Yes, You Heard Me, My Cousin Chris Farley

I was using "cousin" in a very loose (I almost said "relative" but thought that might be too much of a pun) sense. You see, my mother's sister Nora is married to Chris Farley's actual familial first cousin. Thus, though not by blood and many times removed, Chris Farley was indeed my cousin.

There are cultures that value family so much, that even if you're four times removed from both sides of the family and once removed from society at large, family is family, and family deserves respect, affection, and recognition. And no, family is not a one way street, and no, Chris Farley never actually got around to respecting/recognizing me as a member of his (far-removed) extended family, but I am confident that he would have gotten around to it at some point in the future if his future had not been so unexpectedly and unfortunately taken away from him. I like to think that Chris Farley would have liked the idea of having somebody like me claiming to be related to him.

So, to those few who have suggested that I am out of line with my particular portrait of my family tree, I say this: I am aware of just how far removed Chris Farley and I were from each other. But, I feel like I know him better than I know some of my more geographically (and mentally) distant cousins to whom I am actually blood-related (sadly). Or, to make a better point...I am often told that I share much in common with my great-grandfather, whom I never met and thus have nothing but family stories told through the ever-thickening haze of history, while I have documented (and often re-run on Comedy Central) footage of Cousin Chris (as I fondly refer to him). Should I just leave my great-grandfather out of my family tree because he is just a handful of obscure stories? Of course not!

So, why would I leave Cousin Chris out?

Music to Blog By:
Red Right Hand - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

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