d i n a n e . n e t 

Does anyone besides Mike and I actually watch Burn Notice on USA? It’s one of their summer shows, on after Psych. Of course, probably no one watches that either. You should, you know. If you like dramadies and watching TV in the summer that isn’t the Red Sox making you want to throw the remote at the TV. Even if you don’t watch Burn Notice, I think this can be a fun activity for everyone.

A brief overview for non-Burn-Notice-watchers: The show is about a spy who gets burned, meaning he’s black-listed and not allowed to spy anymore. The people who burned him dumped him in Miami, where his mother, brother, ex-girlfriend, and best friend live and help him with various good-will activities such as saving a neighborhood from the influx of a new-age mafia. He spends his time making bombs and espionage devices out of cellphones and other random things while helping people and trying to find out who burned him so he can go back to being a real spy.

Mike and I were watching the season finale off of the TiVo last night. (If you happen to have it waiting on your TiVo, you can rest assured that this is not going to be any kind of spoiler.) Much of the beginning of the episode dealt with him trying to make contact with another spy-type. They were communicating in bizarre code, leaving clues for one another.

The main character narrates the show as if it were a how-to on spying. This particular narration was about how spies can’t trust each other, so before real contact can be made, they test each other out using non-involved third parties. In this case, the other guy paid a random stranger on the street to stand at a magazine rack reading a travel brochure. The stranger was told only to give a parcel to the first person who came around bothering him.

The main character’s name is Michael Westen. The clue in this case was that the travel brochure was for Madison, Wisconsin.

… You know what? I just found a quote from the show, I’m going to paste that in so you can read it yourself. I think I’m getting a little too roundabout.

The truly paranoid don’t go to meetings themselves. They use a cutout, someone unrelated to them hired to show a prearranged sign and deliver a message. The sign is something innocuous but hard to miss. My favorite is a tourist guide from Madison Wisconsin. No one will look at it twice, but unless I’m in the mid-west I know they are waiting for Michael Westen.

–Burn Notice episode 11, “Dead Drop”/”Loose Ends”

So, I immediately began thinking, what tourist guide would I use? Mike? Anyone else?

Unfortunately for me, my initials are DJ, and there really aren’t any states that start with J. So, I have to go more global. Mike didn’t think there were any countries beginning with J, but I think he just didn’t think about it long enough. I rolled my eyes and said, “Jordan.” And unless you already knew that I share my last name with that country (yeah, I gave it away… I can’t help it… this topic is too awesome), you wouldn’t know why that was funny. Moving on, we came to Japan, but there aren’t any interesting places in Japan that begin with D. There’s also Jamaica, but again, no D cities. The only other country beginning with J is Jersey Island, which is barely a speck in the channel between France and England. As a bonus, all of their towns seem to start with S, so at least my sister is covered.

But that did give me an idea. Can I be so lame as to use the state of New Jersey and just ignore the N? Suddenly I’m wishing my middle initial was N… no, I’m not really, I like my middle name just fine. But still, I think I’d like to see about ignoring the N in NJ.

Well, after a bit of googling, I think I’m pretty screwed. The best I can figure is “Delaware River Region of New Jersey,” unless I want to use the tiny little town of Dover, which the New Jersey tourism sites don’t acknowledge. Lame!

More googling and I find that really Mike is screwed too. Rhode Island isn’t really holding any large number of places worth visiting, and none of them start with the letter M. Ooh! I did just think of an awesome one for him, once you go worldwide! Moscow, Russia.

Hawesome.

Sad for me, though, because even after we’re married I’m still screwed. No interesting cities in Russia or Rhode Island starting with D.

Man, maybe this isn’t an awesome game.

Let me know if you find an awesome one for you, though. Then I can be uplifted.