It's all relative

Every 3-4 months I receive an email from the good folks at 23 and Me. If you've signed up or had the courage to put your genetic material up to the test ("Please don't tell me I come from a line of serial killers or dentists") you have also received one of these.

I've spoken to friends who refused to do one of these DNA tests for fear of getting a surprise visit in the middle of the night. Or during a Game 7 of ANY playoff series.

"Dad?"

That was a possibility, but I never entertained that thought. Mostly, despite my misspent youth and sometimes reckless abandon, I was very careful in this arena. And we'll leave it at that.

Besides, despite the immense Siegel fortune, including "huge tracts of land", I'm not sure anyone would willingly admit to being part and parcel of my dysfunctional family. Though, as my brother often reminds me, "every family is dysfunctional."

However, and this may come as a surprise to you, I have discovered that a few people in the ad biz and I are distantly related. For discretionary purposes I won't name names, but when I contacted these 3rd and 4th far removed cousins, they wisely chose to remain far removed and responded with what could only be described as...

"Feh."

Not so with my 5th cousin David Esrati, who, blessed with a similar outsized concern for justice, is impossibly more political than me. David ran for the US congress and sadly fell short of beating Ohio's finest, Representative Mike Turner, a GOP assclown who other prototypical GOP assclowns aspire to be.

Most the relatives I stumble upon come from my father's working class family who are distinctively Ashkenazi. All hailing from Belarus, Germany, Poland, Lithuania and shitty grim Eastern European shtetls, where Jews did their best to avoid those who would beat them up, mock their beaver hats (come on, they are funny looking) or take their lunch money. 

A few years ago, I had contact with a pretty young blonde woman from London. We actually corresponded for a while. Naturally, I assumed we were connected via my mother's family who still reside in Glasgow. But it turns out, the picture was muddied when she told me she also had roots in Eastern Europe.

Isn't that a kick in the kilt?

Besides my immediate family, and Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits fame) and David Duchovney, there just aren't many of us Single Malt folk spiced generously with Hebraic Seasonings.

SFX: KNOCK, KNOCK

Excuse me, there's someone at the door.