Laker tickets | Zach Selwyn

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

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

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

Except in my high school.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I went back to see Adam.

“What was that all about, dude?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I could have one, I guess,” I said.

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

Remember this?

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

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

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

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

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

“Look, I’m only 17, ya know?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I never saw Les Miz again.

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

I haven’t smoked Mexi-shwag in decades.

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

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

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By Zach Selwyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His job: RABBI.

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

“Yes indeed,” he answered.

“So was he really a Rabbi?” I asked.

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

“I’m guessing a bootlegger?”

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

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

“Baruch Hashem,” I said.

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

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my behind the stage seats

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

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

“Haha yeah right,” she said.

“No. I’m going.”

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

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

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

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

“Uhhhhhhh….”

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

“Do NOT drink Absinthe,” she demanded.

“I won’t, I promise.”

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

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

$15 super joints from a beautiful blonde girl

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

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

At least 25 of these shirts at the show.

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

“It’s hash bro,” he said.

“Nice,” I said.

“Nice,” he responded.

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

“Nice.” I said again.

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

I stared up at the clouds.

“Nice,” I laughed.

“Totally nice,” he replied.

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

The author, moments after the hash took over…

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

“Nice.”

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

This girl was FINISHED before the show even began

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shook my hand and walked off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NICE…

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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!

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Anna Faris producing new comedy podcast ‘Missi & Zach Might Bang!’

Anna Faris producing new comedy podcast Missi & Zach Might Bang!

CRISTINA EVERETT @CRISTINAEVERETT

Anna Faris is expanding her presence in the podcast world.

The Mom star and host of Anna Faris is Unqualified has launched a new podcast featuring Gone Girl actress Missi Pyle and actor-musician Zach Selwyn. Titled Missi and Zach Might Bang!, the new show is a fun mix of celebrity interviews and improv and is being executive produced by Faris and her Unqualified co-host/producer, Sim Sarna.

“[Missi and Zach] have spent their careers navigating Hollywood as actors and musicians, and now they are taking their multitude of talents and launching their podcast,” according to the show’s press release, which adds that it will feature “an array of improvisational songs, stories, laughter, and the immortal question… Will they ever bang?”

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The Worst Cocktail in LA.

By Zach Selwyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweet tie bro.

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

“It’s amazing,” he said.

That was all I needed to hear.

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

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

“Uhm Tito’s”

“Oh. So… What is that?”

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

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

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

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

“We have Tabasco,” he said.

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

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

Jesus fucking Christ.

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

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

And then I started looking around at the decor.

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

“Oh, Sinatra?” He said.

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

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

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

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

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

There was a photo of Kirk Gibson above the urinal.

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

“Joe Dimaggio?”

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

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

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

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

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

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Bloody Mary Buca Di Beppo Cocktails Comedy Encino humor Joe Dimaggio Los Angeles Zach Selwyn
11 years ago I covered a $659.48 bill in a Vancouver bar because Jason Momoa had conveniently, “left his wallet at home.”

Aquaman owes me some cash.

All of these Aquaman billboards that are towering all over the country have had me nostalgic for a night, back in 2007, when I had spent the night drinking and hanging out with a young actor named Jason Momoa who was playing “Ronon Dex” on a TV show called Stargate Atlantis.

I had met Jason because I had made and performed a viral “Stargate Atlantis rap video” about how much of a superfan of the TV show I was… (even though I had never seen an episode). The producers then offered me a small role as “Scientist #2” on an upcoming episode of the program and they even flew me up to Vancouver to act in a scene. We also scheduled a “Set visit” for the TV show I was currently on called Attack of the Show.

This whole thing started when my friend Jane, a veteran TV producer, was asked by the Stargate universe to create them a “viral video” for the internet.

This was during a small period of time when TV/Film companies were hiring producers to try and capture lightning in a bottle for the masses by shooting high quality videos that seemed cheap, affordable and easy to digest online… This was WAY before influencers, SoundCloud rappers and Instagram stories… This was before everybody had an iPhone and a high quality camera in their pockets and garage band on their laptops. If you had musical talent and were willing to work for next to nothing, you could get a million views and the respect of the industry in about a week.

I had recently performed and produced a series of comedic rap videos for Attack of the Show – which led to Jane calling me to do a song about Stargate Atlantis as they attempted to develop their online brand.

“Have you ever seen the show?” Jane asked me on the phone one afternoon.

“No, but that won’t matter,” I responded. “Send me the DVD’s and I’ll write a song tonight.”

Her messenger delivered the DVD’s that afternoon. I watched six episodes. By 11 p.m. that night I had written an entire rap song about how much I loved Stargate Atlantis and how, as an actor, my dream was to be on an episode of the show…

Two days later we recorded the rap song with a music producer named Terrace Martin. Yeah, the same Terrace Martin who rolls with Kendrick Lamar. You know that song “Damn?” THAT TERRACE MARTIN. The man is a hip-hop legend. However, back in 2007 he was just another guy trying to make it, like we all were… and his resume included some indie rappers and a couple of songs with Snoop Dogg.

Here’s the Stargate Atlantis song and video we shot while making it…

After this song and video went “nerd viral,” which meant that all the Stargate Atlantis fans went crazy analyzing the lyrics and anointing me the “King of Stargate rap music” – I began receiving hundred of emails and MySpace requests from Stargate fans across the world. They all had names like “Wraith Woman #2” and “Daedulus Dude” and were asking me for my address so they could send me things like Stargate collector’s plates and shit. (I still have these). It was crazy. The fans rivaled Trekkies or the disciples of the Star Wars Universe. I had suddenly been accepted into the tight circles of Stargate fanatics.

The video was spreading and an executive producer on the show held a cast and crew screening and made me an instant celebrity amongst the cast, grips and writers of the show. It was INSANE. A week later they flew me up to Vancouver to play my small role, put me up in a hotel and even PAID me… These are the type of jobs that RARELY come along…

Anyway, I first met Jason Momoa on set the day of my scene, and I watched him train incessantly for some tricky fighting sequence. I interviewed him along with the rest of the cast for my set visit and got along well with everybody. What stood out to me most about Jason was that, whereas the rest of the cast had big, beautiful trailers… Jason had an AirStream trailer from the 1960’s. The other cast had couches, but Jason had removed his and fastened in a hammock instead. The dude was definitely living a different life as a TV star.

After interviewing him, we started talking music and went back to his Airstream where he showed me his 1940’s Gibson acoustic guitar that was worth about $5,000. I played it in awe and dreamt of the day I could play a character like his – a “Satedan,” a member of civilization from the Pegasus Gallery on my own bad ass science fiction TV show… Instead, on the episode that day I was simply playing “Scientist #2,” a character who contracts some disease and had a few throw away lines to Dr. Mckay (played by the hilarious David Hewlett).

By the way, I still get occasional 13 cent residual check in the mail from this role…

After my scene was shot, Jason casually mentioned that he had a day off the next day and wanted to know if I had any interest in getting some beers that night.

“Sure, man,” I said.

That evening we met at the hotel and proceeded to ambush the nightclubs of Vancouver. At first, we met some of his friends for drinks where the bartender refused to charge him anything. A few beers in and we headed over to a dinner spot where a bunch of his friends joined us. The drinks and food flowed and I was amazed at how many people stopped and paid their respects to Jason and his impressive dreadlocks. He was a big time celebrity in town… I just thought he was a cool guy. Then, around 11 p.m. the bill came.

We all sort of stared at it for a long time. And then Jason picked it up. He looked at it, leaned over to me and whispered in my ear.

“Dude, I left my wallet at my place, can you cover this?” He said

“Uhhh, pay me back?” I said, rather scared to look at the total.

“Yeah man, we’ll go to my apartment. I have cash.”

And so, just like that, I put my card down and bought Jason Momoa and his friends a $659.48 dinner.

And then we went to the bar and I bought some more beers. And then some more. And then we stopped at a liquor store on the way home where I picked up some Stella Artois to take back to his place.

I was about $750.00 in the hole at this point.

Momoa’s apartment was sort of like his trailer. He had decorated it with a bunch of his homemade leather furniture, was definitely not a fan of pre-fabricated food and he immediately put on the incredible Tom Waits CD Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards.

We drank a few beers and talked about Hollywood, his girlfriend Lisa Bonet and how he had dreams of becoming a “Warrior” in the movies or something… I told him how my dream was to play the Greek Theater in Los Angeles someday. We went back and forth about how the wolf was his spirit animal and mine was the eagle. He showed me his screenplay, which was wrapped in a handmade leather-bound notebook of some sort – and I gave him my band’s new CD Alcoholiday, which he told me he liked. He then gave me a copy of a terrific book called “Hobo” by Eddy Joe Cotton (A MUST READ) and we toasted to our dreams until the early morning.

Around 3 a.m. I called a cab and my night out with Jason Momoa had come to a drunken, blurry end. I stumbled back to my hotel room at the Sutton Place and got into bed… It was then that I realized SHIT. I forgot to ask him for the money from dinner.

The next day my wife called and asked me if I had spent $750.00 on our card, as she was getting “fraud alerts” from the bank.

“Yeah, it’s a long story,” I said. “But I made a cool new friend!”

A few weeks later, the British TV station SKY 1 contacted me about using my Stargate song as a promo to hype the upcoming new season of the show. I agreed and it opened up a brand new fan base across the pond. To this day, the ASCAP residual checks I got from that usage are above and beyond any financial success I have ever experienced.

And somewhere, on an old hard drive of mine, exist about 25 photos of me and Jason hanging on set… in the bars and among the barflies of Vancouver back in 2007. There is also a segment we produced for Attack of the Show on a DVD buried somewhere in my garage, but I ain’t trying to go dig that shit out either… If you have it, internet, feel free to post it.

The author on set with Momoa 2007…

Jason and I stayed in touch for a few years, texting songs and book recommendations to each other, but once he got more and more successful, our texts stopped and we both fell into busier work and fatherhood. Now, as I see him staring at me from the stage of Saturday Night Live – or from behind his massive Trident on an Aquaman billboard, I feel like he finally became the “warrior” he had told me he wanted to become.

As for me, I haven’t played the Greek Theater yet… But, when I make it there, I’ll perform any song you want to hear…

Even the Stargate Atlantis song…

2007 acting Aquaman Attack of the Show David Hewlett essay funny G4TV Jason Momoa Kendrick Lamar money Music SNL stargate Stargate Atlantis terrace martin Vancouver Zach Selwyn
ZZACH joins RUDE JUDE and ROSS from BINARY STAR to talk hand jobs, proper towels for that time of the month and some secret slang!

more here: http://foreallyshow.com/

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Missi Pyle and Zach Selwyn are back at it this week performing live from the legendary Hotel Cafe – 1623 Cahuenga Blvd. in Los Angeles – special guests from Missi’s new YouTube Red show! $10 at door

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