"WHEN Chuck Norris does a push-up, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down."


"If it tastes like chicken, smells like chicken and looks like chicken, but Chuck Norris says it's beef - it's freaking beef."


"The best part of waking up is not Folger's in your cup, it is knowing that Chuck Norris hasn't killed you in your sleep."


Click here to go to 'The Encyclopedia of Chuck Norris Facts'


At Lovell's Records in Uptown Whittier, a hand-drawn poster outside the door features their employees' favorite Chuck Norris jokes. Leave it to an independent record store to be the convergence point for online pop culture phenomena. After 50 years, Lovell's jumped into the 21st century when its employees got bored of stapling music posters to its walls. They chose to "download" their own water-cooler moments from the Internet. They've gone where more and more are going - crossing cyberspace into Main Street.


In case you don't have a teenager in the house or aren't 22, let me explain. Chuck Norris, the martial arts expert, movie and TV actor ("Walker, Texas Ranger") and now, infomercial huckster ("The Total Gym") has attained pop icon status on the Internet. Jokes about him play off this small but muscular man's tough-guy image, employing a droll delivery of outrageous "facts" that are, well, outrageous even by Chuck Norris he-man standards.


Norris himself gave the "A-OK" to such publicity by commenting on the Internet buzz via his own official Web site.

Follow up:

Basically, the jokes feature Chuck Norris doing even more amazing feats than what he does to bad guys - usually kicking someone in the face. ("Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light and went back in time.")


Often, the jokes center on things kids like to do, like eat fast-food. ("Chuck Norris is the only person who ordered a Big Mac at Burger King and got one.")


Why am I telling you all this? Because it is in the interest of "net neutrality," whereby everything on the Internet travels as equal packages of data. The people at Google, Yahoo and AT&T may disagree and want a priority line. But the beauty of the Internet is its democracy. Everything - from a kid running a video on YouTube of he and his brother battling with light sabers, to a bunch of one-liners about an action hero from Torrance, to serious news about the war in Lebanon - is treated equally.


That kind of equality makes the Chuck Norris phenomenon more interesting. In the `40s, water-cooler moments came after office workers listened to serial dramas on the radio (i.e. "The Shadow"). TV's Golden Age prompted office workers to lament Elvis' gyrating hips on "Ed Sullivan." In the `70s and `80s, "Saturday Night Live" and "Seinfeld" in the early `90s, added words to the pop lexicon (Rob Schneider's "making copies," Al Piscopo's "Baseball is berry, berry good to me" and Billy Crystal's "Vro rook mah-vehlous" from SNL; "the soup Nazi" and "yada yada yada" from "Seinfeld.")


But those were crafted from media moguls in New York and Los Angeles. Today's new water-cooler moments are created by kids putting up jokes on Web sites or break-dancing videos on YouTube. And the jokes and the zany moments are just as funny, just as entertaining as the mass-media produced ones.


Chuck 'Facts' websites may be the first example of a personal medium being used to wrap us in a collective laugh. How did a de-humanizing medium - the thing blamed for separating us from clubs, social activities, society - bring us together?


Lin Humphrey, who has been teaching "Introduction to Folklore" at Citrus College for 35 years, says the human need to laugh supersedes all technological barriers.

"Twenty years ago people were a lot more communal. Now there is the cocooning phenomenon. Yet, we all know laughter is good for us. We are supposed to laugh as much as possible. So we will all try to laugh,"

she said.
How are computers and the Internet changing the way we tell each other funny stories?

"I think you are right, the Internet has taken the place of TV sitcoms and movies. It's kind of the same thing - but it is a change in technology,"

she said.


I'm a little uncomfortable with my theory of interchanging medium. Seems like the Internet is more like graffiti than television. It's urban, widespread, emanating from many points. It has junk, spam, pornography amid news, jokes and analysis.


It's it, as eBay would say.


Even the latest Chuck Norris jokes include the Internet ("If you Google `Chuck Norris gets his a-- kicked' you will get zero hits. It never happened."). And there's this one, already old, about TV: "It takes Chuck Norris 20 minutes to watch `60 Minutes."'


Careful, Chuck, the clock is ticking. By the time you download this and post it on your Web site, we could be moving on to the next Internet phenomenon. Ain't that a kick?


Source: Pasadena Star News