The Rundown

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4

OK, this is weird. It took almost 10 years for the United States to get to, shoot and kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was gotten to, shot and killed a few days ago during a surprise raid on his compound in Pakistan by a highly trained U.S. military team. OK, so that wasn’t the weird part—that was just the kinda incompetent part. Here’s what’s weird: at about the same time bin Laden was having the last, worst and shortest headache of his life on the other side of the world, the Inland Empire’s own neo-Nazi leader—Jeff Hall of the  HYPERLINK “http://www.nsm88.org/” \t “_blank” National Socialist Movement—was taking a fatal dose of bulletry in his Riverside home . . . and it was allegedly administered during an even-more-surprising ambush . . . by his son . . . who is 10 years old. Weird? Well, yeah. And, yes, incredibly sad, too—in both cases, actually—but the silver-lining kind of sad. Hall and bin Laden were Asshole Bigot Fucker Pigs. Really—that was their college fraternity. I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that Hall and “Binny” pledged as brothers during the same Rush Week—and the boys were philosophically and tactically inseparable, toting their firearms and video cams and spouting their dumbshit hateblabbery on a never-ending procession of terror tours until . . . well . . . the end. They were both married more than once, had a bunch of kids and a tendency for the wacky. Bin Laden’s idiosyncrasies were pretty well documented, but it was only last November that Hall ran for Western Riverside Municipal Water District board—and lest we get to laughing too large at his expense, let’s remember that he got 30 percent of the vote. Of course, Hall ran a campaign especially suited for Riverside voters, including that whistle-stop photo-op tour through the Vekol Valley in Arizona, where he and 10 supporters made a big show of claiming to “fight the [Mexican drug] cartels and reclaim the land.” Armed with pistols and high-powered rifles, the group led patrols through the desert and “secured” an abandoned building. Hall had announced plans for another civilian border patrol this month—in fact, he announced them last Saturday, a few hours before he was killed. Hey, maybe the kid didn’t feel like going. But it’s hard to believe that. While memorializing Hall on the National Socialist Movement’s website, his colleagues described him as “a loving Father of five children, a family man and a dedicated American Patriot” and claimed that “his children were his life.” Yeah . . . um . . . I’m not gonna touch that one.

THURSDAY, MAY 5

At 5:50 a.m., as 1,062 homes and businesses in north Upland suddenly lose their electrical power, one of the most-diplomatic things that people say is, “Rats!” It’s also one of the most-prescient things. Turns out the power failure, which originated on Kenwood Street west of San Antonio Drive, was caused when the electrical equipment was sabotaged by a rodent.

FRIDAY, MAY 6

New information just in on that anonymous rodent who sabotaged the electrical box in Upland. It was not Lenny Dykstra. Yes, the crime does fit the M.O. of the former All-Star baseball player and Murrieta resident, who allegedly stripped his home of $400,000 worth of stuff and sold it after filing for bankruptcy in 2009. But Dykstra couldn’t have been diddling with the electrical box because he was busy denying the 13-count indictment that was handed down against him this afternoon. Whew! Bet he’s happy to have that alibi.

SATURDAY, MAY 7

Isn’t it about time for the local basketball season to end?

SUNDAY, MAY 8

Phil Jackson coaches what he insists was his last basketball game, and if he’s not just burning sage, that means he’s going out with National Basketball Association records for the most championships (11), the highest winning percentages in the regular season (.704) and postseason (.688) and the world record for the most-embarrassing final game by any legendary coach, ever. No telling what Jackson will do next, but as Lakers management cleans house in the coming weeks, any of the players who lose their jobs would be perfect fits for the next incarnation of The Real Housewives of Orange County.

MONDAY, MAY 9

Give me one wish and I would have Kobe Bryant play out the last few years of his contract for a rebuilding Lakers team that has traded away every big-contract player but him in an effort to save money and create the salary-cap space to acquire Dwight Howard at exactly the moment that Bryant’s contract expires.

TUESDAY, MAY 10

Give me another wish and I would have Kobe’s wife, Vanessa, leave him for Pau Gasol.