It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … Chuck Norris, Internet hero

Published 9:00 pm Friday, April 28, 2006

What’s Chuck Norris been up to since he and CBS shut down “Walker, Texas Ranger” in 2001? Apart from those Total Gym infomercials, that is.

The laconic, lethal-limbed action star has in fact undergone an improbable metamorphosis. The kick-meister has turned into a punch line.

As in: Chuck Norris doesn’t shave … he stares at his beard in the mirror and the hair jumps off his face in fear.

And: Chuck Norris can count to infinity.

And: As a baby, Chuck Norris could fit the square pegs in the circular holes.

“Facts” about Norris’ awesome prowess are almost as ubiquitous on the Internet these days as porn sites (and occasionally just as X-rated). In the great cyberspace incubator, Norris has become, at 65, a folkloric figure like Pecos Bill, who legendarily rode a tornado using a rattlesnake for a whip, and Paul Bunyan, who is said to have dredged out the five Great Lakes while rassling with his gargantuan blue ox, Babe.

Norris’ lionizers, of course, would tell you that their man’s man Chuck would have roundhouse-kicked Bunyan into Saskatchewan and ground Babe up for a Happy Meal. In the world of Norris-isms, excess in the name of exaggeration is a virtue.

The ascension of Norris into the realm of myth and legend didn’t happen by accident. Not totally, anyway. The phenomenon was nudged into existence by Ian Spector, an 18-year-old Brown University student.

Last April, Spector created a tongue-in-cheek “fact” site centered on Vin Diesel, another macho star who’s better known for doing damage than dialogue. He said there’d been a lot of joking about the “bizarre nature” of Diesel’s movie “The Pacifier,” which cast him as a Navy SEAL turned nanny. Spector wanted to create a site where “anyone could view or submit” comments.

“After a month or so, the novelty began to wear off,” said Spector, who is majoring in computational biology for the moment but hasn’t ruled out neuroscience. “So I, like, put up a poll to see who the next one should be about. There were about 12 people on my list. Chuck Norris wasn’t there at all. But I got a lot of e-mails saying, ‘Put on Chuck Norris, put on Chuck Norris.’ So I did, and he won by a landslide.”

The site Spector launched – www.4q.cc/chuck – didn’t take off immediately, but word got around. And around. And around. And now, in the wake of stories in major newspapers and college dailies and Conan O’Brien’s regular late-night spoofing of Norris’ four-square image, the site has not only inspired dozens of similar sites, but has also attracted a staggering 100 million hits itself.

Spector is hard-pressed to explain the Chuck Norris phenomenon. He noted that the high school and college students who compose the vast majority of the various sites’ visitors barely know about “Walker, Texas Ranger,” much less Norris’ 1970s and ’80s movies (“The Octagon,” “Missing in Action,” “Invasion U.S.A.”) or his background as a martial-arts champion.

Spector suspects their vague understanding of Norris’ history actually facilitates the game, freeing them to project the wildest notions onto his image of confidence and invincibility.

Norris’ publicist, Jeff Duclos, can’t quite explain it, either. He pointed to the consistency of his client’s persona – “kind of a John Wayne thing, very classical, an archetype of the male heroic image” – and the near-unavoidable presence of “Walker” reruns on the USA Network and the Hallmark Channel. And he gives a lot of credit to “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” where Norris acknowledged the frequent ribbing with a guest appearance in which he engaged the host in mock combat.

But Duclos doesn’t believe any one factor can be cited. Rather, it’s a convergence. “The interesting thing about it to me is, it’s completely organic,” he said. “It wasn’t manufactured or created. It just emerged. There’s well over 8,000 of these things (Norris-isms) that have been contributed. And it’s not just one site, it’s dozens.

“And then these lists of the ‘most popular’ or whatever get e-mail-blasted across everywhere. I think it’s just the technology revolution in action, people creating their own form of entertainment. It’s really amazing when you think about it.”

Duclos said Norris initially didn’t know what to make of the sometimes “out there” factoids about him but has come to find them flattering – enough so to post a list of his favorites on his official Web site.

Duclos is thrilled that the “facts” have afforded his client a new audience and new opportunities. Not a bad development when Norris, far from retired, has a three-book deal for “Justice Riders” Western novels; a team martial-arts project, the World Combat League; and his charitable foundation, Kickstart. Nor is he done making movies.

Spector, for his part, figures he’s “on the 14th minute of my 15 minutes of fame,” and he’s OK with that. Only recently turned 18, he’s started a worldwide phenomenon, been written about in newspapers, done radio and TV talk shows, even met the man himself (and pronounces him “a good sport”).

It probably doesn’t matter now anyway. The wheels are in motion. The universe has turned. Chuck Norris actually may be as unstoppable now as his legend-stokers would have it. Maybe he was all along. Maybe this isn’t accidental. Maybe this is the ultimate fact about him:

Chuck Norris is the Internet.