Trailer Park Boys | Zach Selwyn

When I came down with the rebound and heard my right knee explode and pop, I knew something was horribly wrong… I looked up at the faces of my basketball teammates looking down at me lying on the court writhing in agonizing pain. I somehow managed to verbalize what was going through my mind…

“That’s it, amputate my leg… just cut the fucker off.”

Turns out my injury wasn’t bad enough to turn me into an amputee, but it was bad. Torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Partially torn medical meniscus. Partially torn medial collateral ligament (MCL). If you’re not familiar with this medical terminology, in layman’s terms… I blew out my whole fucking knee.

Before I was given the official medical report by my doctor, I had four days to figure out what the hell I had done to myself. Why? Well, in America, with health care as bad as it is, getting in to see an Orthopedic surgeon for an official diagnosis takes time… Like, a lot of time. Which means, after Googling “knee injuries” over 3000 times, I had to make my own medical diagnosis on myself until a doctor appointment could be set up.

Based on my online research, I had concluded that one of three things had happened to me:

1. I tore my ACL.
2. I tore some other knee ligament.
3. My bones were deteriorating from early onset kidney disease and I would be dead by August.

My father and sister are both doctors, so their advice to use the RICE method, (Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate), helped a lot. They recommended getting crutches to get around, so, I quickly called my friend Scott, another basketball friend who had suffered numerous leg injuries over the years. Sure he had a pair… he said. But they were for people 5’10” and under.

After searching for cheap crutches online, I called the Hollywood Goodwill and was told by an employee that they had a set that they would hold for me. As I limped through the parking lot of the store, praying that they would fit my 6’2” frame, I went over certain decisions in my life that had lead me to this point… Why had I turned down the professional path to pursue this artist life? If I hadn’t, would I be staggering through a Goodwill parking lot in Hollywood on a Thursday afternoon in my pajamas trying to save $15 on crutches if I only had I taken that job at FOX SPORTS all those years ago? What had I done to my life? The last couple months had been tough… Air BNB disavowed my house from renting it out, so my income had been roughly slashed in half. My latest voiceover residual check I had received in the mail was for .08 cents… My only solace of late had been in playing basketball… and now that dream, like my right knee, was CRUSHED.

I felt like I was on the verge of being homeless.

Of course the girl at Goodwill had made a mistake. They had a WALKER, not crutches. It also happened to have a blood stain on it, which is why it was SLASHED to $2.00. I passed.

Finding crutches in this town is nearly impossible.

I went to Walgreens next, where the crutches were at the back of the store. I hobbled all the way in only to find that they were “on sale” for $59.99. Excuse me? 60 bucks? FUCK OFF. I was about to go fasten myself a crutch out of an old tree branch and a bicycle seat when I looked on my phone and noticed that Home Depot sold them… I called, but got no answer. When I showed up, I was told that their crutches were not available in-store. They were online deals only.

“Go to Urgent Care,” my friend Alex told me. “They’ll be able to tell in five seconds if you tore something… and they’ll give you crutches for free.”

Urgent Care it was. I found one with a five star rating on Yelp and went down. I paid my $25 co-pay and was treated by a 20-something female who claimed to be a doctor, although I noticed that her name tag did not say “M.D.” It had a bunch of other letters that I’m sure were placed there to confuse naive patients… Hers said A.P.R.N. C.N.M.

I texted my sister – a doctor down in Newport Beach – to see if this lady was, in fact, a doctor.

ZACH: Hey – What do these abbreviations mean and is she a legit doctor? A.P.R.N. C.N.M.

She wrote back immediately.

AMANDA: NO! That stands for Advanced Practice Registered Nurse – Certified Nursing Midwife – What are you, fucking pregnant? get the hell out of there and see a real doctor!!!

Since I had already paid the $25.00, I stayed. The young “doctor” felt my knee. She moved it around. She stretched it. It actually felt pretty good… And then, she gave me her official diagnosis:

“You did NOT tear anything,” she said. “This is a bad sprain at worst.”

“Really!” I exclaimed. “A bad sprain? Thank you sooo much! If I ever need a midwife, I’m calling YOU!”

She took some X-Rays of my knee, (which I later learned were completely unnecessary for a ligament injury and cost me $125) and I asked them to provide my free crutches. When they explained that they did have crutches – but that they cost $39.99, I bit the bullet and bought them. Finally, upon checkout, the manager told me that I could earn a $5.00 gift card to a Starbucks if I simply gave them a 5-Star Review on YELP.

“Hell yeah!” I said. “You guys made my day.”

I put in the 5-Star review, snagged my gift card and Uber-ed home to elevate my “bad sprain.” Wow, no tear, no surgery, no problem. I was elated and texted everybody I knew that I’d be back on the basketball court within weeks.

Better days…

And then I got an appointment with a real doctor.

Dr. Weiss was recommended to me by my primary care physician. I had my leg up on his exam table the very next day, confident that he would walk in, slip me an ACE Bandage and wish me happy holidays… Instead, within 30 seconds of looking at my knee, he casually offered the following.

“Wow, you tore the shit out of your ACL… Hopefully you didn’t do too much damage to the other ligamants,” he said.

“Wait, what?!” I reacted. “Tore my ACL? But the Urgent Care said it was a bad sprain…?”

“Well, if by ‘bad sprain’ they mean a ’completely annihilated anterior cruciate ligament,’ then… yes.”

Oh fuck.

Dr. Weiss scheduled an MRI for that afternoon and told me I had wasted my money on X-rays and my entire Urgent Care appointment.

“Lemme guess,” he said. “They offered you a Starbucks gift card?”

Following the MRI, which is when you go inside one of those huge claustrophobic X-Ray machines to examine all of your inner workings, I was back in Dr. Weiss’ office for my evaluation two days later.

He broke down my injury and began planning out my recovery. Since I was set to travel with my family for the holidays, I was concerned I’d be missing out on my trip… He assured me that since my swelling was so immense, I would have to wait at least four weeks for surgery. He then explained how it would work.

“Based on the fact that you’re 44-years-old, I’m gonna replace your ACL with a cadaver ligament.”

“I’m sorry, what? A CADAVER LIGAMENT?”

Doctor Weiss smiled. He went on to explain that younger “athletes” can replace their torn ACL’s with their own ligaments, but for older guys like me, the best option is to take an anterior cruciate ligament from a DEAD BODY and put it into my destroyed knee.

“Can you make the ligament from like some Kenyan distance runner or something?” I joked.

“Haha,” He said. “It’ll most likely be from a car crash victim.”

Wonderful.

Dr. Weiss also told me that 20 years ago, patients my age wouldn’t even be ELIGIBLE for ACL replacement. As if men over 40 were considered beyond repair or something… Luckily, the outlook on knees had changed since the late 90’s.

My torn ACL

Eager to get to my rehabilitation, I bought a $300 knee brace from the doctor (Of course, not covered by insurance) and got instructions on how to put it on. After it was affixed, I had the look of a hydraulic half-man/half-Cyborg. I felt like Darth Vader.

“Will I be ever able to play basketball at the level I was playing again?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said. “But you might want to join an elderly league.”

Limping out of Dr. Weiss’ office on my crutches, the first glimpse of my mortality had hit me. Knees crumble, ankles snap… ligaments are torn. Age is forever out there hunting us down. Luckily, with this type of injury, full recoveries are entirely expected and at worst, I would lose 4-6 months of my life to inactivity.

On the way home, I stopped at Starbucks to spend my $5.00 gift card on a cup of coffee. When I presented it to the cashier, he told me news that at this point, I was not surprised to hear.

“Sorry, sir,” she said. “This card only works at certain Starbucks… Not this one.”

I logged onto Yelp and changed my review…

*Ed Note: Zach is set for ACL replacement surgery in Mid January. Stay tuned!

CHECK OUT/BUY ZACH’S DEBUT NOVEL NOW!

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

Sklar brothers
By Zach Selwyn

“Mr. Selwyn – I think you’ve got a chance to make a lot of money in traffic,” the slightly overweight man staring at me from my computer told me. “We loved your audition… Are you ready to become the next LA eye in the sky?”

“Uhmmm… Can I think about this for a couple of days?”

If you are wondering how I found myself in an online interview to become one of those traffic reporter guys with a nickname like “The SKYLORD,” look no further than the current state of the film and television industry in Los Angeles.

About a year ago, as the Screen Actor’s and Writer’s Guild strikes were coming to an end, I found myself pretty deeply in debt. My last job at a startup media company had gone away the same week that I had bought my first ever new car – a Tesla by the way – and my son was getting ready to start college. In two weeks, I had gone from a top creative executive at a media company to an unemployed 48-year old actor and musician… something I hadn’t been in three years. Expenses were high and no TV work was on the horizon. California’s ridiculous non-existent tax benefits on TV and film production had devastated the very industry that this town was originally founded upon. In short, Hollywood moved out of Hollywood.

To give you an example of how unions and tax incentives have fucked up this city, a friend of mine who is an indy film producer, recently told me about his upcoming project about a pack of possessed coyotes attacking hikers high in the Hollywood Hills. I auditioned. I got a great response. I was excited that something was going to be shot in my own backyard. When I asked my friend the producer about the shooting schedule in LA, he was perplexed…

“We’re not shooting in LA… We are shooting in Colombia,” he said.

I didn’t get the part.

So, as usual, I texted everybody I knew in the business and asked for work. Nobody had anything. Some were off trying their hands at real estate. Some were applying at Trader Joe’s. Others said the Apple Store had decent health benefits. It was bleak. So I logged back into my Linked In account and started looking for any job I could find.

One morning I stumbled across a company that was looking for “Voiceover Talent For a Radio Gig.” After filling out an online application, a recruiter named Steve Bunch reached out to me and asked me to record a simple vocal demo. He sent me a voice sample… and it did not take me long to find out that this was not some amazing cartoon voice job on a show like Family Guy… This audition was to become a traffic reporter in Los Angeles. A TRAFFIC REPORTER? Sure, it sounded like an odd job, but in a way it was totally in my wheelhouse. I’ve announced and done voices for hundreds of projects… and let’s just say I was intrigued. Especially when I found out that the gig promised, “AFTRA union pay, 100K, health insurance and a 401 K.”

A 401 K? I thought to myself… Shit, in my 28 years in Hollywood, I had managed to save about $3,200 for my future. If I could guarantee some wealth in my later years? I would talk about car accidents and freeway closures on the radio all day! Who cares if I didn’t know what a ‘Sig Alert’ was?

But first, let’s face it. Linked In absolutely sucks. In the five or six years I have been on the site – I’ve applied for hundreds of jobs ranging from writing to hosting to creative positions and production jobs… During that time I have maybe been given an interview TWICE. There is nothing more disheartening than seeing that 798 other candidates have already applied for the same gig and that they are more qualified than you are. I did get one paid gig from their website… and it involved selling my facial expressions to an AI company that was digitizing actors for $300. Hey, times are tough. I don’t have many other skills beyond the entertainment industry. Plus, I’m not about to start an “Only Dads” account where I do dirty things for old rich men who are into middle-aged Jewish guys. (Although my wife is contemplating a cooking-with-her-feet Only Fans channel called “Bon Appe-FEET.”)

We’ve already trademarked the name.

So, I wrote Steve Bunch back. I was asked to write something about traffic and record it as if I was announcing it on the radio. I researched some phrases and dropped a killer take on some made up freeway bullshit that sounded legitimate. Here is what i said:

We have a SIG Alert off the 405 just before the 101 freeway that’s been backing up traffic for ten minutes – we are GRIDLOCKED and LOADED – also if you’re heading into Glendale look out for that disabled vehicle on the 170 near Burbank- that should be clearing up in just a few minutes- and be careful of some sort of large dead animal if you’re anywhere near the westside around Bundy – there’s your afternoon traffic report- I’m Zach keeping you on track- and as always – getting you safely back… HOME.

Boom. I fucking nailed it. I threw a little reverb on my voice and sent it out to Steve Bunch awaiting an offer to start recording my voice from home for $100,000 a year.

Steve reached out the following day. He said I was a natural. He loved my audition and even remarked that I had potential to be “One of L.A’s top traffic talents…” if I stuck with it. He mentioned the LA legends of the past… like Bill Keene and modern day freeway phenoms like Stu Mundel and Ginger Chan.

“I’m not familiar with them,” I said, meekly.

“You will be.”

Through Steve, I quickly learned that being a traffic reporter involves a hell of a lot more than speaking traffic jam jargon into a microphone. In fact, this job was NOTHING like I had imagined.

“So, here’s how it works, Zach – firstly do you have a car?” Steve Bunch asked.

“Yes, of course!”

“Great… Well, this job requires you to be in-person at the office around 5:15 a.m. every day to get to the morning rush – but the good news is you’re DONE by 10:30… You can go home for a lunch break but need to get back by 1:00 for the after lunch commute. After that you’re pretty much prepping for the drive home around four and then you’re sending out reports until nine p.m.

“So… it’s like a 15-hour day?” I asked.

“Give or take, but you have breaks in between,” Steve Bunch said.

“Uhm… And where is the office, exactly?”

“We’re over in Long Beach by the 405. Where do you live?”

“Uhm, I’m like in Hollywood,” I said.

“Oh, well… you’d probably have to move.”

“Well, I drive my daughter to school and run carpools and like, all that stuff.”

Steve went silent. I heard him take a deep breath as if he had just been wasting his time in talking to me.

“You know, most of our applicants are empty nesters or they have a non-working spouse,” he said. “But if it helps, it IS an AFTRA job… so you would earn union wages. Like I said, there is a LOT of money in traffic.”

“Well, I mean – I can’t just uproot my family to Long Beach,” I said.

“Well, there’s a six-week training period you’d have to attend, most people move and rent places during that time”

“Really?” I giggled. “Six weeks? This whole thing seems pretty simple to me.”

For some reason, that pissed Steve Bunch off. As if I had broken the cardinal sin in traffic talk. He got serious and became slightly aggressive.

“You think this job is easy?” Steve responded. “You try listening to responders and police scanners all day and then writing traffic copy without the proper training. Lemme ask you a question. Do you even know what a Sig Alert is?”

Oh boy. Steve was mad. Here it was, my first job offer in nearly a year and a half and I was mocking the guy trying to recruit me directly to his face. I explained to Steve that I had no idea what the hell a ‘Sig Alert’ was – I just thought it meant that there was like, a SIGNAL that ALERTED you to bad traffic.

“Wrong,” Steve said, almost sounding appalled. “It’s when an incident causes a delay that lasts over 30 minutes or more. In your audition, you said you had a Sig Alert that was only a ten minute delay. That is HARDLY a Sig Alert, my friend. That’s called slight congestion!”

“Oh,” I said, humbled. “I guess there are some things I wasn’t aware of.”

Steve went on and on about obscure traffic factoids that could not have been more boring. I learned that the LAPD invented the Sig Alert in 1955 from a guy named Lloyd Sigmon who they named it after. I learned that a 1124 code meant there was an overturned vehicle. I even learned that CFJDE stood for “Caucasian Female Juvenile Driving Erratically”

“These are the types of things you need to be familiar with,” Steve said. “This is the traffic capital of the world and you have a chance to help these commuters get to their destinations… we’re sleek, organized and we take this job VERY seriously. Starting salary is 55 thousand but it will go up as you work overtime. So, what do you say? Would you be able to start training in the next two weeks?”

Look. I hate turning down jobs. Especially in today’s economy and with my debt where it is. BUT, to logically start every day of my week in Long beach at 5:15 would mean I leave my house at 4:30 a.m. I would never see my wife or my kids again. I would spend my entire life either IN traffic and talking about it. All I could think of was how I once dreamt of hosting the news on Saturday Night Live and now I was going to be telling radio listeners that there was an overturned turnip truck blocking three lanes on the 405 freeway. I politely had to tell Steve that I wasn’t able to take the job due to the long hours and the daily commute.

“Yeah, I understand,” Steve said, sounding defeated. “Seems like less people care about the traffic reports these days… Everybody’s got Waze and Google maps and A.I. and all that stuff… so weird. But who knows… if you change your mind, we may have a spot for you.”

“Sure, Mr. Bunch,” I said. “And thank you for the interview.”

Over the past year, I’ve told this story to a lot of people, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet in today’s Hollywood. Most folks agree that, although it may not have been the best job in the world, it sure would beat digging ditches. I just didn’t know how I would be able to pull it off with my family responsibilities. However, any time I am driving home and I happen to have a radio station playing and the traffic guy comes on and tells me about some lane closure or a deadly crash, I salute him for taking the leap into the world of traffic reporting. I wasn’t able to make it work, but you never know what the future holds. I just wanna be able to spend as much time with my family as possible before I’m an empty nester.

And tonight, it looks like I’m gonna be late for dinner… Seems like there’s a Sig Alert on the 101 South…

Listen to Zach’s Newest album “Rodeo Zach’s Last Ride“

ZACH SELWYN is a humor writer, actor and musician based in Los Angeles.

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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

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Hey guys! I’m finally able to announce the release of my second novel “DROP DEAD GORGEOUS” – today on KINDLE! If you’re a digital reader, please take a look and enjoy! Sample chapters available in the link. Hard copies will be available in a week or so – so thank you all for your support! This is the official SEQUEL to “Austin Translation” – when Rob Stoner travels to Nashville to solve the mysterious suicide of his ex-girfriend. It’s murder, mystery and mayhem in Music City!

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS: AKA THE NASHVILLIANS

When True Crime Podcaster Rob Stoner is summoned to Nashville to investigate the mysterious suicide of his ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago, he suddenly finds himself making his way through Music City still holding onto lost dreams of his own music stardom. Things get even crazier when he discovers that his ex was holding a piece of paper in her hand with his phone number on it when she died. Now, Rob has to solve the crime, navigate his way around the shady side of the music business and try to get it all done without losing his marriage, his career and his mind…

PRAISE FOR “DROP DEAD GORGEOUS”

“I voiced a character in a musical comedy podcast which Zach wrote and produced. I thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with Zach, but felt strongly that the project was lacking the comedic device of death. I’m glad to see that Zach has combined all elements into this fast-paced murder comedy set in Music City.”

– Will Sasso, actor

xoxo MUCH LOVE!

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written by Zach Selwyn. Dir. by Adam Siegel.

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This morning I drove past two skinny homeless men with multiple missing teeth who were smoking cigarettes before nearly running over a mangy stray dog panting in the street. I made a left turn at the Hustler Hollywood store, narrowly averting a woman who was squatting and urinating into a discarded water bottle. I eventually parked and walked around my car, side-stepping two discarded needles some dog crap and a used condom. I dodged a speeding Hyundai that was being driven by a dude vaping and texting at the same time before opening the passenger door… and helping my kid get out of the car.

“Ready for school?” I asked.

Welcome to Hollywood.

A scene from our nice little walk to school

I was raised in a peaceful, quiet corner of the desert where coyotes and jumping cholla cacti were my biggest fears while walking to school. I didn’t see a homeless man until I was about 13. Hustler was a magazine that only prisoners and truckers read and needles were something only a doctor could get a hold of. Yesterday, my son asked me why the guy who lives in the dumpster across the street from his carpool pick-up lane is always shouting, “Ho ass bitch” while shuffling down Selma Avenue.

I am raising my children in Gomorrah and it’s starting to freak me the fuck out.

Nice little bottle of urine found by the carpool pick up

This school year, my son’s entire fifth grade class was moved to a new school campus – about 10 blocks north of the previous campus where they had been since kindergarten. The new campus is on Selma Avenue and is a stone’s throw from the Hollywood YMCA. It’s also a block south of Hollywood Boulevard, nearly 10 medical marijuana dispensaries, six seedy bars, smoke shops, two run-down hotels, a vintage street clock that has been permanently set to 4:20 and about nine tattoo parlors.

Back in my 20’s, when I was stumbling out of the bar Boardner’s (a block away from the school on Cherokee), I could never imagine that someday my son would be taking “Beginner Spanish” 50 yards from where I once puked after a night of Vodka – Red Bulls. I never thought I’d be raising my kids anywhere but some pristine little tucked away school with manicured lawns and open fields and morning sing-a-longs. Little did I know that barbed wire fences, metal detectors and cement soccer fields were going to be the norm for my children…

At a back-to-school meet and greet two weeks after the first day, some other parents expressed their concerns as well.

“We just don’t like the way the school feels,” an angry parent offered.

“We are striving to make everybody comfortable,” the principal, a 40-something man named Reggie replied.

“It’s hard to be comfortable when I smell marijuana every day when I drop my kid off,” another mom piped up.

This nearby billboard has all the kids very excited for Christmas

Hollywood has changed immensely since the rundown 1990’s. Tourism is up, souvenir stores are making great money and people from all over the world are still traveling here to take photos of the sidewalk where an actor’s name is etched into a star. Of course, when the tourists come, so do the hustlers. You’ve seen them selling rap CD’s, trying to get you to take the TMZ Tour and drunkenly swaying into your photos while dressed up in a piss-stained Spider-Man costume demanding five dollars.

This guy smells like beef and wants $5 a picture.

Look, my high school was no picnic. I witnessed a shooting, a lot of fights and certainly saw my share of LSD and dirt weed from Mexico, but I was in high school… Not fifth grade. Being raised in the desert certainly shaded me from the inner city realities of gang-ridden America, but I was also lucky enough to travel to places like New York and LA to see how other kids were growing up. Ultimately, their fast-paced lives had a strong effect on me because I headed for college in Los Angeles the minute I turned 18. Thinking back about my childhood dreams, I turned my son one day after school.

“Hey dude, where do you want to live when you grow up?” I asked him.

“Probably the beach… or New York I guess.”

Obviously he hadn’t thought this one out. Not me. By the time I was ten, I had it narrowed down to Los Angeles and Los Angeles.

My son is also already planning out his first tattoo, based on a conversation we had last week. After pouring over NBA star Brandon Ingram’s arms as we were watching a basketball game, he asked me a question.

“Dad, if you could get a tattoo, what would you get?”

“Oh wow, I dunno – probably your name and your sister’s name,” I said. “Something small and hidden and meaningful.”

“I’d probably get Savage in cursive across my eyebrow,” he said.

“You’re not getting a tattoo,” I told him.

“Why not? All the sickest rappers have face tattoos now…”

Oh boy.

The late rapper Lil Peep had the type of facial tattoos my son is craving.

As we listened to my kid’s Spotify playlist, I heard no less than ten “N-Bombs”, three songs about abusing Xanax, Percocet and Molly and over ten about Gucci, 80,000 dollar watches and ‘Lambos. Every song featured sound effects like “Skrrr” for a cool car or “Skrrrrratatatatata” to mimic an assault rifle peppering an enemy with bullets… Look, I love rap music. I chased a rap career myself at one point… but no 5th grader should be asking his dad what Codeine, Mountain Dew and Jolly Ranchers taste like together.

Alas, the reality of this situation is that I can’t afford to shell out 35,000 dollars to private academies like Campbell Hall or Oakwood… Although from what I remember from college – most of the heaviest partiers came out of these schools. Which gives me some hope… And truthfully, other than the dead guy who was wheeled away from the apartment down the block last week, the school is fun, diverse and growing and I’m actually proud to be a part of the community.

So, as the years roll along, I’ll just have to deal with the syringes, homeless guys and Hustler Hollywood foot traffic for a few more years until junior high. Luckily, that campus is located downtown in a much more secure location…

It’s across the street from an outpatient clinic for opioid addicts…

GOT ZACH’S BOOK YET?

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https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/13GPmO6r3oBc46TRpaeGNd?utm_source=generator

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<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>
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