As a full-on girl geek, I was, of course, deeply saddened by Steve Jobs’ untimely passing this week. I’ve been using Apple computers since 1989 (fer real!) and bought my first very own machine (a Mac Plus) back in 1991, which cost me $999, USED! (I was already sort of a grown up back then with a job and everything). I traced Steve’s career from those early days, through the years I actually flew my sorry ass out to San Francisco to attend MacWorld conferences (whee!!! geeky!), through the period when he was actually kicked out of Apple and replaced with a Pepsi guy, and then another guy, to when he was brought back in and, basically, saved the company and the world. He was always one of my geeky hero/icons, and I actually had no idea that these days, everyone knew who he was (yes, we all use Apple products nowadays but I didn’t realize so many of us knew all about their CEO as well).
But in the wake of his death, I’ve been learning all sorts of things about Steve that I never knew before (I guess I fail as a fangirl). And in researching them, I have discovered something else: Steve Jobs is actually related to Lisa Simpson! Here’s how I got there:
1. Steve Jobs was adopted. His biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian immigrant to the US and political science professor, and his biological mother, Joanne Schieble, was a graduate student According to Jandal, Schieble’s “tyrant” father refused to allow his daughter to marry a Syrian, and so the baby was given up for adoption.
(above: Abdulfattah Jandali, Steve Jobs’ biological father)
2. Ten months after Steve was born, Sheible’s father died, and so Jandali and Shieble married.Ttogether, they had another child, a girl: Mona. Five years later, Sheible and Jandali divorced, and Sheible remarried a man named Simpson. Mona took her step-father’s name, and later, wrote a best selling book: Anywhere but Here. Thus, Mona and Steve are full biological brother and sister. They did meet later in life and became friends.
(above: Mona Simpson, Steve Jobs’ biological sister, and cover of her book, “Anywhere but Here”)
3. Mona Simpson married television writer and producr Richard Appel (strange -right I mean, Appel/Apple?) Stranger still is that Appel was a writer for The Simpsons,” and, in an episode titled “Homer’s Mother,” he used his wife’s name for Homer’s mom: Mona Simpson.
(above: Mona Simpson with her son, Homer)
4. And, so there you have it. Steve Jobs is actually Lisa Simpson’s grand-uncle, since he is the brother of her grandmother, Mona Simpson.
(above: Grandmother Mona Simpson with granddaughter Lisa.)
But after all, it makes sense – Lisa displays all the geekery and smarts that would suggest she shares some genes with Jobs.
Also: do you know what the very first Apple computer was called? LISA! (actually, that comes with it’s own scandal).
(Above: Apple’s LISA Computer)
Still, I’m not sure Lisa realized any of that when she went to visit “Mapple” headquarters to speak to Steve “Mobs” in this clip here.
