Chuck It All

On Friday, when a breaking news alert from the Internet informed me that the martial arts actor Chuck Norris had just died, I hit command -T, went to Bluesky, and jubilantly typed out:

“Chuck Norris can die at will!”

My finger moved toward the return key, hovered over the button, and ….

… I didn’t send it out. Some lingering simulacrum of honor and decency — some surviving shred of propriety still clinging to my scabrous soul — persuaded me that there if there is such a thing as “too soon,” surely thirty seconds qualifies.

But almost 24 hours have now passed, and I figure Chuck — the embodiment of supermanliness and the subject of an entire affectionate canon of Chuck Norris Facts jokes — would be too far above the fray, above such epicene pettiness, to object. He would simply squint at me with that steely implacability, and stride away to perform testosteronic deeds the likes of which mortal men could never conceive.

So. Today The Gene Pool revisits yesteryear, when the Chuck Norris meme abounded. Specifically, here are a bunch of winners and inkers from the 2008 “Chuck Norris can…” jokes in The Style Invitational.

Chuck Norris does not buy hurricane insurance. Hurricanes buy Chuck Norris insurance. (Seth Brown)

Chuck Norris sneezes with his eyes open. (Michele Uhler)

Steel is made of Chuck Norris’s bones. (Thomas Hansen)

Chuck Norris doesn’t need to bathe. He just breaks your nose so you can’t smell. (Robert Gallagher)

Chuck Norris doesn’t hit the snooze alarm — time stops until Chuck Norris is ready to get up. (Rick Haynes)

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas until Chuck Norris tells it to leave. (Christopher Lamora)

Chuck Norris doesn’t surf the Internet — he walks on it. (Paul VerNooy)

Q: How many Chuck Norrises does it take to change a light bulb? A: Trick question — there is only one Chuck Norris. (Brendan Beary)

Chuck Norris can clap with one finger. (Art Grinath)

Chuck Norris auditioned for the circus by stuffing a dozen Volkswagens into a clown. (Kevin Dopart)

Chuck Norris does not obey the law of gravity. He humors it. (Jeff Brechlin)

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Good.

I would also like to mourn the passing of another man who, for better or worse, made me what I am today.

Lewis Diuguid was a brilliant, courtly, editor and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post back in the day. In 1995, when I was editing the Sunday Style section of The Post, Lew submitted an essay to me that I published almost immediately and largely without editing, because it charmed me. Here it is.

With this story, Lew acquainted me with the term “aptonym,” that literary curiosity in which a person's name is peculiarly well-suited to their occupation, character, or actions. Lew had devoted half the essay to the aptonym; the other half belonged to the palindrome, which Lew’s unusual last name happened to be.

After I published his essay I asked Lew if he minded if I appropriated the aptonym concept and took it to obnoxious heights (or lows), and made it an indelible part of part of my oeuvre. With characteristic graciousness, he acceded.

Over the succeeding years, I became universally acknowledged as the world’s preeminent, and most annoying, curator of the aptonym. I also steadfastly kept Lew’s “aptonym” formulation, rejecting a similar term: “aptronym,” said to have been coined by the famous editor Franklin P. Adams by scrambling the first three letters in “patronym.” That’s dandy , Frank, but adding an unnecessary letter was inane — in the field of aptonymetronics, concision is crucial. There is also an older formulation called euonym, which means roughly the same thing. I reject that because of the atrocious “euo.” Eww. I’m going with Lew.

Lew wrote with grace and voice and, mostly, a twinkle. In the story I published, he says of his own name that perhaps it wasn’t merely a palindrome, but also an aptonym. Here is how he put it:

“My name is pronounced, too loosely, "Do Good." Modesty prohibits my claiming aptonymetry. I shall leave that for others less worthy.”

Lew died this week at 90.

Farewell, old friend. Yeah, you done good.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Pool:

Here are five Hall of Fame level aptonyms I identified and/or popularized.

• Les McBurney, famous firefighter

• Andy Dick, famous dick

• Jeffrey Undercoffer, undercover Secret Service agent

• Wesley Dingus, mayor accused of sniffing girls’ underwear

• Harry Beaver, gynecologist

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