Here's a true fact about Chuck Norris facts: Their bearded namesake doesn't really get them. And here's another one: He's okay with that.
"Some are funny. Some are pretty far out," Norris said in a recent post on his Website. "Being more of a student of the Wild West than the wide world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it."
"[But] I neither take offense nor take these things too seriously."
To the uninitiated, Chuck Norris facts are statements about the iconic, kung-fu fighting action star that are very likely not at all factual--i.e., "Chuck Norris ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one,"--but which sound right because Norris is, after all, an iconic, kung-fu fighting action star who willed Walker, Texas Ranger to live for nine prime-time seasons.
According to the actor's publicist, Jeff Duclos, Norris' favorite Chuck Norris fact is the one about the Boogeyman: "When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris."
According to the Random Chuck Norris Fact Generator (www.4q.cc/chuck/), the people's most popular Chuck Norris fact is the poetically stoic "Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried."
"Ultimately," Duclos said, "it's very flattering."
The Random Chuck Norris Fact Generator, a descendant of the Random Vin Diesel Fact Generator (www.4q.cc/vin/), and a precursor of the Random Mr. T Fact Generator (www.4q.cc/t/), has been serving up "Paul Bunyanesque exaggerations" of Norris' powers, as the Washington Post put it, since last summer.
Starting in November, the site became "exponentially popular," mushrooming from 10 million hits to 37 million hits today, according to Ian Spector, who oversees the fact generating empire with the help of the coder known as "Toad King," and the two NASA employees whose earth-bound interests include a certain former A-Team star.
Spector doesn't really know why the Norris facts took off, drawing much attention from bloggers and emailers.
"I told maybe 10 people about the site," Spector said.
Spector can't even really say why Norris, whose signature movie hits (Missing in Action, Invasion U.S.A., A Force of One) predate the 17-year-old Brown University freshman, became the subject of the Random Chuck Norris Fact Generator, except to explain that when his site asked users which star they wanted to see get the Vin Diesel treatment (Christopher Walken? Samuel L. Jackson? Lindsay Lohan?), Norris outpolled all comers.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Norris, 65, was cowriting a novel. When he hit the road to promote The Justice Riders, as well as his new tough-guy venture, the World Combat League, he found himself faced with the same question: "Everybody wants to know [about the facts]," Duclos said. "It always comes up."
By New Year's, the Post was weighing in on the phenomenon. Then, late last week, Norris weighed in on the subject himself.
"It's quite surprising," Norris wrote on his Website.
Spector, meanwhile, wasn't surprised that Norris opted not to go Delta Force on his computational biology-studying student body. "Had he or the other people on [Norris'] site been upset," he said, "I think I would have heard from them sooner."
Spector almost came face-to-feed with Norris last Monday, when both were booked as guests on CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. Norris was in the main studio; Spector, wired up to appear via live remote. But as bad timing would have it, Spector's segment got cut. The camera never cut to him; the virtual confab never happened.
Said a non-embittered Spector: "It was an interesting experience."
While the Web hits keep coming, Spector is already looking ahead--to a new site, and maybe to a new subject.
Random Steven Seagal facts, anyone?