Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.
Zach recently began shooting a multi-episode series for History Chanel – where Zach travels deep into the heart of America to find the most unique and unusual people, jobs, locations and history he can find! Produced by Bullet Point Films, expect the series to premiere on TV and online in late 2017 or early 2018! Here’s a sneak peak of Zach at Rhinebeck Aerodrome in upstate New York and in Grand Teton National Park… Look for him on the road!
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Ratified in 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution – which is America’s only Amendment to later be repealed – federally prohibited the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol.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.
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.
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Secondly, Zach is working on the script for Warner Brothers COuntry Artis UNCLE DRANK’s new Podcast. Follow him on IG @uncle_drank
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The Day The Derby Became a Bank * By Zach Selwyn
I live about a mile from the building that was once the famous swing dance club known as “the Derby.” In the mid-late 90’s, when the swing music revolution twirled its way across the streets of Los Angeles and turned regular farm boys from the Midwest into Rat Pack wannabes, “the Derby” was the swing club to frequent.
In 1996, Jon Favreau was so inspired, he made a pretty great film about it called Swingers and suddenly star Vince Vaughn had the entire town looking for “beautiful babies” and saying that everything was “money.” I passed a bootleg VHS tape of the film around my college friends and soon fell in hook, line and sinker. After graduation, I dove head first into the post-Swingers madness that raised dirty martinis all over Hollywood. Lines formed around the Hillhurst/Los Feliz street corner where the Derby resided awaiting entrance into the ultimate haven of swing-cool.
I owned 15 bowling shirts, white “creeper” shoes, Cadillac-emblazoned pants, shoulder-pad heavy sport coats, a flask, three Big Bad Voodoo Daddy CDs and a t-shirt that said “It’s Frank’s World, Were all Just Living in It.” I went to Las Vegas monthly, drank gin and tonics and swept my hair up into a James Dean-inspired pompadour. I remember feeling so confident that my “swinger” image would live with me for the rest of my days, I traveled to New York City around 1999 and searched out underground West Village swing clubs to show Manhattan that a “Real Life Hollywood Swinger” was in their presence. Somehow the façade worked and after ringing up a $290 credit card bill, I managed to make out with a girl named ‘Kitty’ who had a Stray Cats tattoo on her shoulder before retiring to her floor mattress in Brooklyn where she woke up six times during the night to smoke Marlboro Reds.
It was all because of Swingers.
And then, about five years ago, it was announced that the Derby was going to be transformed into a Chase Bank. The bar where I spent my early 20’s was suddenly going to be a place where I would curse the teller for charging me a checking account fee… The club where I once dated the hottest bartender in town was turning into a place where a gal named Evelyn would inform me my mortgage was ten days late. When I heard the news, I knew this was not good. The Derby? I thought… A bank? WWJFD? (What Would Jon Favreau Do?)
Turns out, Favreau had bigger fish to fry. Even though he could have easily bought the Derby and used it to store his Iron Man memorabilia, he ignored my twitter plea for him to buy the bar and turn it into a museum. I’m sure Vince Vaughn most likely drank at “Mess Hall,” the restaurant next door, toasting the ghosts of the barroom that made him a movie star… but he was also too busy and uninspired to save the bar. I even tweeted actor Patrick Van Horn, who played SUE in the film. He at least took the time to write me back by quipping “End of an Era.”
A week before the Derby was to be gutted, I gathered my old “Swinger buddies,” – now dads who had traded in slick sport coats and suspenders for Old Navy hoodies – and we poured out some gin for Favreau and Vaughn, for Sinatra, for dirty martinis, for the incredible wooden Derby ceiling, for the memories we had shared at the bar and for the debauched nights spent watching amazing swing bands like Royal Crown Revue sing “walk right in, walk right out…”
We even quoted the movie a few more times to make sure we still knew all the classic lines. “Get there…” “This place is deaaad anyway…” “He’s all growns up… I would never eat here.” “You’re the fun-loving out going party guy, and you’re sweating some lawn jockey?” The night went on and on.
As the evening died down, we all retired a lot earlier than we had in the late 90’s and excused ourselves back to our families. The next week, the Chase Bank transformation had begun and the last remaining memories of my first few years out of college were carried out and discarded.
A few weeks ago, I found myself in line at the Chase, staring up at the exact same wooden ceiling that I had spun girls beneath in the past. The ceiling beneath which I had done shots of Crown Royal a hundred times. The ceiling that watched over me as I tried to find assimilation with a unique sect of people during those weird times when you’re not yet quite sure who you were – who you are – or where you are going.
I got up to the bank teller and deposited my meager check, taking a moment to remark that this building was once my one-time favorite nightclub.
Without making eye-contact she mumbled, “Yep, every one of you middle-aged guys who comes in here has the same story.”
“Fuck off,” I whispered under my breath.
I took another glance at the ceiling and thought of the days gone by. Hollywood is forever a town of transformation. Very few restaurants and bars make it ten years… hence the stories you read about now defunct clubs like The Trip, The Cathouse and Gazzari’s that were the most happening places to be. In my life, the Derby was certainly my place. The place where I was part of a nationwide fad that engulfed my youth when I was a mere lump of clay awaiting to be molded into the lump of Play-Doh I am these days.
As I looked down at my bank receipt and realized how far this journey in Hollywood had taken me, I thought of the dreams I had at age 22 that were still somewhat unrealized. When places that mean so much to you as a kid disappear, you fail to immediately recognize that they will be gone for good and the memories will fade or melt into new ones until all you have left are a few photographs and some journal entries. I look back at my two years as a pseudo-swinger as important remembrances that I will take with me through all of my life. At the time I thought I’d be 22 forever, twirling cute tattooed ladies across slick wooden floors only pausing to sip drinks and wipe the sweat from our brows. I never thought I’d be 40-years-old and in the exact same room looking down at a bank statement stressing about the fact that I barely had enough money that week to cover my DWP bill.
Again, my thoughts turned to Jon Favreau. As the worlds most in demand director, he probably never imagined he would achieve the level of success he has back when he was simply searching for familiarity amongst the Hollywood night-crawlers of the mid 90’s. I reached back out to my old swinger buddies and arranged another drinking night to sit back and reminisce about the Derby days gone by, and we all agreed to get together on a following Tuesday night.
Of course, by Monday morning, everybody had flaked and the plans were cancelled so we could spend some time with our families. We all agreed to try again later, and I thought about how a little piece of all of us died the day the Derby did…
And a part of me knew, that somewhere, high up in those Malibu Hills, Jon Favreau was feeling the same thing…
Buy Zach’s Book “Talent Will Get You Nowhere” on Amazon.com!
Zach’s newest comedy CD is in digital stores – and yours for CHEAP! Check out HUNGOVER AT DISNEYLAND
Featuring “Web MD Song” – “Jay-Z Signs White MC” – “Bad Night in Bro Country” – “LA Ski Hat Weather” – “Dudes” – and The title track!
THE LAST BACHELOR PARTY * By ZACH SELWYN
Last week, I received an email invitation to the bachelor party for a guy at work I barely know. His name is Nick. He’s 33 and marrying a nurse named Rachel. The wedding is in Woodland Hills in October and the bachelor party was being planned by his younger brother. How I made the bachelor party invite list, I have no idea. Nick and I aren’t particularly close and we barely acknowledge each other on the set of the TV show we work on. We’ve shared a few beers on weekends and a YouTube video or two, but to say we’re even that close would be a stretch. Still, I’m 37. I have two kids under six. I pass out nightly at 9:47 while watching SportsCenter. I pee sitting down at night because it’s more comfortable. I immediately made an executive decision. I am GOING to that bachelor party.
In the not-so-recent past, I would have declined the invitation on sight. However, I am now looking at this bachelor party as my last chance to really do something crazy. Be it Las Vegas, Cabo San Lucas or even a local pub crawl around Hollywood, I am GOING. Yes, I am going.
See, amongst my closest friends, my bachelor party is collectively known as the “worst bachelor party of all time.” Celebrated in 48 beer and whiskey-drenched hours in Las Vegas in early Fall, 2004, 15 of my friends from all different times of my life fought over where we should eat, argued about which strip club we should peruse and complained about my lack of participation in the “Bachelor Scavenger Hunt” game they put together a few nights before.
In their defense, it wasn’t their fault. It was MINE. I was so infatuated with my fiancee that I refused to do anything that might be considered crossing the line. I turned down my buddy Ari’s offer to pay $500 for me to have a double naked lap dance from two Russian sisters in a private room where “anything goes.” I decided to turn down the hits of pure MDMA my buddy Derek brought – opting to drink Miller Lite instead. I even had a chance to bite sushi off of the naked body of a gorgeous Japanese woman – but opted to use chopsticks instead. I was a downer the entire weekend – but in my mind I was preserving the sanctity of my upcoming marriage and honoring the woman whose hand I would slip a ring upon.
Now, looking back at that Las Vegas weekend nearly eight years later, I can’t believe how STUPID I was.
Dumb, dumb dumb, stupid dumb. What was I thinking? I guess at the time, instead of enjoying the 21-year-old stripper attempting to grind my crotch into sand during the song Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue, I was thinking about the joy my fiancee and I shared when I proposed to her. When the guys all did shots of a scary looking drink known as an “Adios Motherfucker,” I passed – afraid of puking or getting too drunk and upsetting my fiancee. I was in a protected zone. A zone not unlike the one Ed Helms has in The Hangover films. I was, literally, a huge God-damned pussy.
The point of this story is to kindly offer up advice to all prospective husbands out there planning a big blow-out bachelor party. My advice? Ask your fiancee if you can POSTPONE your bachelor party until you are about eight years into your marriage. Trust me, you need it a lot more than you did a month before your wedding day. If I could gather my buddies again and go BACK to Las Vegas for my bachelor party today? FORGET IT. Those two Russian strippers? Puddy in my hands. Derek’s MDMA? Swallowed. And that naked sushi dinner? Let’s just say I would have been balls deep in yellowtail. I’d give one of my children to have those opportunities again. Because as you get older, become a parent and a responsible adult, those little hedonistic moments you used to take for granted never happen anymore. Case in point? Last Tuesday I literally snuck out of my house after my wife and kids went to bed to go to Yogurtland. FUCKING YOGURTLAND.
Two old college buddies, Ryan and a guy who went by the nickname The Sauce, were behind my “Bachelor Scavenger Hunt.” They created an elaborate list of activities I had to accomplish before the night was through. If I got 75% of them, I’d reach “Legendary Bachelor Status.” 50% meant I was an “Accomplished Bachelor.” 25% meant I was deemed “Worthy.” By the end of the night, I completed 2% of the activities on the list. The worst score in the history of their Bachelor Party game. I was not ashamed back then. I even took pride in my refusal to play along with games like “Grab a Stranger’s Tits.” However, every time I think about my pathetic score, I am dying for a shot at redemption.
The one game I did decide to play along with was called “Bird on a Wire.” It required my using my forearm as a “shelf” of sorts to a girl with large breasts. The boobs rest on your arm like a Falcon on a leather gauntlet preparing to be hoisted into flight. You hold the pose for three seconds and your friends check the activity off of their list. Well, directly following a few beers at a casino bar in the Palms Casino, we found a willing participant. I slid my arm beneath her heaving mammaries and held it for three seconds. My friends applauded. The sheer shame of my activity hung heavily over my head for the rest of the night. So much so, that when the rest of the activities came out, I turned them all down in fear of the guilt I would carry with me forever. Jump in the Caesar’s Palace fountains? Uhhm, no. Start a food fight at a buffet? Forget that. Pose with a fully-clothed girl in the “Reverse Cowgirl” position on top of a limousine? Get the fuck out of here. I had done the “Bird on a Wire” thing, and I was retiring from the game. Disappointed, Ryan and the Sauce mumbled about my lack of participation throughout the rest of the night.
Why men have to engage in the most primitive and testosterone-laden activities as a way to celebrate their upcoming nuptials, didn’t make any sense to me at the time. I thought the women I knew- like my wife – had done it right… They chose a select, mellow location – like vineyard or a boutique hotel in Palm Springs – and treated themselves to massages and five-star dinners . They got their nails and toes done and wisely spoiled themselves while feverishly flipping through US Magazine and gossiping about reality TV. The craziest thing they did was sip Mojitos through “penis straws.”
My friends all wanted to gamble, drink, drug, bang and eat. When my brother caught me texting my wife that I missed her from a bar at 10:30 at night, he promptly took my cel phone and told me I was not allowed to use it the rest of the trip. I was miserable, and only half-wishing that I was in Sonoma County with my wife at a spa retreat. So, I did what I know how to do best: I drank through it.
Don’t get me wrong. Many women out-party the men at bachelorette parties. About three years ago, in Lake Tahoe for a gig with my band, six jiggly 20-somethings streaked across the stage I was playing on while wearing condoms in their hair and t-shirts that read “Buy us a shot, She’s tying the knot!” These grotesque partying wildebeests proceeded to do Jaegermeister shots on top of the bar, flash their shaved Britney’s to everybody willing to take a peak and make out with any college kid able to take his mind away from Beer Pong. It reminded me of the terrific term my old friend, the late comedian Greg Giraldo coined when describing a pack of drunk bachelorettes. He called them “A gaggle of squawking twats with their A Hard Man is Good to Find t-shirts.” Perfect.
At the end of Saturday night at my bachelor party, my old friend Rick threw a punch at my buddy Dave while we were in the after hours shit-show known as “Drai’s.” The argument was over who was talking to the hot waitress first, even though both men were married at the time. It was a weird scene and made everybody uncomfortable – but no one more than me, suddenly forced to break up a fight between a friend from college and a friend from work. Two guys I had known forever, but two guys who were also married. My first thought was, “Why would a married guy even hit on a waitress?” Now, eight years into my marriage, I totally understand. It has nothing to do with actually sleeping with another woman, it has to do with seeing if you can still flirt. It has to do with seeing if you still have GAME. It has to do with hoping that your slight post-wedding weight gain and thinner hairline affects your ability to be desired by someone of the opposite sex. It’s why my grandfather held the country club waitress around the waist while ordering a pastrami sandwich and why my stepfather recently told a hostess at a Mexican Restaurant to “bend over, he was driving her home.”
I cant make this stuff up.
On the flip side of things, it goes the same for my wife and her friends. The women who spent their bachelorette weekends at the spa now have similar thoughts about what they would have done differently as well. I asked my wife what the biggest difference would have been during her wine tasting weekend. Without hesitation she said, “There would have been a lot more cock.” I am so glad we’re married.
Yesterday, Nick’s brother sent out an official group email to the bachelor party. Turns out, he rented a cabin in Big Bear and wants to spend the time hiking, barbecuing and drinking local micro-brews. Nick seemed to applaud the situation, and even sent out a follow-up email stating “Thank GOD were not doing it in Vegas!” I suddenly slunk low in my desk chair. What? No Vegas? What are we gonna do in the woods, trust-building exercises? Fishing? Pinning Weeblos badges on each other? Fuck that.
My one shot at redemption was shattered. My ego deflated. I replied to the email by saying that I had a “family thing” to do that weekend and I couldn’t make it. After all, if I’m gonna go camping, I’m taking my son and daughter with me. I don’t want to go play “Ookie-Cookie” with nine dudes I barely know in a cabin in the woods. To tell you the truth, I was horribly disappointed in Nick. I even emailed him and told him so. I told him that someday he’d look back on his bachelor party and want a re-do. He’d want the strippers and the drugs and the precarious situations. He’d want a memory of a final throw-down together with his friends that defiled humanity as we know it. I urged him to change his plans and go to Sin City. Reno. Even fucking Laughlin. His stance was strong. Big Bear it was.
So, I’m no longer going to Nick’s bachelor party. The sad thing is, after Nick – I don’t have many single friends left. The one wild card is my younger brother, who is still unmarried. If I can convince him to go to Vegas, I might have a shot at reclaiming my manhood. Then again, he’s an outdoorsy guy, so a Big Bear situation might present itself again. Nonetheless, until he gets engaged, I will be forced to celebrate my adulthood with my children, going to the park, the beach and the mall for recreation. I will find my kicks by running on a treadmill rather than “making it rain” at a strip club. And I’ll be cheering on YMCA youth basketball games rather than playing “Quarters” on a barstool.
And if all else fails, there’s always Yogurtland…
ZACH SELWYN * August 23, 2012
Zach Selwyn 