Pit the Texas Ranger known as Walker against B.A. Baracus and who wins? Ian Spector, author of CHUCK NORRIS VS. MR. T: 400 FACTS ABOUT THE BADDEST DUDES IN THE HISTORY OF EVER — that’s who. It’s the sequel, of course, to the bestselling THE TRUTH ABOUT CHUCK NORRIS: 400 FACTS ABOUT THE WORLD’S GREATEST HUMAN, culled from the Internet sensation known as the Chuck Norris Fact Generator.
Like the site, the book works best in small doses — like trip-to-the-toilet small. Read any page and you get the joke. Read any two pages and the joke starts wearing thin. At least that’s the case this time around, with too many hinging on Norris’ roundhouse kicks, Mr. T’s role in ROCKY III or either’s sexual or defecation ability for a punchline.
That’s not to say there aren’t some damn funny ones. There are, including:
• “Chuck Norris got in touch with his feminine side, and promptly got her pregnant.”
• “Mr. T stays in shape by doing one hundred pull-ups a day. With his wiener.”
• “Mr. T once made a paraplegic run for his life.”
But some are just plain leaden, while others are way convoluted, requiring several sentences to say what could said in one. When you’re having to go that far to give the gag a little more life, perhaps the sell-by date has passed. I will say that I admire Spector’s apparent “fuck you” attitude to Norris by being extra-hard on him this time around, perhaps as payback for the lawsuit the actor brought against him over the first book. —Rod Lott
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in the history of ever… that’s fuggin catchy.