PETER BUFFA -- Comments & Curiosities

Are you watching? If you’re like me, you are, but not much. I’m an

Olympics fan, but these Olympics are tough to sink your teeth into.

For one thing, the time difference is a killer, with Sydney 18 hours

ahead of us. Even when it’s a three-way photo finish, it’s hard to get

too worked up over something that happened 18 hours ago. And if you’re a

news junkie, there’s no way to escape the results of big events by the

time NBC finally gets around to waking up the peacock and rolling the

Olympic fanfare that night.

Following our local heroes -- Lindsay Davenport, Amanda Beard, Julie

Foudy, etc. -- is fun, though. Lindsay had to withdraw with a sprained

foot, darn it, which is probably the most coverage she would have gotten

even if she repeated her 1996 gold-medal performance. Could someone

please tell me why she gets about a thousand times less recognition than

she deserves? Thank you so much.

I’m actually enjoying the background stuff on Australia more than the

games. You might be interested to know that Costa Mesa’s sister city is

in Australia. It’s the city of Wyndham, just outside Melbourne. It used

to be called Werribee. Now it’s Wyndham. Do you know why they changed

their name? I forget. Very, very nice people, though.

A few members of their city council and school board have visited in

recent years. They call their council members “councilors,” which is

stylish, and two members of the current council are named Peter, which

shows they are very smart councilors. Peter Ross and his wife paid a

visit (what does “paid” a visit mean?) during my last term and couldn’t

have been more warm or gracious. The Aussies are a fun-loving lot,

though, exactly as advertised. It’s “Aussies,” by the way, and they call

the country “Oz.”

I remember one delegation that fell head over heels in love with Goat

Hill Tavern. No matter what sights we suggested they see, they had only

one question: “How far is it from the Goat Hill?”

Americans and Australians -- as Winston Churchill observed about us

and the British -- are “two people separated by a common language.”

Local slang is always fascinating, but especially so when you toss in

some Aussie irreverence. A dentist is a “fang carpenter.” Very elderly

people are “crumblies.” If you’ll need a jacket or a sweater, they advise

you to “rug up.” A busybody is a “sticky beak.” And, my personal

favorite: an inexperienced surfer is a “shark biscuit.”

I’m also fascinated with Tasmania, just off the Australian mainland,

and a world unto itself. It supposedly has the cleanest air on Earth,

with the exception of the polar caps. It also has a number of species

that exist nowhere else in the world and, yes, there is a real-life

Tasmanian Devil, upon which the Looney Tunes character is based. It looks

like a small, black bear with a pointy face. It’s constantly stressing

over something, hopping around and shrieking like mad.

There’s just something captivating about a world so different from

ours. The opposite seasons, for instance. Their winter is just ending.

Even so, it’s been unseasonably cold. If you watch the crowds at the

outdoor events, they are “rugged up” like Green Bay fans on a Sunday

afternoon. Did you know that water goes down the drain counterclockwise

in the Southern Hemisphere? What happens is that the Earth’s magnetic

field and ... well, the water and the pipe itself are ... forget it. It

just does.

As much as I enjoy the feature stories on all things Aussie, I think

NBC has gone over the top with the obligatory personal profiles of the

athletes. Out of a few thousand athletes in these games, about 1,600 of

them apparently have poignant stories and NBC is determined to tell us

every one of them.

A little cycling, a poignant story. Some swimming, a poignant story. A

little soccer, a poignant story.

There has to be one well-adjusted kid from a solid family who just

loves to swim and worked her tuckus off to get to the Olympics in there

somewhere. NBC just needs to dig deeper.

I do sympathize with anyone who has to wrestle with the “major

sport/minor sport” dilemma, though. When it comes to international

sports, majority is in the eyes of the beholder.

In this country, field hockey is a sissy, girly game that breaks out

occasionally during high school P.E. classes. But in places like the U.K.

or Pakistan, field hockey is a manly man, bone-breaking, nose-bleeding,

out-and-out war that elicits as much passion as our high-profile sports.

To us, badminton is a sport you played at your grandparents’ house and

no one ever bothered to actually put up the net. In Asia, people run each

other down in cars after arguments about which badminton star is the

better player.

Try to catch some of the “minor” sports if you can. They’re usually

like nothing you’d expect.

A little Ping Pong, anyone? Whaddayou nuts? At this level, it’s “table

tennis,” and it’s a whole different Koala. First of all, the players

stand about a block and a half from the table. With each serve, you’d

swear someone has thrown the tape into high-speed. It’s a blur of smashes

and returns and lunging saves. It’s hard to believe anyone could move

that fast, let alone play table tennis at the same time.

So there you have it. The 2000 Summer Games. The time zone is way out

there to the left, but it’s a magical place. There’s more than a week

left, so you still have time to head down there and see for yourself.

Better rug up, and stay out of the water if you don’t know what you’re

doing. Nobody wants to be a shark biscuit.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Fridays.

He can be reached via e-mail at o7 PtrB4@aol.comf7 .