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

Three Great 80’s LA Movies With “Girl” In The Title

Modern Girls Goth Bar

Modern Girls

With Daphne Zuniga, Virginia Madsen, Depeche Mode and Jesus and Mary Chain on the soundtrack, a great opening scene at Bullock’s on Wilshire, great shots of Melrose when it was skeevy AF, a dramatic scene at the Mulholland fountain on Riverside, a great goth bar scene, and a great role for my friend Rick Overton as a British tour manager. There’s a Toni Basil song on the soundtrack, a Hamlet reference, and a joke about The Graduate’s “Plastics.”

Jeff Goldblum

Earth Girls Are Easy

With Geena Davis and HOT JEFF GOLDBLUM HOLY SHIT, the very funny Julie Brown, ANGELYNE!, Michael Mckean, and Jesus and Mary Chain and Depeche Mode on the soundtrack. NILE ROGERS soundtrack! There’s a Dennis Quaid song on the soundtrack! Small role for Rick Overton. Deeply stupid, but not as bad as you’d think (hot Jeff Goldblum.) You find out that if you shave an alien Jeff Goldblum, he becomes very hot.

Valley Girls

Valley Girl

With a hot ass baby Nick Cage, the Plimsouls, scenes shot in what is now the Viper Room, and songs by the Sparks and Josie Cotton. A movie about punks who listen exclusively to New Wave! A movie that was sued by Frank Zappa! Two ladies who were later in Real Genius! Directed by Martha Coolidge, who pulled a MEGA-HIT on a budget of 300K! She was also told that she HAD to have four shots of bare breasts in the film, which she agreed to, but there was no indication of how long the shots had to be, so they are blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em boobs. There is also a Toni Basil song on the soundtrack and a reference to the Graduates’ “Plastics.” No Hamlet, though!