Round Room | Zach Selwyn

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-3-scott-macarthur/id1217686743?i=1000383315241&mt=2

Kaitlin Olson Might Bang Missi Pyle podcast Scott MacArthur songs The Mick Zach Selwyn
<blockquote class=”instagram-media” data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-version=”7″ style=” background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% – 2px); width:calc(100% – 2px);”>

<p style=” margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/BZj_BSagq-s/” style=” color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>Got an amazing musical surprise from @zachselwyn and @rahzelthelegend at @interbrand's #BGB2017. Thanks for the impromptu jam session guys! @roywoodjr was rocking out right off screen.</a></p> <p style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>A post shared by Dr. Oz (@dr_oz) on <time style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;” datetime=”2017-09-27T23:05:12+00:00″>Sep 27, 2017 at 4:05pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote>
//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js

dr. oz freestyle interbrand oprah rahzel rap
Relive this country classic now.

Audio Chateau Cardi B Comedy Comedy Central country Jeff Peters Megan Thee Stallion Missed Riffs Music Nicki Minaj rap SNL Zach Selwyn
California Lottery City Lights Bookstore Commercial san francisco
I moved to Hollywood in 1997 and was quickly initiated into the music scene, which at the time was hanging by a thread to a lost rock-n-roll dream that grunge had laid waste to a mere six years earlier. The glitz and glam of Sunset Boulevard had moved east – away from Gazzazri’s and their tasteless “hot body bikini contests” to more turtleneck and ponytailed night clubs like the Roxbury, where cocaine became less of a party drug and more of a designer hangover from the 1980’s. (Yes, the Will Ferrell-Chris Kattan sketch was based on a real place). MTV VJ Riki Rachtman and his Faster Pussycat partner Taime Downe had closed the Cathouse Club when the metal crowd aged out and the less-than-subtle meat market shoppers grew more comfortable in the darker corners of places like Johnny Depp’s Viper Room and Jon Sidel’s Smalls on Melrose. About the only remaining Sunset staples were the pay-to-play stalwarts that seduced high school bands from the Valley into bringing their friends to watch them hack their way on the same stages once shredded by Guns N Roses, The Doors and every cheese metal hair band with a name like “Durrty Toyze…”

So, at 22, new to Hollywood with a dream of fronting my own band and a love of all things Rock-n-Roll, I was intrigued by the Sunset Strip. I longed to see the Rainbow, flick a cigarette where Axl Rose did in the November Rain video and make my rounds through the streets where Nicolas Cage drove around in the film Valley Girl improvising lines about dudes getting mohawks from his buddy’s convertible. For a few months, I stumbled in and out of the fading bars like Dublin’s and occasionally chased women out of my league into the SkyBar and Argyle Hotel. I often caught glimpses of people like Dr. Dre, Vince Neil and Hugh Hefner only to end up back at my tiny apartment wondering if I would ever find my scene in L.A. After all, I had successfully traipsed through the bars of my MTV rock video youth, but I was certainly a good 10-15 years younger than the majority of women I chatted up at bars who often bragged to me that they had once dated C.C. DeVille before he had joined Poison.

On most of these lonely Los Angeles evenings in the late 90’s, my friends and I would end up back at some tiny apartment off of Fountain where some stranger we were partying with claimed he had a line on good weed… and we would make a call, page somebody and then wait for 45 minutes for it to show up. Most of the time it didn’t, because we were too drunk or high to figure out how to share directions so occasionally we would have to venture OUT to score the grass ourselves. Whenever we went to retrieve the dope, the scene often unfolded with two or three of us crammed in a smoke-filled hip-hop basement studio pooling together 60 bucks to buy a sack of weed from a crew of 11 guys with six loaded 9 millimeters on the coffee table. We’d pay and leave and feel like we just survived a bungee jump or something. Eventually, we would go home and smoke and drink and watch episodes of South Park. (Yes, that was still on back then.)

Alas, when the weed or the beer ran out, most nights ended up with the most sober member of our crew suggesting a quick trip up to the market for more supplies. After a bunch of cash and waiter tips were collected and handed over, we flipped a coin to see who would drive and we made our way up to the large, often-crowded grocery store located at 7257 Sunset Boulevard.

A place notoriously known as “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s.”

Ralph’s grocery store is about the most basic, mid-range priced supermarket in the southern California basin. It is way cheaper than say, Whole Foods or Gelson’s, but comes with its own set of problems. It is much more crowded, much dirtier and offers low-level produce, terrible customer service and has a way more scandalous (if not homeless) clientele. This has been true since Ralph’s expanded its locations to over 200 in southern California and monopolized the market for well… markets. In Los Angeles alone, there are 22 Ralph’s Supermarkets at the time of this writing, and I have most likely set foot in every one of them. And the funny thing is? Some of these stores have been given permanent L.A. nicknames.

The Ralph’s grocery store at 260 S. La Brea Boulevard has been known as “Model Ralph’s” for decades. Located near where a number of modeling and commercial casting offices are, patrons of this establishment may be treated to seeing former Calvin Klein underwear models buying orange juice, cute actresses from Modern Family searching for organic eggs in yoga pants and even Flo the Progressive Insurance lady wheeling a cart full of frozen food towards the checkout stand. Most LA residents consider “Model Ralph’s” to be fairly safe and it boasts one of the city’s youngest clienteles.

Another Ralph’s on Los Angeles’ radar is located on Western Avenue and Sunset – and is referred to as “Ghetto Ralph’s” by all of the locals. This rodent-infested flea trap not only boasts of the worst parking lot ever designed by a human being, but it shares a building with a Ross Dress for Less upstairs where I once bought a single sock for 39 cents. “Ghetto Ralph’s” is also where I once witnessed a homeless man walk in, load up a full shopping cart with ten bottles of vodka and just WALK OUT, unscathed and ignored by security. As impressed as I was by his brazen activity, I eventually took my adult shopping back to the much cleaner Gelson’s up the street.

Then, down south of USC, where I went to college, there was a Ralph’s known as the, “Don’t Ever Go In There Ralph’s,” where the deli counter was operated by a woman who I once saw lose a hair extension into my container of potato salad.

So when I first heard of “Rock-n-Roll Ralph’s,” I was intrigued… What could be going on there? Was it like the Hard Rock Cafe of grocery stores? Full of gold records and live music and signed guitars from dudes like Don Dokken on the wall? Were rock stars drinking in there? It sounded interesting and somewhat dangerous. The store was up on Sunset, somewhat close to Guitar Center, Sam Ash Music, and the late Voltage and Vintage Guitars (both now vape shops). The Seventh Veil Strip Club, as memorialized in the Motley Crue song Girls Girls Girls, was within stumbling distance. The best thing was that it was far away from the spent casings of the Sunset Strip after-hours bars, where the ghosts of metal bands that once fired blanks into the Hollywood night aiming for world domination still believed that a deal with Mercury Records was one showcase at the Coconut Teaszer away. So, the first time I heard about “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s,” I knew I had to check it out. I remember calling my new LA friend Reese, who had already slogged five years in the City of Angels, and asking him about it.

“Dude, it’s so bad-ass,” Reese told me. “Slash and Duff are there all the time, Sebastian Bach buys wine there, I heard Sheryl Crow gets her tampons there and I’ve seen Lemmy, Nikki Sixx and one of the Living Colour guys… I think”

“What do you mean you think?” I asked.

“Well, he was a cool looking black dude with spandex and dreadlocks and it was like two in the morning… of course that was like, three years ago.”

“What about tonight?” I inquired, the clock approaching 1:15 in the morning. “Do you think we can expect to see a rock star buying something if we go there now?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. “My girlfriend said Tommy Stinson was there two weeks ago.”

That did it. Tommy Stinson? Slash? Lemmy? I was never a HUGE hard rock fan, but I knew that LA was crawling with heroes of my youth and I was gonna be damned if I didn’t get a chance to run into some legendary guitar slinger while buying a 12-pack of Coors Light. Shit, with any luck, maybe I could get a guy like Tommy Stinson to come back to my apartment and jam with me… THAT would put my music dreams on the map.

So, Reese took me on my first trip to “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s.” Forty minutes later, after wandering the aisles like a wide-eyed kid hoping to see a celebrity while on the Universal Studios Backlot Tour, I came to a rather jarring conclusion:

This place was simply a filthy grocery store.

Reese and I failed to run into ANYBODY remotely famous. The highlight of the evening was when the checkout guy told us that Adam Duritz had been in earlier that afternoon and bought a Honeybaked Ham.

The legend of “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s” extends back to the heyday of the 1980’s Sunset Strip scene. Those years were documented by Penelope Spheeris when she turned her camera on the pretty boys and girls parading up and down the boulevard, preening and praying for a record deal to propel them onto the world stage. Re-watching The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years in 2023 is a harrowing experience, for many reasons. The sheer amount of sexism, hedonism, desperation, alcohol abuse and unbridled debauchery is enough for you to question why you ever begged your mom for a Quiet Riot t-shirt back in 1983. But, what I admired more than anything, was that back then, these musician kids lived 10 to a room, in abandoned Hollywood warehouses and apartments. They were survivors. Dreamers. They were just like me, except that dozens of females in fishnets weren’t floating me cash to pay for cigarettes and rent for a rehearsal space. To survive, these future lords of Los Angeles would rummage through Hollywood and Highland BEFORE there even WAS a Hollywood and Highland, begging for change, turning tricks and selling homemade merchandise that allowed them enough money to get high, laid and yes… buy booze at “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s” at closing time.

“Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s” was the type of place where the bag boys concealed tattoos beneath their aprons, the checkout dudes claimed that their band once “opened for Kix at the Roxy” and vixens casually dropped produce on the floor just to bend over in case a casting director was there scouting for the next Warrant video. It was the type of establishment where you could get 30 steps inside before being asked to put out your cigarette. You could shoplift a few batteries for the apartment boom box and not be questioned. It was the type of place where young starlets just getting off of the Greyhound from Indiana could get pregnant in the bread aisle.

Today, if you drive by the store, you will notice that they have embraced their history and Rock-n-Roll nickname. Someone high up on the Ralph’s food chain commissioned an artist to design a signature Les Paul ‘Ralph’s-logo’ guitar on the front door beneath a silhouetted rock band. This weird mural is an artistic homage to a lost time in this city and to the nickname given to a random grocery store by some long lost L.A. resident. There is one problem, however: Rock-n-Roll in Los Angeles hasn’t been Rock-n-Roll in a VERY long time.

Think about it. Since the Grunge revolution, can you name five ROCK bands that have come from Los Angeles and conquered the world? Are you still thinking about it? I thought so. That’s because there aren’t many. Maroon 5, love them or hate them, are the closest. Although they’ve adopted LA as a home, Counting Crows is technically a San Francisco band… and far from “hard rock.” Rage Against the Machine, Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were able to carry the flame by being original enough to march forward and you can say the same for Beck. But after that, the city is awash with a cavalcade of one hit wonders like Foster the People, Incubus and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.

The bottom line is that Hip-Hop is king. So, if I was the manager of “Rock-n-Roll Ralph’s,” I would tear down the silhouetted rock band and Ralph’s guitar and replace it with a logo of Kendrick Lamar spitting bars into a fucking champagne bottle.

A few days ago, I went up to “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s” just to see if anything had changed. I passed through the guitar doors and inhaled the familiar unclean scents of rotting produce. I noticed how the prices had risen dramatically and I looked at some sale prices and perused the wine aisle, considering taking advantage of the ‘30 Percent Off if You Buy Six Bottles’ deal. I noticed a few neighborhood residents buying dog food and diapers and remarked how the interior hadn’t changed at all since I first went in back in 1997. I was disappointed. After coming to terms that this store was no longer something to be enamored with, I chalked it up with the rest of the long gone LA rock palaces. Somewhere in the trail dust of the mid 1990’s, “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s” went the way of The Cathouse, Gazzari’s and the Starwood Club.

As to not look suspicious by wandering around the grocery store, I decided to get out of “Rock-N-Roll Ralph’s” for the final time. I grabbed a Kombucha and paid for it at the self checkout aisle before hopping in my 2016 electric vehicle and driving away to my two-bedroom home in the Valley.

Not very Rock-n-Roll at all…

(Check out the Ralph’s-inspired album cover of Zach’s single “Haven’t Seen Much Morning Recently”)

bukowski Comedy David Sedareis Guns N roses Hair Metal Hollywood hunter s. thompson Jonathan Ames Los Angeles Ralph's Rock N Roll Ralphs SHort storiy 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
My Wife and I Spent a Week on Tinder and it Almost Wrecked Our Marriage * 2015 by Zach Selwyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The kind of cheesedick I imagined asking out my wife

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

And then my wife got asked out on a date.

“You’re not going, “ I screamed.

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

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

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

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

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

“No, why?”

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

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

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

Oh crap.

How I imagined ‘Dante.’

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

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

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

I really hoped Perla didn’t look like this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A perfect gentleman,” she responded.

“What did you do?”

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

“Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amber Rose dating funny jewish story Hot Jewish girls Jewish Tinder marriage Swingers Tinder Zach Selwyn. short stories
my behind the stage seats

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

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

“Haha yeah right,” she said.

“No. I’m going.”

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

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

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

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

“Uhhhhhhh….”

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

“Do NOT drink Absinthe,” she demanded.

“I won’t, I promise.”

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

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

$15 super joints from a beautiful blonde girl

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

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

At least 25 of these shirts at the show.

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

“It’s hash bro,” he said.

“Nice,” I said.

“Nice,” he responded.

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

“Nice.” I said again.

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

I stared up at the clouds.

“Nice,” I laughed.

“Totally nice,” he replied.

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

The author, moments after the hash took over…

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

“Nice.”

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

This girl was FINISHED before the show even began

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shook my hand and walked off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NICE…

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

1965-2015 bob weir Bruce Hornsby Comedy fare thee well Grateful Dead jerry garcia Music phil lesh santa clara short story Trey anastasio
Zach breaks down the crowd, the Seattle Mariners and Lenny Kravitz’ penis.

Live from August 4, 2015…

420 country-rock Eminem freestyle rap I got Robbed Music poulsbo slippery pig Zach Selwyn Zachariah and the Lobos Riders
From April 25 – 28, ZACH will lead a band featuring Nashville legends -while performing LIVE at the world famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in Nashville during live tapings of the hit NFL Network show “Good Morning Football”Zach’s band Zachariah & the Lobos Riders recently released their new album “Hacienda” to high praise Lead singer Zach Selwyn, a former ESPN personality and digital sports content talent for TBS currently hosts the new interactive game show “Stacks” – Returning fall 2019. Stay tuned for more NFL Draft information! Show airs 6am-10am – prepare for NFL FREESTYLES, COUNTRY REWRITES, COVERS, EPIC CLOTHING and Zachariah ORIGINALS!

Zach Selwyn Photo by Brie Childers

Watch the band’s newest music video HERE

Good Morning Football hosting Music Nate Burleson NFL NFL Network sports Zach Selwyn Zachariah