JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Jeffrey Jeturian coined a word some years ago which I’ve decided to adopt: bonga, short for ‘bobo na, tanga pa’ (not just moronic, but clueless). It is not to be confused with ‘bongga’, two g’s, meaning fabulous. It’s time we start calling a bonga a bonga; no point in being charitable when we’re so badly outnumbered.

Here’s an example of bonga. You know how everyone’s been doing bossa nova albums or covering old songs, bossa nova style? Well one of the perps recently visited a friend’s workplace, so my friend put on some Astrud Gilberto. The alleged bossa nova singer said, “Ay! Sino siya?” (Who’s that?) Bonga! Bonga nova to be exact.

I just saw a bonga movie: Die Hard 4.0, also known as Die Flaccid. We didn’t expect much of this movie because face it, it would not exist if Bruce Willis still had a career, but it’s crushingly bad and not at all fun. Bruce can’t be expected to learn any new things at this stage, so I was counting on Timothy Olyphant to make it work. Unfortunately Timothy as a villain is less threatening than Mat my neutered cat. Timothy was Sheriff Bullock in HBO’s magnificent Deadwood— believable because he has a straight-arrow, square-jawed, two-dimensional good guy quality (and he’s pretty). Which does nothing for a supervillain, who must possess gravitas, radiate menace, or at least have a British/Teutonic accent like Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons. If they were going to hire a cast member of Deadwood, why not Swearengen for Chrissakes? Ian McShane: there’s an uber-evil dude.

Maggie Q is well-cast as a terminator, although as Riccardo put it, why did the villains have to put on FBI uniforms if they were going to shoot the guards on sight anyway? Now that his directorial career has fizzled out, Kevin Smith has made the transition to supporting geek. The actress who plays Bruce’s daughter radiates “We couldn’t afford Lindsay Lohan”. The only cast member we really liked was Justin Long as the hacker; as Chus pointed out, he’s like Keanu, but not pretty and more expressive.

I can’t decide what was dumber: the car smashing into the helicopter, or the fighter pilot shooting at the trailer and taking down the freeway in the process. Yippee-kai-yay, bonga.