it was Rush. I knew it wasn’t Rush.

Finally, on my weekly sleepover at my father’s house, I had to ask my dad – who, although he is truly one of the smartest men I have ever known – is not much for rock-n-roll trivia.

“Pretty sure it’s a Neil Diamond song,” he exclaimed.

That did it. I spent the next week saving up my bread and thinking Neil Diamond sang Nights in White Satin. Finally I took $20 from my job bussing tables – and went to the local record store called Zips. I acted nonchalant and cool – like all record store shoppers used to act when they would walk into a place with so many options… You wanted to appear focused. If you have ever been to an Amoeba Records in LA or San Francisco, you know the swagger you want to have when you walk in. You want to impress the clerks. You can’t look lost around the other customers. You want to appear as if you know exactly what you are looking for.

Neil Diamond 1986
My father swore Neil Diamond sang “Nights in White Satin.”

I headed towards the rock section. I started thumbing through Neil Diamond CDs. The big cardboard box ones. The CD packaging that was soon banned by the Environmental Protection Agency – although they somehow let the plastic that now pollutes half of our oceans remain as the primary packaging for compact discs. If I ever come across that massive plastic floating island in the middle of the Pacific, I’m gonna be amazed at just how many CD jewel cases compose the island’s largest volcano.

Anyway, I rifled away through Neil Diamond. I could not find Nights in White Satin. I looked at the Neil Young section as well, just in case my dad had simply “mixed up his Neil’s.” No luck. Finally, I realized I had to do what every young music loving record shopper dreads the most at a retail store: I had to interact with an actual employee.

After fooling around with some buttons and stickers near the register, I eventually mustered up the courage to raise my voice above the din of the shitty hair band that was playing from the speakers in the ceiling.

“Hey man, do you know which Neil Diamond album Nights in White Satin is on?”

The dude momentarily stopped filling out the plastic rack card he was illustrating in red Sharpie for Alice in Chains.

“Neil Diamond?” He chortled. “That’s not Neil Diamond. That’s the Moody Blues.”

What? The Moody Blues? That shitty band that sang Ride My See-Saw? Impossible.

“Yeah, look in the prog rock section,” he explained.

Fuck me. I was going to the prog rock section? I never went to the prog rock section. I hated bands like Yes and early Genesis and what?!? I refused to go to the prog rock section and gasp! Buy a prog rock CD??

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I had to enter the PROG ROCK section?

Listen. In 1991 broke teenagers didn’t have illegal or easy 99 cent download services. Or streaming. Or YouTube. Or any cassette singles that were made in 1967 when Nights in White Satin was recorded. I had but two really expensive choices… I could to plunk down the 16.99 for the actual album the song first appeared on, which was called Days of Future Passed… Or, I could play it a little safer and spend 18.99 on Voices in the Sky: The Best of the Moody Blues.

Either way, I was throwing my money blindly at 13 unknown songs. I decided to go with Voices in the Sky because it just sounded trippy and like something I might “get high to” someday. I brought it up towards the front where the clerk informed me that if I bought two “same artist” CD’s I would get a coupon for three dollars off. Luckily I passed on that amazing offer.

So, I was roughly twenty dollars invested into the Moody fucking Blues. I had recently dropped $195 on a sweet Blaupunkt Pull-out tape deck for my ride at the local stereo shop, and I had also scored a Sony Discman-cassette adapter so that I could have CD-quality sound in my car at all times. Assuming my batteries weren’t low, of course… So, I loaded up the Discman and rolled my windows down and began a very brief relationship with the Moody Blues.

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My $195 pull out tape deck.

The first song was Ride My See Saw. Skip. Then another clunker. Skip. Soon, however, the songs got a tad more interesting… Never Comes the Day was soaring and anthemic, and Question had some Stones-y undertones… but the sheer annoyance of Talking out of Turn or I’m Just a Singer in a Rock-N-Roll Band was so hard for this kid from the lowest corner of the desert to accept that I had to move ahead to Nights in White Satin for the remainder of my drive home.

My stepfather returned from rehab two weeks later and I showed him my recent musical purchases. He approved highly of the Byrds and the Doors Greatest Hits, but he scoffed immediately when he saw the Voices in the Sky CD I had purchased. His complaint was simple… And was very understood.

“You’re such a stooge, man – you didn’t buy a Moody Blues CD with Tuesday Afternoon on it?” He scoffed. “That’s like, their best song ever!”

Two weeks later, I had saved up enough money to buy a second Moody Blues Greatest Hits CD. One that had Tuesday Afternoon on it. I swear to God. This collection, called Legend of a Band ran me $14.99 and introduced me to a trippier longer version of Nights in White Satin as well as the poppy foppishness of the hit Your Wildest Dreams.

(For the record, my stepfather could have changed my life if he had just said, “Screw the Moody Blues, go listen to the Kinks.”)

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No man should own TWO Moody Blues Greatest Hits

To this day, Voices in the Sky and Legend of a Band both sit in gargantuan CD cases in my office that have been collecting dust since around 1994. In the same case are thousands of CD’s that set me back 14.99 here and 17.99 there. From Phil Collins to 3rd Bass to that fucking Oasis album that came out after …What’s the Story Morning Glory. We all have them. Resting in our garages and attics, taunting us like medals of adolescence that will forever brand us as the parents who tell our kids that they need to do some research once in awhile because “nobody’s going to do it for you.”

Well, we better be careful. This new generation’s problem is that everybody is doing it for them.

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IMG_9457
One page of over 1000 in my 90’s CD collection.

As I paid my bills this month, and looked over the CD collection I have amassing in my house that is worth nothing but fond memories, I thought back to that hard earned $18.99 and $14.99 I had dropped on those CD’s back in 1991. That’s a lot of money for a kid. That’s a lot of money for a lot of people. The music industry sure did take advantage of us, didn’t they? Then again, without them, we wouldn’t have what we have. As I sent off another online bill to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power at that very moment, I thought to myself that all that disposable high school income sure would be really helpful right now.

And then I pulled out that CD case, got stoned and listened to Nights in White Satin…

Episode #17 Missi Pyle & Zach Selwyn

Download and hear ZACH and MISSI PYLE on the latest ep. of “Anna Faris is Unqualified”

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Watch Zach’s New NBA Rapdate! Week 20

  • March 11, 2016
  • by zachselwyn
  • · comedy, music, lyrics, jay-Z, beyonce, blue ivy · Homepage · Music · NBA Rapdates · Uncategorized

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America’s Top 10 Elementary Party Schools

  • November 23, 2015
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer · Uncategorized

elementary      By Zach Selwyn

Yep. It’s that time of year again where we crown the best K-6 party schools in the country!

10, Little Red Wagon, Marin County, CA. – Nestled north of San Francisco and south of wine country, this K-through-6 party school is known for its tech-savvy parents and their wild weekend ragers. Moms like Tricia Trophee have been known to drink wine at 2:00 in the afternoon following sessions of hot yoga. The yearly “Pumpkin Fund Raiser” has been nicknamed the “Drunken Fun Rager” by parents for years, culminating in three arrests on campus last year alone. Plus, in this MILF-heavy town, tech money goes a long way in keeping up appearances.

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Little Red Wagon Mom Tricia Trophee starts on the Chardonnay at 2 pm

  1. Studio City Elementary – Los Angeles, CA. – Forget Beverly Hills. If you want to send your school with the best looking moms and dads in the country, look no further than this private elementary that runs upwards of $28,000 a year. And it’s worth it for the parties and the parade of failed actresses and ex-models sending their kids here. Wife-swapping rumors have circulated for years, but it’s their “White Christmas” school party that impressed us. Sources say a dad is also a full-time cocaine dealer and the party (Which featured DJ Tiesto) indeed lived up to its “White Christmas” namesake.
  1. Sarah Palin Elementary, Phoenix, Az. – Re-naming this school “Sarah Palin “in 2008 wasn’t the smartest thing Phoenix officials have done, but it certainly upped the hotness factor. Ex Arizona State students who remain in the Tempe area are known to tap kegs at the 5th grade basketball games – which have broughtin many college recruiters. Plus, a 2015 study revealed that 1 in 5 parents have been featured in one way or another on internet porn websites.

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    Ex ASU Student Heather Gillespie with her newborn and a cig and some wine
  1. Denver Charter – Denver CO. – The recent legalization of marijuana in Denver earned the city nearly a billion dollars in its first year. That means parents are partying. Nearly every parent carries a vape pen and makes a nightly stop at local pot shop “The Grass Station.” (Where 15% of proceeds go back to the school). Many parents are tattooed as well can be found all winter long slamming peppermint Schnapps and hot chocolate in rented cabins and chalets across the Rocky Mountains.

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A typical pre-carpool ritual in Denver

  1. Benjamin Button Elementary – Philadelphia, PA. – Named after the dramatic 2013 film starring Brad Pitt, it got its name because every parent there seems to be looking younger as the years go on. Why? Some say it’s the HGH the school administers to parent volunteers who help out as crossing guards and lunch servers. That, coupled with a rising heroin problem, has made this school a perennial top ten on our list. Plus, one dad at the school is rumored to have seven children from 4 different women. Play on playa.
  1. Battle Creek Elementary – Battle Creek, MI. – Yearly parent parties, such as the “Hash Bash,” “Kids and Kegs” and “Pimps Up Hoes Down” have yielded plenty a “hot mom boob flash” on Snapchat. Fake boobs are a thing here, and nearly every mom loves showing off their bolt-ons once the drinks start flowing. Nearly every parent is involved in a micro brew business as well, and local craft beers keep these hard partying Midwesterners drunk and horny all year round.

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Mom Stacy Sher at last years Pimps and Hoes Party

  1. Totem Pole Elementary – Seattle WA. – The Pacific Northwest has it all. Craft beer, wine, legal weed and RAIN which keeps a lot of parents indoors. Here is where the heavy partying parents celebrate each Seahawks game with mugs of Mac and Jack beer and key parties. One Dad, Zachary Wingate, brought a 2 foot beer bong to his 6 year old daughter’s birthday last year. Nearly all the parents got hammered. With the sun going down so early, most of these parents start hitting the bottle around 3:00 – which has led to quite a few divorces and at least 9 suicides in 3 years.

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Mom Kathy Jackson was arrested for cocaine distribution last year

  1. David and Goliath K-5 – Hollywood, CA. – One mom, Rachel Steinbart, went viral last year when a topless dance photo surfaced of her living it up at the annual “Spring Fling” Carnival in April. Known as the internet famous “Best Mom Tits Ever” – she is currently negotiating a reality show about her life, her kids and her impending divorce. She is also rumored to be dating 80’s hearthrob Scott Baio. (Just another day I Hollywood, I guess). Other famous parents at the elementary include Minnie Driver, Ex Pornstar Taylor Canzzz and one of the Baldwin brothers. (Not Alec). With most parents barely caring about their kids education, this school is known for its expense accounts, liquor bills at Mastro’s and overall hungover disposition.

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Mom and ex-pornstar Taylor Canzzz

  1. Deerborn Elementary – Silver Lake, CA. – With the hotness factor skewing younger and younger, this $32,000 a year private K-6 is home to some of the best looking parents we’ve ever seen. (If you can ignore a resting bitch face once in awhile). The hair is perfect and the bodies taut and tight. This leads to a lot of swimming parties including Summer’s “Drool in my Pool” and the “Midsummer Wet Dream” party hosted by former Playboy editor Robert Carlotta at his 9800 square foot home. Deerborn released a popular 12-month calendar last year called “Milfs in Thongs” which sold out and raised $140,000 for the school.
  1. Goodenough Elementary – San Diego CA. Last year’s #1 repeats as the drugs got better and the yearly “School Trip to Burning Man” got saucier. Parents have been known to do molly on weekends during soccer games and smoke weed at the legendary 4:20 statue on campus. Gar Thomas has 3 kids from 3 ex-models. Stacy Brown is a swimsuit and lingerie model with a 3rd grader. Hart Fraulich is rumored to have slept with the (very sexy ) and hard partying 3rd grade teacher Katie Pollen – as well as Christine Cox, a volunteer music teacher. Everyone is beautiful and nearly everyone is high. Pure MDMA can be bought from the janitor and San Diego’s wild, sexy attitude runs rampant through this gorgeous $40,000 a year campus. Look out for the “Halloweenis” party where parents trick or treat drunk and have been known to copulate on lawns of neighborhood homes.

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    3rd Grade Teacher Katie Pollen

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Seven Celebrities You Didn’t Realize Were Once Children!

  • November 3, 2015
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Homepage · The Writer

Seven Celebrities You Didn’t Realize Were Once Children! By celebrity blogger Zach Selwyn.

NUMBER 6 is SHOCKING!

Sure, you know them by their famous personas. But, did you know that these seven celebrities grew up as kids once just like you and me? Scroll down to begin slideshow.

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  1. JESSICA BIEL

Yep. Believe it or not, Jessica Biel was not always the stunning late 20’s beauty you have grown accustomed to watching on the screen! She was once a child! She was born and had to be potty trained and then grew up and had dreams. At one point she was in elementary school!

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  1. CHANNING TATUM

Sure we all know Channinug Tatum as the oily bo-hunk stripper from the Magic Mike franchise… and 21 Jump Street. But did you know that he was once a toddler? And then was in kindergarten too? He even has a mom and dad! Yep, he might be in his 30’s now, but he was once a little kid.

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  1. The Weeknd

Pop superstar The Weeknd was actually born Abel Tesfaye and was once a newborn baby, then he was five, ten… and eventually 12! His childhood was full of fun! And toys! He even once went to 3rd grade!

Image: Dwayne

  1. Dwayne The Rock Johnson

Die hard wrestling fans first met The Rock when he was in his early 20’s. But did you know that he had a teenage period and was even a newborn once? He played little league and other things that kids do! Amazingly, he wasn’t always the chiseled action hero you see in the movies. He didn’t even get that tattoo until he was older!

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  1. Frank Sinatra

Hard to grasp, but childhood isn’t exactly a NEW celebrity phenomenon. In fact, Ol’ Blue Eyes himself once peed in a diaper and cried for a bottle. He slept in a crib and had stuffed animals and cried for his parents. Rumor is, back in New Jersey, Sinatra was once unable to walk – and could only crawl. Luck be a Lady indeed.

HOUSTON, TX - MARCH 1: LeBron James #23 of the Cleveland Cavaliers during the game against the Houston Rockets on March 1, 2015 at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2015 NBAE (Photo by Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images)

  1. LeBron James

The youngest NBA player to ever get to 25,000 points – was once the youngest kid on the playground! Sure he’s an athletic specimen now, but Lebron James was once just a tiny little dude being breast fed and spanked. He was, indeed, a child once. Then he had a growth spurt and SLAM A JAMMA! He became a basketball player.

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  1. Barack Obama

Woah! Yeah, best believe that! Even our US President – Barack Obama was once a kid. He ran around and said goo goo gah gah and probably threw a rattle at the family dog. He even had to learn his ABC’s and how to add and subtract! This little guy went from a crib to the Oval Office! But he was once a little kid!

CLICK FOR NEXT SLIDE SHOW

NINE CELEBRITIES WHO ONCE HAD BABY TEETH (#4 will BLOW YOUR MIND)

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Model GiGi Hadid once had baby teeth!

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Read Zach’s New Short Story: “Why You Should Never Have a Yard Sale”

  • September 9, 2015
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Hero · Homepage · Short Story · The Writer

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

Oh how wrong I was.

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

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

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

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

No sale.

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Vintage T-shirts. Priced at $10. Sold for $1.00

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

“These are fun,” she exclaimed.

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

“Could you do ten bucks?”

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

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

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

I quickly Googled Yard Sale Etiquette.

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

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

“Ay de mi!” She said in Spanish.

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

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

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

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

“Maam, could you do 25?” I asked.

“How about one dollar,” she said.

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

“Senor, I will give you two dollars.”

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

“20 bucks,” I said.

“3 dollars,” She barked,

“18?” I pleaded.

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

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

“How about two?” She offered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ready to make a deal?” She asked.

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

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

“Told you so,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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…)

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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.

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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!

**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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Watch the Final New Ep. of “America’s Secret Slang” this Saturday!

  • July 28, 2014
  • by zachselwyn
  • · America's Secret Slang

Every wonder why we call it a “honeymoon?” Why your BEST MAN is called the BEST MAN /(Hint – not because he’s your best friend!)

Tune into the final new episode of “Americas Secret Slang” this Saturday Night at 9pst/10 est on H2 – #secretslang

(Also, learn all about how many words we get from SEX…)

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Watch Zach’s band 2 Scarves Mash up Wiz Khalifa/Blake Shelton! We Dem Boyz… Round Here

  • July 7, 2014
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · comedy, music, lyrics, jay-Z, beyonce, blue ivy

Waylon Nimoy & Cash Shatner are back with a mashup of “We Dem Boyz” and “Boys Round Here” by Wiz Khalifa & Blake Shelton. Guest starring: Gata from Tyga’s crew. Check it out!

 

 

#2scarves @jinglepunks #wedemboyz @Mistercap

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Watch Zach’s New Clip of Celebrity Whispers! Angelina! Steve Martin! Mark Wahlberg!

  • June 25, 2014
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Comedy · Sketch Comedy · Uncategorized

 

So much crazy stuff is whispered on the red carpet… check out the latest from Celebrity Whisper and ZS!

 

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