Pop star Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl halftime song-and-dance routine got, umm, mixed reviews. The Scrapbook, though, watched the performance with rapt attention, and we have to say that to our eyes and ears Timberlake was simply stunning.
You may be inclined to discount our objectivity, though. In the interests of full disclosure, we alert readers to the fact, revealed here for the first time, that The Scrapbook is a cousin of the ex-Mouseketeer. To be precise, we are seventh cousins. To be even more precise, The Scrapbook is a seventh cousin once-removed of Justin Timberlake’s.
We only just learned of the relationship ourselves, thanks to an email alert from the online genealogy company Geni.com. By their expert reckoning, our great-great-great-great-grandfather is a brother to Timberlake’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
It’s clever marketing for the genealogy service, to be sure. But we looked up the stats and learned that we very probably have somewhere north of 100,000 seventh cousins at large in the world. Sure, one of them commanded a stage at the Super Bowl. Odds are good, though, that quite a few of our kin at that remove are scoundrels or worse.
The Scrapbook is reminded of the story, told to us years ago, of the professional genealogist hired to spend a day on archival research. He presents his flabbergasted client with a report on his family tree and a bill for $5,000. The client protests that the time and labor can’t possibly be worth more than $1,000. The genealogist agrees. But I now know a whole lot about your family, he says, and the rest of my fee is for keeping my mouth shut.
