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Zachariah & the Lobos Riders are set to release their newest 6 song EP “Cloud Road.” Z details how this surprise record came about…

Cloud Road EP * 2020 By Zachariah & the Lobos Riders

In December of 2019 I blew out my knee playing basketball. I vowed to return to the court within a year and elected for surgery in January of 2020 – Following the surgery came the Norcos. As a decent wine drinker, painkillers were never my thing and I have been able to avoid them after major surgeries – of which I’ve had my share… But this time, things were a little different. Lying in bed, unable to walk or barely get up to use the bathroom, I would play a lot of music and drift off into the spacial tranquility of a few pain pills. At first it was 2, then it became 3 and I was pretty soon out of my bottle… The doctor had told me it would take about three days to not need them anymore, I was on day 11. What came to me during these lost moments was a lot of lyrics about childhood memories, dreams dying, and the main street that I grew up on in Tucson Arizona in the 80’s and 90’s… Cloud Road. The first song is the raw file you hear “Cloud Road Painkiller Freestyle.” That was done in one take off the dome. I quickly understood why so many artists get involved with Vicoden, Percoset etc. These five songs came to me in three days. The sixth was written for the TV show “Breaking Bad” but ultimately not chosen.
CLOUD ROAD (CLICK FOR SAMPLE)

A different approach for me for sure. A nod to my teenage years in Tucson dying to go anywhere… now looking back and realizing I have gone everywhere. What’s next? I need another motivating factor to push me into whatever is next…

PRAY TO THE LORD

Back in high school, my friends and I would drive around all night and break into unlocked cars and steal stuff. We then took the stuff to Zia Records for trade money, Play it Again Sports for cash and second hand shops… One night a few guys broke into my old football coach’s truck and he was watching us from his window. At one point, one of the guys said he saw him flash a gun. We ran. The part about dropping my high school ring at the scene of the crime is based on a separate incident involving a girl’s bedroom when her boyfriend stopped by – but combining these two incidents into this song made sense.

MY MIND GOT MIXED WITH WANDERING

Yeah, where does the motivation go? I think I speak for a lot of young people here when I talk about how we all want to find that one comfortable place but then see something else a little more appealing just around the corner. I wasted a lot off my 20’s looking for something else and not recognizing what was in front of me.

JUST A LITTLE INTERMISSION

Again, painkillers had me rapping to myself a lot. And for some reason I was doing it in a Humpty Hump – Special Ed voice… This is a nod to the 90’s hip-hop I loved – and it’s really just a joke – as most of my rap songs are.

CLOUD ROAD PAINKILLER FREESTYLE

When putting this EP together, I came across this a week before releasing it. It is the seeds that grew into the title track of the record as well as the “Intermission” song. I was rapping into my phone on a galaxy of pain meds… In a studio this might actually be dope.

THE BALLAD OF JESSE PINKMAN

Since I rhymed about Jesse Pinkman in “Intermission,” I felt like this fit on this record as well. I wrote this before a season of breaking Bad and sent to the EP’s, tweeted about. And had a lot of show fans RT it as well. Ultimately, someone heard it and said they did not need any new music. So FUCK THEM. This song deserves to be heard, even if the show hasn’t been on for six years.

“ALEXA PLAY RED FUCKIN WINE!”

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

“I’m sorry, what?” I responded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sure, whatever you want,” I said.

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

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

Not the way to start your day

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

I promised her I would.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To this day, he fucking hates frozen yogurt

Lotta these dudes in the parking lot

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

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

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

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

Discarded balloons everywhere

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

And then, through the crowd, I saw RAINBEAUX.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God… Zach Selwyn?” She said.

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

Charlie? Hello Gail…

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

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

Secretly, I didn’t believe her.

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

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

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

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

“Wow, didn’t expect that,” I said.

I thought Rainbeaux would marry a guy like this…

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

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

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

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

“Of course I do,” I said. She smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

“Me too.”

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

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

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

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

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Zach is excited to announce he has published his first crime mystery novel, “Austin Translation.”

Set in Austin, Texas during the summer of 2020, true crime podcaster Rob Stoner finds himself set up for the murder of a young girl. Now, using his amateur sleuthing skills, he has to clear his name, find the killer and save his marriage all during a global pandemic.

Please download on Amazon.com – Physical signed copies will be available for purchase upon request for $10.00 in the near future.

(c) 2020 Desert Hobo Press

All rights Reserved

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The Derby in its heyday, 1997

The Day The Derby Became a Bank * By Zach Selwyn

And the Derby today… A Chase Bank

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.

Seanny Walls, Big Daddy Jake and the author, feelin’ “Money” in 1998. #jawline

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.

The line leading to these steps would wrap around to Los Feliz Blvd.

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!

http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Will-Get-You-Nowhere/dp/0983723737/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1397244717&sr=8-2&keywords=Zach+Selwyn

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Lakers are For Fakers * 2015 By Zach Selwyn

The following is an email chain I exchanged with my Hollywood agent, who I have paid 10 percent of my income to these past ten years. In that past decade, he’s brokered a deal or two for me and has also bought me lunch three times. His agency is a big one, but I am a lowly peon in the cable TV hosting game, dwindling way beneath the Seacrests and Trebeks of the world. However, I am undoubtedly the biggest sports fan on the roster. Which is why, as a die hard NBA fan, I began asking him for tickets to the agency “luxury suite” four months ago to watch the Los Angeles Clippers play the Cleveland Cavaliers at the Staples Center on January 16, 2015…

Oct. 12, 2014.

From ME: Yo – Looking for Clippers – Cavs tickets on Jan 16 2015. I think the Cavs are gonna be great this year – and their new coach is a mastermind. Clips look strong too. Both teams will be in top playoff mode around January. If possible, might I be able to get into the agency box seats that night? Asking early to make sure… Thx – Z

From AGENT: Z! Of course buddy. Emailing tickets guy. You need two, right?

From Me: Yes Thank you so much.

Nov. 8, 2014.

From ME: Checking in on Clippers – Cavs tix for January. Has anyone asked about them? Thx – Z.

From AGENT: You’re #1 on the list. I got you covered big Z.

From Me: U Rule. Thx.

Dec. 9, 2014.

From ME: Hey brother – any news on those tickets? It’s getting close and I want to make sure I get in here before the office shuts down for holiday season.

From AGENT: Thank you for your email. Our offices have closed until January 7, 2015.

Jan 7. 2015.

From ME: My dude. Zach here – Hope your holidays were awesome… I was in Seattle with the fam. Checking in on Clippers – Cavs game for January 16. Wanted to see if you could email the tickets to me? Or maybe messenger them? Very excited – thank you sooo much.

From AGENT: Hey Z. Checking in with tickets guy again today.

When the Lakers lose, this is often what the Staples Center looks like…

Jan 8. 2015.

From ME: Any news?

From AGENT: Hang tight.

Jan. 12, 2015.

From ME: Hey man, sorry to bother you – but game is in 4 days – trying to figure out babysitter and all that stuff… Looking forward to seeing LeBron.

From AGENT: (No reply).

Jan 16, 2015.

From AGENT: Hey Z, so sorry bud but we had an overflow of ticket requests for this game… Apparently both teams are playing really well. Matthew Perry snapped up a pair this morning and Giuliana Rancic is top of the list for the other pair. Sorry bud. We’ll get you into a game. I know we have seats for the Lakers – Nuggets on February 10… Chace Crawford just turned them down.

In the world of celebrity, free stuff is king. Matthew Perry and his 500 million dollars does not need free basketball tickets… Plus, he’s sober, so all the free booze in the luxury box was going to be ignored anyway. Giuliana Rancic? Or DiPandi or whatever her name is? Are you kidding me? She makes fun of celebrity dresses for a living. She probably heard the word “Cavs” and thought it was a leg workout. And Lakers – Nuggets tickets? The Lakers are led by a guy who is famous for being Iggy Azaleia’s boyfriend. Kobe is out for the year. They’re not exactly a hot ticket. The point was, I was not considered successful enough to snag the Clippers tickets. I was looking at some washed up pretty boy from Gossip Girl named Chace Crawford’s rejects… Perry and Rancic were gonna be on their iphones in the suite the entire time and most of the so-called Hollywood celebrities who were going to the game probably think “Chris Paul” is a type of champagne.

Although Im a huge Matthew Perry fan, he doesnt party and look like this anymore…

WTF is this? Maybe a few hot dogs is exactly what she needs…

When I first moved to Los Angeles, the Lakers were all that mattered. They had Del Harris, a young Kobe, Van Exel was being name-checked in Jay-Z songs, Eddie Jones and huge NBA stoner Sam Perkins. (Who looked blazed in 99% of his games). My friends and I would drop $25.00 to sit in the nosebleed section of the Forum just to catch a fading glimpse of what the legendary teams of the 80’s left behind. They were likeable underdogs who fought hard and always battled. Then came Shaq. And Phil Jackson and Kobe became Kobe. Those were the last years I liked the Lakers. Kobe lost his appeal when he shaved his mini afro and faced his legal troubles. Still, going to games was fun because, hey – going to the games are always fun. Still, these last ten years I stopped rooting for them and began just appreciating all professional basketball in general.

Now, Los Angeles is all about the Clippers. A recent text from a buddy read: Lakers are for Fakers… I’m going to the Clips game. The abundance of Lakers flags that people used to display from outside of their car’s windows are long gone. The sea of purple and gold has been replaced by red, white and blue. And let me tell you, I have never seen anyone play pick-up basketball while wearing a Carlos Boozer jersey.

Still, the luxury box is indeed, luxurious. I emailed my agent back a few days later and accepted the Lakers – Nuggets tickets. At least I could see Arizona Wildcat-alum Jordan Hill and possibly watch a few Jeremy Lin up–and-unders. Plus, my brother is a huge hoops fan as well and neither of us are Matthew Perry – sober. Watching two out-of-the-playoff race teams loaf up and down the court over free hot dogs and Stella Artois isn’t a bad way to spend a Tuesday night.

I emailed my agent a week before the game to make sure he could send the tickets over.

Feb. 3, 2015

From ME: Hey man – excited for Lakers – Nugs game on Tuesday… Can you messenger the tickets or email them? Thx brother – Z

From AGENT: Yo, Z – Hey man… looking into this. Looks like Chace Crawford might want the tickets after all… but it depends on if we can get him seats on the floor or not.

From ME: You’re fired.

When it was all said and done, Chace Crawford ended up not going, so I snagged the tickets. The game was poorly attended and didn’t even get exciting until the 4^th quarter. Jack Nicholson wasn’t there. Neither was Leo. Or any other familiar celebrity face that we have all come to associate with the Lakers. Instead, it was my brother and myself, sitting amongst a bunch of 22-year-old agent assistants in the luxury suite, sipping Stella Artois and filling up the stat sheet with junk food.

Bieber texting and missing Kawhi Leonard dominating the 2014 NBA Finals last year.

I looked long and hard down at the floor as the game wound down. I was having the time of my life. I guess watching LeBron James would have been a lot more entertaining, but this was still a pretty awesome way to see a basketball game. As a sports lover, sometimes it doesn’t even matter who is playing. And after Swaggy P made a three-pointer and did the eye goggles gesture with his hands, I suddenly became a Lakers fan again for the first time in ten years.

And as I squinted hard at the row of folks seated on the floor, I believe I recognized a celebrity typing away into his iphone three seats down from the Lakers bench.

It was Chase Crawford.

Buy Zach’s newest album “Skywriting” on itunes NOW!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/skywriting/id910266624

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

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

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By Zach Selwyn

My wife and I once hired a hippie nanny named Sioux who hid little bags of weed for me around our house. I remember the day we interviewed her – she was about 19, naturally slender with long blonde hair and she was wearing a skirt that looked like it was stitched out of the AIDS quilt… She had on Birkenstocks. She smelled like lavender. She was gorgeous. My first thought was, “I would have totally dated this girl back in college.”

I would have totally dated this girl back in college.

When you’ve been married as long as my wife and I have, the best way to say you think somebody is attractive is to say that you would have dated ‘back in college.’
Of course, I told my wife this very fact.
“Well keep your hippie dick in your jorts,” she responded.

I laughed. I love my wife. Meanwhile, after a few conversations, I was sold on Sioux to become our nanny for our then five and two-year-old kids… but my wife wasn’t so into it.

“I don’t know – she seems flighty,” she remarked.

“Cmon, what’s the worst that can happen?” I asked. “She gets high and eats all of our ice cream?”

My wife agreed, mainly because we had a wedding that Saturday night and our other go-to nannies were already busy.

“If she fucks up, that’s on you,” she said.

She didn’t fuck up. At least that first night. In fact, when we came back from the wedding a little buzzed from the wine, we stayed up late with her and talked about the kids, how hard it was to meet guys in Los Angeles and eventually, she secretly told me that she hid a tiny bag of weed for me underneath the sage candle she had lit to ward off bad spirits on the coffee table. As she left, I thanked her and imagined that if she was my age in 1995, we would have been one of those hippie power couples that I was always jealous of at Phish concerts.

My 1995 hippie dream.

The second time Sioux babysat, I casually came downstairs wearing my old Grateful Dead 1992 Spring Tour shirt. She went ape shit. Told me it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen. I immediately felt like Phil from Modern Family, pretending that I didn’t even know I had the shirt on… even though I had been calculating the move since the week before. From the corner of my eye I saw my wife shaking her head while watching my pathetic attempt to connect with Sioux over a t-shirt.

“Nice shirt, babe,” she said.

“I guess I’ll go get ready,” I added before running upstairs to change.

When I came back downstairs, Sioux had prepared some food for the kids (all macrobiotic) and smiled one of those young hippie smiles at me – as if we were college sophomores peaking during a Run Like an Antelope solo. My wife smiled at me. I smiled at my wife. She smiled at Sioux. I kissed my kids. Sioux leaned in and hugged Wendy. They separated. The kids ate. My wife watched me as I leaned in and hugged Sioux. As I did, I stupidly whispered a single word into her ear…

“Candle?”

Sioux smiled. My wife looked confused. I brought myself out of this fantasy hippie love triangle and said, “OK, bath at 7:15 and bed by eight.”

My wife and I walked outside to catch our Lyft.

In our ride to the birthday party that night, my wife cleared her throat and calmly asked me exactly what “candle” meant.

I told her.

“Last time she babysat, Sioux left me a part of a joint underneath the candle on the coffee table and I smoked it.”

“Oh great, so she’s high around our kids?”

“Well, I mean… so what? Sometimes I’m high around our kids.”

“This is her last night babysitting,” my wife said.

I could understand her frustration. It wasn’t because Sioux was this macrame Goddess with rings on her fingers and bells on her shoes… but face it – if your nanny was sneaking joints around your two-year-old daughter, you might think about getting rid of her too.

Still, I argued that we had nothing to worry about and that by the time we returned home, we would be thrilled to find our kids in bed and that maybe we could even split the little bag of weed I was expecting to find underneath the sage candle on our coffee table.

Until we got back around 11:45 p.m.

As it turns out, Sioux had started a bath for the kids upstairs… and forgot that she began running it. She turned on the water and then came downstairs to get the kids and somehow got distracted… By what, nobody knows – food? A text? A documentary on YouTube about the benefits of Dr. Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar? Whatever the case, she suddenly remembered that the bath was on just as drops of water began seeping through our living room ceiling and landing on the floor. The puddle stain on the roof was large and substantial and we knew we were looking at some serious water damage and mold repair.

Sioux was in shambles.

Our ceiling

As she tried to explain how she forgot to turn off the water, we examined the damage and quickly lost the hippie buzz we had all generated earlier. I informed Sioux that we would pay her for her time, but that we fully expected her to be responsible for the damages once we had the roof inspected. She agreed and left, her head hung low, embarrassed and ashamed.

“OK, so she was probably high and forgot about the bath,” I said.

“Ya think?”

Stupidly, I checked beneath the candle for some weed.

There was nothing.

The damage came to over 1000 dollars. Sioux was broke and we felt bad charging her, so she offered to babysit for free until she could pay us back. Amazingly in Los Angeles, that’s only like, five nights of work…

However, my wife and I chose to not use her again.

The last I saw on Facebook she was living in Oregon with a Spanish guy named Pau.

Lucky bastard… He was living my hippie dream…

Preview an upcoming song from Zach’s new album!

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