You ever see something you wish you hadn’t? And later on you became haunted by the image that seemingly burned into your consciousness and kept pushing itself to the forefront of your brain? Maybe a picture of yourself with an ex, a dead dog on the side of the road, or a half-eaten bug in the fresh bite off your burger? I saw something like that last night, and here it is:
No big deal you say? Just a guy in a ballcap? No, that’s not just a guy. That’s James “Lo Pan” Hong from the phenomenal movie “Big Trouble in Little China.” See, this is what he normally looks like:
Now why did that first image disturb me? Because, I screen-captured that off an episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” titled “Miz Tisdale on the Lam” where Mr. Lo Pan plays Billy Joe Fong.
Get it? “Billy Joe,” ”˜cause he lives in Hazzard and it sounds more than a little hickish, and “Fong” because it rhymes with “Dong” and that’s what I imagine he felt like while playing this character. When we first meet Billy he’s in the midst of borrowing Cooter’s welder to repair his wok. And no, I’m not making that up.
Billy Joe Fong spends the episode acting as a decoy for Miz Tisdale and riding around on her side-car equipped motorcycle so as to distract Boss Hogg. He drives rather crazily, swaying this way and that, 
all while screaming Chinese-sounding gibberish, and is perpetually in a collision course with something, whether it be Bo and Luke or Rosco’s police car. This character couldn’t be more stereotypical and clichéd if Mickey Rooney were playing it.
At the point in the show where I screen-captured Billy Joe Fong, or BFJ as his friends call him, he has just invited Bo and Luke to eat dinner with him, which consisted of “Southern Fried Wontons, Sweet and Sour Hog Chaw, and Chitin Chow-mien.” Again, I’d like to emphasize I did not make that up.
I sincerely hope that the writer and person in charge of casting this episode were punished for this nonsense by being drug off to the hell where people are skinned alive.
If anyone needs me I’ll be in the bathroom washing my eyes out with bleach.
i found lo pan’s appearance in hazzard county rather amusing. although i would rank his roles in “big trouble in little china” and “seinfeld” higher, it was good to see him broaden his acting career from playing stereotypical asians, to playing a “country asian.” now, i know that sounds oxymoronic, but did i enjoy it? “INDEED!!!!”
the screen capture of bo, luke, and lo pan is borderline perverse. is it just me, or does it look like luke is about to mount bo? now i don’t have a problem with that kind of thing, but just wait until all the hard-core “dukes of hazzard” fans get ahold of this. you thought there was an uproar with “brokeback mountain” when ang lee turned the cowboy figure gay. just think of all the crushed spirits of millions of grown men with this image in their heads. it could lead to a riot or a mass suicide. it would be like looking back and realizing that the “he-man” cartoons were homoerotic…wait a minute…i mean…”not that there’s anything wrong with that”…i mean…”seinfeld, four!”
I didn’t even realize that hoyay imagery of that capture until after you said something. It does look like Luke’s about to hump Bo.
Luke and Bo did spend an awful lot of time together racing around in the General Lee. And they always seemed to lose their shirts for some reason, especially while wet or around hay. And for a ladies man like Bo was supposed to be you very rarely saw him with a woman. Just his shirtless cousin.
YEE-HAW!