Ghomeshi goes Hollywood

Where’s Jian?

CBC Radio’s notorious sultan of swat last made contact (shurely shome mishtake!?—ed.) with the remnants of his adoring fan base on Oct. 29, in a cryptic FB statement that he didn’t “intend to discuss this matter any further with the media.”

Then he vanished.

He’s not been seen at his Beaches bachelor pad, nor at his usual Toronto hipster haunts, the Soho House or The Drake.

Rumour has it he scarpered for California, just ahead of the gathering shit storm.

In Los Angeles, Jian reportedly—and this is where our scenario gets speculative–made a bee-line for the home of a well-to-do member of the Ghomeshi clan.

Rumour has it he’s hiding out with his uncle, Siavash Ghomayshi, a 69-year-old Iranian-born musician, who lives in the San Fernando Valley.

According to his bio at www.siavashghomayshi.org, Siavash was a budding composer at the age of 12. He studied music at the Royal Society of Arts in London, where he “majored in pop music,” and earned a masters degree in “classical jazz.” (wat dat?!—ed.)

He returned to Iran when he was 25 and established himself as a successful composer. But, like Jian’s father, Frank, he left Iran with a suitcase of dough, just ahead of the Islamic revolution that installed Ayatollah Khomeini in place of the Shah.

Frank Ghomeshi died Oct. 2 and in the eulogy, Jian wrote that his father had been the eldest in a family of seven children. According to Jian (nosestretcher alert!—ed.), when Frank was 15, his father died and he took over the family business, helped his mother, took care of his siblings and put himself through university.

In the late seventies, Frank moved to Toronto, Siavash to LA, where he struggled to establish himself in the Persian language music biz singing “Parsipop,” which had been banned in Iran after the revolution.

Siavash found a niche market with the Iranian and Afghan diaspora in North American and Europe and he’s recorded some 24 albums since 1980.

These days he lives comfortably at 5784 Fairhaven Ave., in the LA area between Sherman Oaks and Thousand Oaks (thas his pile in the photo.)

Drop in! Say hello! Get Jian’s autograph!

Frank contacted Siavash via email re the whereabouts of his errant nephew, but as of press time this morning, we had no response.

Apropos of nothing, the Los Angeles Fetish Film Festival opens Nov. 14.