Simon LeBon’s Astonishing DNA Test

My daughter, Saffron, gave me a genetics kit for my birthday this year, and I know it’s a bit cheesy but in the tradition of middle aged dads everywhere, I’ve been working up the old family tree. 

 I’m pleased to have found a great many writers and poets in my bloodline!

The First LeBon

  The first LeBon arrived in London in the big Huguenot emigration of the 1590’s, and published the Elizabethan period poem below:

Thou has se’en me– stood’st at the corner of thy street

And O!  A fire makes for flashes on thy stone sill

To be solitary pleases you not

So thou wouldst seek out pleasure

And sooth- thou would knows’t wherefore and whyfore 

Nay, pray not for me today

Prithee, pray for me on the morrow–  Francois LeBon

American LeBon

Next, I found an American whose family settled in Louisiana.  We have a great-great grandfather in common.  He loved the SF beat poetry scene so much he moved out there in 1953. 

Antoine LeBon wrote the following,  published in a zine called Street Poems in 1957:

I finally bugged out yesterday

Couldn’t peep my hillside pad

Maybe I’ll head there in a year

Maybe I won’t

I can feel you diggin’ on me, cat, day and night

I’m hep to it, the art and incantations

I dig it, it’s a gas

There’s a dream, a fantasy maybe

Stringing down this road we call our home

There’s shards of glass everywhere

It cuts me, cuts me deep, and finally I say 

Hey man, hip me to it

What do I gotta know? 

Japanese LeBon

Perhaps strangest of all is a British girl whose family moved to Japan in the 30’s, and who wrote pretty little haiku like this one, this is Belleanne LeBon from her school poetry journal:

Cherry blossom lips

Smear in a line as she falls

Into blue water

Amazing stuff.  I showed it to Yasmin and said, look, babe, we’ve always been poets and she said, love, you’re not a poet, you’re just a clotheshorse who got lucky.

Well, I’ll add more if I find more!

‘Til then- Simon

The Truth Behind Bowie’s “A Prettiest Star”

While doing important Bowie-based research around his birthday, I read that he had written The Prettiest Star as part of his marriage proposal for Angela, and played it to her over the phone.

Since she is of Cypriot heritage, he wrote the song as a hassapiko, a Greek folk dance. My friend Johnny tested it and found that it could be danced that way, right out of the box. Because of the “wop wop” in the background, it had always sounded like a kind of cheesy doo-wop to me.

This was charming, because later in life he was dismissive of her relationship and called it primarily business, but this trivia made me feel like there was a moment where he really loved her, even if he forgot that later.

He released it as a single and it tanked, at 800 copies sold. So did the marriage. Ah well.

Chivo!

virginia jones photographed by chivo ballerina

virginia jones photographed by chivo ballerina

I was in a beer ad shot by Chivo, the three-time Oscar winner whose nickname means “The Goat”.

I play a plus sized, sad ballerina in a vintage playroom, shot in the beautiful Palace Theatre on Broadway.  The photos he posted on Instagram are lovely and paintinglike and I thought I’d put them here.

Michael Clark, Not The Guy From Green Mile

I was extra disconcerted by the tweetplosion on the death of Michael Clarke Duncan because I thought it was Michael Clark, the Scottish modern dancer/choreographer who worked with The Fall, Charles Atlas, Peter Greenaway, Laibach, and Leigh Bowery, and I was not aware that he was that famous. No, it’s the big dude from Green Mile. That makes more sense. This has been a free peek inside my head.

Also, thank God that Michael Clark is still around being weird!

Edit: In later years, I met a British dancer who had an affair with Michael Clark and said he was a real arsehole!

Sock It To Me!

This Spring, come time-travel to a mutant 60’s variety show, SOCK IT TO ME, where sketch, stand-up, dance, and aerial artistry collide!

Featuring local comedy favorites Virginia Jones and Gabe Dinger! Famous Mysterious Actor troupe members Josh Fisher and Wally Fessler! Curious Comedy founders Bob Ladewig and Stacey Hallal! Comic actors Scott Rogers and Katie Behrens! With dance and aerials from Daniela Steiner, Kyoko Uchida, Stephanie Seaman and Stephanie Cordell!

CHUBBER ATTACK!


I want you to know about the premiere of
Portland’s first Heavy Metal Musical, Chariots of Rubber, written by
Jeffrey Wonderful and “Private” Mike Albano. It has been in
rehearsals for over a year, and finally, this strange fruit ripens!
It is Grease meets Hedwig meets West Side Story meets Rocky Horror
meets Julian Sand’s Warlock, and it is fantastic.I play Gas Station Attendant #2, a drug-addled lesbian, in a a heavy
metal musical about love, loss and demolition derby in Coos Bay, OR.
I will be singing, dancing, “acting”, and wearing a wig. There will be smoke, cars, carnage, singing, a rock band, talking nipples, sign
language, and blood. Also, you know how colorblind casting was a big deal in modern theatre? This show has genderblind casting!
The premiere is Thursday, July 23rd at 10:15 at Theater, Theatre on
Belmont for $15.
Chariots of Rubber
will run through the weekend (Friday the 24th and Saturday the 25th) and again Aug 13/14/15. You can cash-check-paypal them! Write me
write me write me at badinia@badinia.com! 100 people a night will witness this phenomenon,
and everyone else will just have to gnash their little teeth!

Mercury reviews it here as “subtlety-free theatre.” Har!

www.chariotsofrubber.com is up, courtesy of the wonderful Pete Ellison.

SECRET EXTRA POSTSCRIPT:

They say that the rougher the dress rehearsal, the better the show- well, we had a lead actor break his NOSE. Beat that! We might hypmotize ’em!