A Mockable Review: The Last Stand of Chuck Norris

From time to time here at mockable, we review stuff.  If the guy that owns all these websites would let me have my way, we would review stuff all the time.  The good reviews would go on suggestaholic and the bad reviews would go on mockable.  Of course, the guy that owns all these websites is signing copies of his new book and hanging out with the cast of Fantastic Mr. Fox at the moment.  My ideas for internet business success are probably somewhere right below the official rules of naked male curling on his list of priorities at the moment.  However, since I have the login and password to this site, I am going to talk a bit about a fine piece of literature that I recently came across.

See, first there are pieces of fine literature out there.  This is the stuff that you had to read between the ages of 14 and 24 (and beyond if you got into that shit) in order to make you a well-rounded individual.

Then there is literature that people who think highly of themselves have deemed to be fine. These are books favored by the skinny-jean-white-belt hipsters who either were fortunate enough to get a job at the bookstore or who just live there for free. They are similar to record store snobs, except they know how to read.

Finally, there are fine pieces of literature. The kind of stuff that doesn’t necessarily have redeeming quality as a piece of literature per se, but something that is well put-together and serves a utilitarian purpose.  The Last Stand of Chuck Norris is such a piece of literature. You can’t sit down and read it like a novel (I mean, you can…but it wouldn’t be very fun) and you probably shouldn’t carry it with you and whip it out whenever you need a handy one-liner…it is, however, especially useful when you are sitting around drinking with friends and you feel the need to make reference to Chuck Norris’ penis.

The Last Stand of Chuck Norris is the fourth effort of this kind by Ian Spector, the Brown University Graduate who has established himself as the gold standard of parody Chuck Norris facts.  I have a tremendous amount of respect for Spector because he has effectively navigated the personal life path of academic and business success – and he remains able to throw down a better than average dick joke when the need presents itself.  His website (4q.cc) and his books: The Truth About Chuck Norris (2007), Chuck Norris vs. Mr. T. (2008), Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped (2010) and now The Last Stand of Chuck Norris (2011) represent what appears to be the largest body of work surrounding the oversized hat-wearing actor, martial artist and schill for crappy exercise equipment that the world has ever seen.  I am relatively confident that by the time the last run of Spector’s Chuck Norris series is printed that there will be over a million of these things in existence. In fact, I think I saw it on one college’s list of “dorm room necessities”, right below the $30 microwave and above the complete series of Family Guy.

As far as the overall strength of the book is concerned, it sells for $13.00 and contains 400 “facts” in a sort of bullet-point format. That’s $.0325 per fact.  You’ll probably want to remember that when you are enduring some of the crappier ones.  A couple of them are cringe-worthy bad.  Some of them actually made me laugh out loud.  I personally hated the “facts” that made reference to Chuck Norris’ actual political beliefs.   I don’t need to know anything about the actual Chuck Norris.  I want to laugh at the larger than life parody of himself that Chuck Norris has become.  For the most part, this book accomplishes this goal with room to spare.

I was once in a very large room with General David Petraeus. I was the only man in the room who was not either 1) in uniform or 2) wearing a dark jacket and I was less than 20 yards away from the man.  I had on a white oxford and a tie, but I stuck out like a giant zit on a European supermodel’s forehead.  We’ll talk more about this next time I feel like busting out a self-mock – but the point is that I was in a room with General David Patraeus.

He was presenting important metals to brave people who had done important and brave shit.  Despite being the only retard that didn’t own a jacket, I felt both proud and humbled to be in the same room.  Once all the metals had been presented, do you know what General Petraeus did?  He busted out a list of Chuck Norris jokes…some of them written by Ian Spector.

Yes, the jokes are silly and sophomoric. Some of them are fucking terrible. And no, they aren’t going to turn literature on its ear or do a lot to advance the human condition.  However, Ian Spector has played a leading role in creating something fun that we can all get a relatively inexpensive laugh out – four-star generals and frat boys alike.