Moon Zappa
| Moon Zappa | |
|---|---|
 Moon Zappa, 1988 |
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| Born | Moon Unit Zappa 28 September 1967 New York City, United States |
| Spouse | Paul Doucette (June 2002) |
Moon Unit Zappa (born September 28, 1967) is an American actress, musician, and author. She goes by the name Moon Zappa; "Unit" is her middle name.
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[edit] Personal life
Zappa was born in New York City, the eldest child of Gail Zappa, who worked in business, and musician Frank Zappa.[1] She has three younger siblings, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva. Zappa's father was of Sicilian, Greek-Arab and French ancestry and her mother was of Danish, French, Irish and Portuguese ancestry.[2] Moon attended Oakwood School in North Hollywood, California. She married Matchbox Twenty drummer and guitarist, Paul Doucette, in June 2002. They have one child, Mathilda Plum Doucette, born December 21, 2004.
[edit] Career
Apart from the novelty of her and her siblings' names, she first came to public attention in 1982, at the age of fourteen, as a vocalist on her father's Top 40 hit single "Valley Girl". The song featured Moon Zappa delivering a monologue in 'val-speak', a collection of slang terms popular in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. In the mid-80s, Moon and her brother Dweezil were frequent guest VJs on MTV. Next to "Dancin' Fool", "Valley Girl" was Frank Zappa's biggest hit in the United States, and popularized phrases such as "grody to the max" and "gag me with a spoon". The song appeared on Zappa's 1982 album Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch. She later made another recording titled "My Mother Is a Space Cadet", with guitar accompaniment by her brother Dweezil. She also guest-starred on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show as Marylin.
As an adult she has worked as a stand-up comic, magazine writer, and actress in the films National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985), Spirit of '76 and the television sitcom Normal Life. She appeared as a burka-clad Muslim woman in one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, as Ted Mosby's cousin Stacy in an episode of How I Met Your Mother and on an episode ("Pampered to a Pulp") of Roseanne.[3] She worked as a VJ on VH-1 in the mid-late 1990s.[citation needed] She also appeared on Rock & Roll Jeopardy!, losing to Dave Mustaine and George Clinton.
She is the author of the novel America, the Beautiful, published in 2001,[4] and articles in major periodicals.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Moon Unit Zappa Biography (1967-), Filmreference.com
- ^ Miles, Barry (2004). Zappa. Grove Press. pp. 124. ISBN 9780802117830. http://books.google.com/?id=2pPgG9AXjN4C&printsec=frontcover.
- ^ "Pampered to a Pulp" at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Zappa, Moon Unit. America the Beautiful: A Novel. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 2001. ISBN 9780743213837
- ^ Zappa, Moon Unit (2001-11-18). "One Street at a Time; Positively Third Street". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B03E6D91338F93BA25752C1A9679C8B63. Retrieved 2008-11-04.
[edit] External links
- Moon Zappa's Website
- Moon Unit Zappa on NNDB
- Moon Zappa at the Internet Movie Database
- 1967 births
- American people of Italian descent
- American people of Arab descent
- American people of Greek descent
- American people of Portuguese descent
- American film actors
- American television actors
- American vegetarians
- American writers
- Frank Zappa
- Living people
- People from New York City
- People from the Greater Los Angeles Area
