Chuck goes from obscurity to eternity in just months

Suddenly, and without warning, the unthinkable has happened.

Chuck is the new Jacob.

It isn't official yet, but judging by the painful rash of current movies and TV shows that feature a character named Chuck, my first name is destined to replace Jacob as the most popular boy's name in America.

Those of us whose parents named us Charles and then nicknamed us Chuck have had to put up with only a few occasional smears and blots over the years.

There was Charles Manson, the helter-skelter killer from California affectionately known as Chuck by prison guards;

Then came the delectable Chuck E. Cheese, a gambler's preparatory college for our children that masquerades as a strip mall carnival and pizzeria;

Chuck Schumer, the U.S. senator from New York who thinks that "our troops are doing nothing but causing problems" in Iraq;

Charlie Weis, the heaviest, lightest-weight football coach in the history of Notre Dame University;

Chuck Barris, the game show guru who now claims he was a CIA hit man with 100 kills;

The "Chucky" movies that feature a homicidal doll intent on scaring you until you stop breathing;

And Two-buck Chuck, the nauseating-but-affordable "wine."

I'm not including Charlie Brown on the list. In the old Peanuts cartoons, I never did figure out whether Peppermint Patty was being devilishly nasty when she called him Chuck. Maybe it was veiled kindness after all.

But enough about the scattered history of Chucks.

Tonight on NBC comes the debut of the latest Chuck show, cleverly titled "Chuck." It sounds just marvelous and so real-life.

"Chuck Bartowski is a socially awkward twentysomething who works as a computer expert at the Nerd Herd, a 'Geek Squad' inspired techbench at his local electronics retailer," according to the NBC plotline.

"Chuck's sister is a doctor who is constantly looking out for his best interests and wants to help him find a girlfriend. On the night of his birthday party, Chuck receives an e-mail from his former Stanford University roommate, who is now a CIA agent. When he opens it, he unwittingly downloads an entire server of sensitive data, once only privy to the government of the United States, into his brain."

Then a week from Wednesday ABC decides to Chuck it with "Pushing Daisies," although this time it will be a woman named Chuck who is murdered on a cruise ship. Coincidentally, Chuck's old boyfriend has just decided to get out of the pie-making trade and a into a start-up business where he raises murder victims from the dead to find out who really killed them.

The rub is that he has to return them to the great beyond when the case is solved and doesn't want to part with former flame Chuck for good.

If those two made-for-TV spectaculars aren't enough, you can head to the movie theater and catch a double-Chuck-feature.

There is the new, highly acclaimed film "Good Luck Chuck," and this summer's Oscar-contending movie "Chuck and Larry."

The first one, "Good Luck Chuck," sounded most promising in its synopsis.

"It started when Charlie Logan was 10 years old," states the plot summary. "Breaking the cardinal rules of spin-the bottle, Charlie refused to lip-lock with a demented Goth girl and she put a hex on him. Now, 25 years later, Charlie is a successful dentist … and still cursed.

He discovers that every woman he's ever slept with has found true love -- with the next guy after him."

The reviews have been coming in fast since it opened.

"If you've got any luck at all, you won't have to watch 'Good Luck Chuck,' " a spectacularly sleazy and laugh-free "comedy."

"'Good Luck Chuck' goes from bad to just plain unwatchable," said another.

The next feature, which came out earlier this summer, is "Chuck and Larry."

"Chuck Levine and Larry Valentine are two firefighters. They are good friends. However, Larry is a widower (with two small children) and Chuck is single," says its plot summary.

"Larry dares Chuck one day to eat a dead rat, but he falls from the ladder that he was going to the drop the rat from. Chuck saves him but the two are rushed to the hospital and quickly recover. Larry calls in that favor big time when civic red tape prevents him from naming his two kids as his pension beneficiaries. All that Chuck has to do is claim to be Larry's domestic partner on some city forms."

The spontaneous hilarity continues from there.

I'm not sure why there is a sudden rush to use the name Chuck in fine, dramatic presentations. But speaking only for myself and not on behalf of all the Chucks in Chicago, I will say this: Why couldn't my parents have given me a name that would never be shortened nor attract any attention?

You know, something like Orenthal James?

Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached at chuckgoudie@gmail.com.