Props to Pooh, Sars, and my friend Chels.

Two mounted police officers are making their morning rounds on the bridle path in Central Park. According to the Laws of Foreshadowing, we know that when X = the intelligence level of cop conversation and Y = their distance from a dead body, X always has an inverse relationship to Y. One cop says to the other, "I found a George Foreman grill on eBay!" You do the math. The cops ride on a little while longer and approach a parked car just on the other side of a footbridge. One of the cops calls out, "Rise and shine, lovebirds," obviously forgetting that a phrase like "rise and shine" is Dramatic Irony Code for "dead body ahoy." The other cop dismounts and walks over to the driver's side, where we see the window is shot out, there's a guy slumped over against the steering wheel, and all kinds of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee gore spattered on the dashboard. Oh, hey, it's a dead body. The cop shouts out, "They didn't take the radio, they took his head off -- and they took his pants, too!"

Before long the Special Victims Unit is at the scene. Detectives Olivia "Revlon Colorstay" Benson and Elliot "Love God" Stabler peer into the deathmobile and find only one spent round -- a .44 magnum. I don't know why the cops decided this was an SVU case. I guess they put out an NPB: a No Pants Bulletin.

Opening credits. The doodly-doodly synthesizer. Major characters striding ever-so-purposefully four-abreast.

Back at the station Stabler and Benson meet with Cap'n Cragen, Detective Munch, and Detective Monique Jeffries. The whole gang takes turns barking out information on the dead guy. "Victim's name: Dean Woodruff!" "Age thirty-five, salesman for fitness equipment!" "Divorced once, has an ex-wife and two kids upstate!" "Shot in his own car between two and two-thirty AM!" "No eyewitnesses!" One at a time, people! There's enough expository script material for everyone! Munch speculates on the .44 slug: "Means the shooter was either a wacko or insecure." Cragen asks what he means. "It's overkill and messy," says Munch. Benson mentions that the crime scene is a big "grope spot." Stabler nods. "Yeah, it's a romantic place for honeymooners, teenagers, co-workers." It occurs to me that Stabler's job as a character on L & O: SVU and my job as a recapper for the SAME SHOW might make us co-workers. Anyway, SVU is running down the fingerprints and checking to see if there was somebody with the victim. "Maybe he was alone," says Munch. Benson doesn't get it: "Maybe his pants came off from the force of the shot?" "All I'm saying is that he could have been having safe sex with himself. Safe that is, until he got shot," says Munch. Okay, Munch? My MIND was safe until it was forced to process "Detective Munch" and "masturbation" at the same time.