Hit by a Pitch

Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured. –B.K.S. Iyengar

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The Criminal Minds team is called to Denver, where three women have been killed in the past month. Members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) arrive at the crime scene of the latest victim to find the body of a reasonably fit blond woman in her mid-30s, still wearing workout clothes and one expensive running shoe, on her living room floor. The body is wrapped in a yoga mat.

This is a case for the BAU because it appears the same unknown subject (unsub) killed all three women. All victims were found wearing workout clothes and one expensive athletic shoe and were wrapped in yoga mats.

The first victim was found in the living room of her home and the second was found in her kitchen. All victims were home alone when the unsub attacked. The crime scenes were tidy, the yoga mats were neatly wrapped and fastened around each body, and no weapons were found. The unsub takes a shoe from each victim as a souvenir. He clearly is organized. He is of average intelligence and is considered attractive and outgoing by the community, meaning that he can fit in to any neighborhood and move freely without suspicion. Although he craves human contact, he feels superior to others and knows that if they would only submit to his control and live their lives the way he dictates, they would be much happier, healthier, and fulfilled.

Aside from being reasonably fit blond women dressed in workout clothes, the victims had nothing in common. Even Penelope Garcia, with her quirky fashion, fuzzy pen, awesome glasses, and mad-crazy computer skills, can’t find a connection.

While the team delivers the profile to the local authorities, another body is found, just one day after the last murder. He’s escalating.

Garcia determines that, although the four victims didn’t know each other or frequent any of the same establishments, they all were regular gym-goers. She cross-checks lists of employees of all gyms in the downtown Denver area, focusing on front desk staff and cleaning crews. Nothing.

While going through the computer of the first victim, Garcia finds that she had a blog wherein she posted about a creepy personal trainer who bothered her. Subsequent posts revealed that, after quitting one gym because of the creepy personal trainer, the first victim went to a second gym, which she later quit because the creepy personal trainer started working there. Later, the creepy personal trainer taught a class at her office, then at her third gym. The posts don’t reveal the name of the creepy personal trainer, but Garcia knows he is the unsub. She uses her mad-crazy computer skills to piece together which gyms the first victim frequented, and then found the one personal trainer/fitness instructor who taught classes at all those gyms within the past several months. Why nobody from any of these gyms questioned why the creepy personal trainer had to work at every gym in downtown Denver was a mystery even the BAU wouldn’t be able to solve.

Garcia finds that the unsub is due to be teaching a yoga class at an upscale downtown gym in an hour. The team rushes to the location and finds him in the parking garage with a blond, ponytailed woman at knifepoint.

“I’ll – I’ll do yoga!” she says.

“Yoga is the answer!” the unsub yells. “You cannot do yoga.  Yoga is your natural state.  What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state. Why are you trying to deny your natural state?”

The woman screams. “I’ll do yoga!”

Derek Morgan steps in and talks to the unsub. “Yoga is important for living a well-adjusted life. When I was a child, I always wanted to do yoga but it was prohibited by my domineering father who believed the only worthwhile form of exercise was running 12 miles first thing in the morning.”

“Oh my gosh,” the unsub says, his hold on the knife weakening. “That is so terrible for you. I can sense that your flow is constricted.”

“Yes, my flow, it is constricted,” Derek Morgan says, a small tear forming in the corner of his left eye, reflecting the bright Colorado sun. “It took me a long time to recognize the importance of yoga for a balanced and healthful life.”

“Yes! Balanced and healthful! Yoga is so important!” The unsub drops the knife and lunges to get into a parparivrtta parsvakonasana pose. (I don’t know if that’s how you say it. As you might have gathered, I don’t do yoga.) Before he can extend his arm, Derek Morgan handcuffs him as the rescued victim cries and says, breathless, “He wanted me to do personal training sessions with him and go to his yoga class but I didn’t want to! He wouldn’t leave me alone after that and followed me out here, going on and on about how it would be beneficial to me. He was going to make me do yoga and then kill me!”

On the plane on the way home, the new random blond woman who apparently has become part of the BAU gazes wistfully out the window.

“What’s wrong?” Aaron Hotchner asks.

“I don’t particularly care for yoga, either, and sometimes there’s a personal trainer at my gym who talks to me when I don’t want to be bothered. Next time, I’m going to punch him in the face.”

Hotchner smiles a half-smile, as he is wont to do in an effort to appear benevolent, as well as exacting. “A punch to the face is the best way to deal with creepy personal trainers.”

I get it. It was just the whatever anniversary of John Lennon’s death. You can now get Beatles songs on iTunes. Apparently this means even people like me who hate the Beatles and never do anything to voluntarily expose themselves to anything related to the Beatles will frequently and annoyingly come into contact with the Beatles and/or John Lennon. Even the new Girl Talk, which is otherwise awesome and a glorious achievement in music the likes of which we have not seen since, like, Mozart, ends with a John Lennon song (“Imagine,” which I hate with such fiery hatey hate it’ll piss me off too much to even tell you how much I hate it).

I understand, on an objective level, that the Beatles made great contributions to rock & roll and music and blah blah whatever. That doesn’t make me like them. Seriously, what is this:

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
. . . .
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved

Um, duh?

Nothing makes a person feel more lonely than hating the Beatles. There are a few of us out there, as I just discovered by googling “I hate the Beatles”:

• The Beatles SUCK homepage
• I Hate the Beatles Facebook group
• Is It Normal? I hate the Beatles (This one says the Jonas Brothers are good. I think it’s a trap.)
• last.fm I Hate the Beatles group
• Experience Project: I Hate the Beatles

I’ll probably get hate mail for this, which is fine. I’ll be listening to the Stones, who are vastly superior to the Beatles in every way.

Song: Abusadora by Wisin & Yandel
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It’s the bottom of the ninth inning at Coors Field. The Rockies and Cubs are tied and I’m sure it’s a tense moment for all involved (when the Cubs come to play the Rockies, Coors Field fills up with annoying (redundant?) Cubs fans who couldn’t name five players on the active roster but act like they’re really into baseball until they get way too drunk to fool anyone) when Carlos Gonzalez comes up to the plate, the sounds of Wisin & Yandel filling the warm evening air. Carlos Gonzalez has been on fire today — he’d already hit a single, double, and triple, and George Frazier (one of the tv guys) was saying that he just needed a home run to complete the cycle. That never happens, right? I mean, it hardly ever happens that anybody hits for the cycle, and there’s no way it’s going to happen when the dude on tv was just talking about it.

Well shit, it did happen. Gonzalez smoked the hell out of the first pitch he saw. It was a walk-off home run, giving the Rockies a 6-5 win over the Cubs.

That’s pretty bad ass, right? You’d think people would be talking about that shit on Twitter.

Well, no. (Click the picture to get to a larger version. I tried to post the big version here, but it totally broke my site. I know you can’t really see what I’m talking about when it’s this size, but I guess that’s better than jacking up the whole site.)

(Pls. note my groundbreaking tweet, wherein I said, “What’s sad is that if Carlos Gonzalez played for the stupid Yankees or the Stupid Red Sox, he’d be trending on Twitter right now.” I actually thought about adding the stupid Phillies, but 140-character limit and all, I knew I had to stop somewhere.)

Do you see what the #1 trending topic on Twitter was when I took this? Robinson Cano. As far as I can tell, Robinson Cano, who plays for the stupid Yankees, hit a home run and the Yankees won. Oh, wow. Later, Brad Lidge, Phillies closer, was a trending topic. As far as I can tell, Brad Lidge sucks ass and blew another save. Wow.

Since Carlos Gonzalez accomplished the monumental feat of hitting for the cycle and hitting a walk-off home run to beat the Cubs, he has not been a trending topic on Twitter.

Wait! I lied! As I’m writing this to bitch about people on Twitter not talking about the awesomeness of Carlos Gonzalez, he is finally trending!

That kind of defeats the purpose of me writing a post to bitch about people on Twitter failing to talk about Carlos Gonzalez, but I’ve already written a post to bitch about people on Twitter failing to talk about Carlos Gonzalez. So here it is.

Song: Word Up by MSTRKRFT (Warning: song awesomely contains very bad language.)
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I’m thinking about changing gyms because a personal trainer talks to me too much.

Well, that’s not the only reason, but it’s a big one. I’m putting this shit behind a cut because it is long and totally ridiculous. Also, please keep in mind that I have PMS.

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