Amusing excerpts from the
FAQ
Questions about what?
Anything. Cecil knows all. Naturally, since he does not want to put his readers to sleep, he does not tell all. (We leave that to movie stars.) He prefers to confine his attention to questions that are interesting and funny, or sometimes just interesting. However, stupid but funny also has a pretty good shot.
Isn't that what Ann Landers does?
No, no, no. Advice columnists just try to get you through the day. Cecil is trying to eradicate world ignorance. He deals strictly with factual questions. Questions you've always wanted to know the answers to. Questions like: What are the real lyrics to "Louie Louie"? When they execute a guy by lethal injection, do they swab off his arm first? How do the astronauts go to the bathroom in space?
We wanted to make that last one the title of one of the Straight Dope books, but Ballantine wouldn't go for it. They also wouldn't go for: "THE STRAIGHT DOPE - Third Book of Revelations." Said it was too long to fit on the computers. Sure. We say they were scared of the religious right.
Has there ever been a question Cecil WOULDN'T answer?
Well, let's see. He discussed the calorie content of sperm. That was pretty out there. He also dealt in a grave and educational manner with the issue of why fecal matter is brown. Actually the question didn't say "fecal matter." But we didn't want to get termed (terminated, for you newbies) by the AOL RoboCensors, which is where we first posted this FAQ.
Then there was the matter of the gerbils. And placenta stew. No question, we are definitely advancing the frontiers of civic discourse.
But you asked if there was ever a question Cecil refused to answer on grounds other than that it was inane. Can't think of one, but we'll say this: if you ever come up with a question that Cecil won't touch, you'd better turn yourself in to the police.
Did Cecil have a vast army of assistants to help him with his research?
No. On occasion he called his brother-in-law. He has also had the assistance of an editor, generally a feckless youth, plus an illustrator. For many years now the illustrator has been Slug Signorino, a legend in his own right. Someday we are going to write about Slug, too. We'd do it now, except the court locked up the psychiatric notes.
About those editors. The first was Mike Lenehan. Mike was not feckless. Mike had fecks to beat the band. It may truthfully be said that Mike was something of a father figure to Cecil, who was then of tender years himself. Mike took the young genius under his wing, nurtured his gift, and made him what he is today. Often Mike, who is now executive editor of the Chicago Reader, looks back and thinks: Lord, this is all my fault.
Even then, you see, Cecil was a handful. In print this evidenced itself as a certain attitude with regard to readers. Our favorite comment remains, "If ignorance were cornflakes, you'd be General Mills." Or: "I'm going to explain this as well as I can, given the limits of my space and your attention span." But Cecil also took it out on his editor, so much so that after three years Lenehan bailed. The next editor was Dave Kehr. Dave hung in there for two years. At last, broken in spirit, he took to reviewing movies and wound up writing for the New York Daily News. It was tragic.
The management at the Chicago Reader huddled. This Cecil, they said, he's brilliant, but his insufferable personality is more than any normal person should be asked to bear. The only solution is to assign him an editor who does not have any sense of self to start with.
This explains Ed Zotti. He started off slow and it's been downhill from there. But since 1978 he's kept Cecil, if not happy, at least constructively pissed, cranking out columns once a week. Better that than letter bombs.
Are the questions in the column real?
Of course they're real. You think we could make this stuff up?