Rather than sceptical, cynical, I would prefer satirical or something.
 
[Q] Satirical.

But anyway, that's why I liked Mad Magazine, because it was... it was like crazy type of satire on the… on the sacred cows of the… of the day.  And so when my friends and I discovered it in high school, you know, we devoured every page, and… and was especially, you know, mad about Mad. We… and before that, as I said, I had the corny jokes, but my friend and I were… tended to be wise-cracking and… and not to take things too seriously. Although I said I was a machine, but I did also like to… like to laugh, and so… so when I’m writing for the paper, we always had sections about jokes, and we always had, you know, in our Yearbook we had… we had fun things in there that weren't expected. So I've carried that through, as you know, and many… there are lots of corny jokes in the indexes to my books now that… that people probably haven't discovered yet, but, you know, somebody will ask me, why do I have a reference to Bo Derek in the… in The TeXbook? And it turns out that just all the pages where…which are cited in the index for Bo Derek is where I used the number 10, you know.  So all the way through I've had this silly streak of some sort that means I don't take everything too seriously.