When the Boogeyman goes to sleep at night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
Chuck Norris has counted to infinity – twice.
There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.
I’ve loved reading these “Chuck Norris Facts” for years. It was pretty awesome when we actually got to meet the man in person recently when we photographed Norris and his lovely wife Gena for Houstonia magazine.
Part of the hook for the story was that Gena had recently fired up a full blown water bottling plant on their giant ranch property near Navasota to bottle water from the natural aquifer they found on their property. The plant is a state of the art facility and there is a charity component to their H2O endeavor. You can read more about it in the Houstonia story here.
Since we were there in sort of the middle of the afternoon on a sunlit partly cloudy day, we needed a big light and lots of power for the outdoor shots. We used a Profoto B-4 and a Plume Hexoval 180 for most of the outdoor shots.
Although we shot the bottling plant and did lots of still life shots of water bottles, the highlight for me was getting to make a cool environmental portrait of the former Walker Texas Ranger star and Gena on his awesome Texas ranch. We also shot in their horse stables, which had amazing light. Gena was a professional model, and the two of them together have a lifetime of experience in front of the camera and were just wonderful subjects to photograph. I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with two nicer, more accommodating people.
As we were loading the gear back into our vehicle, he came back out of the house and gave everyone in the crew a paperback copy of a Chuck Norris Facts book. I think he gets a big kick out of the cult hero status from all these “facts.”
Before we departed, Norris was telling us a story about going to Iraq to visit troops there. He was standing at the front of a long line of soldiers eager to meet him, shaking hands, posing for photos, signing autographs and such. When one of the soldiers (who was a particularly big strong guy) got to the front for his turn, the conversation went like this:
Soldier: “Ok, kick me in the chest!”
Chuck: “I’m not going to kick you in the chest…”
Soldier: “No, really, I want you to roundhouse kick me in the chest!”
Chuck: “Come on, I’m not going to kick you in the chest.”
The soldier wouldn’t let up, and was just dying to go back to the barracks and tell all his buddies that he survived a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the chest…..the line was starting to grumble from the delay.
Finally, Norris quickly grabbed the soldier, and in one quick motion the (at the time) 70 year old martial arts veteran spun him around backwards and put him in a choke hold and dropped the big guy to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
At this point all the other military guys standing in the autograph line, full grown men trained in combat, were yelling like little kids, “Put me in a choke hold too! Put me in a choke hold too!”
Of course….after hearing this story, what do you think I did?
