COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

Ever play volleyball? I did. Once. It’s hard.

I was able to do nothing other than jam my thumb, which hurts. There are one or two physical activities that I do well, but most of them, not so much. Never mind that.

Next weekend is the big kickoff of the Beijing Olympics, within which Newport-Mesa has a number of connections, two of them courtesy of volleyball, thank you very much.

First, there is beach volleyball mega-star Misty May-Treanor, one half of the Misty May-Kerri Walsh volleyball juggernaut. Misty May spent her high school years in Costa Mesa and was a sports superstar at Newport-Harbor High.

The “Treanor” in her name refers to her husband, Matt Treanor, a catcher for the Florida Marlins and another Orange County product who played baseball at Mater Dei and was named to the high school All-America team. Misty May and Kerry Walsh are the Tiger Woods of beach volleyball. Not only did they win the Big Shiny Gold Thing at the 2004 Athens Olympics, but they also did it in seven matches without losing a single game. If you’ve ever seen Walsh, who is about 7-foot-8, spike the ball, it would all make sense.

The other Newport-Mesa-Beijing connection is Costa Mesa resident Mike Villani, who will be the venue announcer for indoor volleyball at the Beijing games. Mike has worked as an announcer and voice-over artist in more commercials and informational videos than you can count, including announcing a number of venues at the 2004 Athens games, which is where his long, winding road to Beijing began.

Mike and a few other announcers pitched every Chinese sports official they met in Athens on what a good idea it would be to have native English speakers speaking native English at the 2008 Beijing games. The Chinese officials were not impressed. With almost 1.5 billion people from which to choose, they were sure that enough of them could brush up their Shakespeare at least well enough to announce a few matches of this or that.

Apparently, the powers that be in China forgot western languages and Chinese mix every bit as well as moo shu pork and parmigiano-reggiano. After more than a year of training Chinese announcers in English, their teachers made an interesting discovery: The English announcers-in-training could understand each other, but no English-speaking people could understand them. That’s not a good sign.

Not long after that, Villani and some of his co-announcers from the Athens games got an e-mail from the Chinese Olympic committee that said, on second thought, we’d love to have you, and bring your English with you. They also invited professors of English from the U.S. and the U.K. to visit Beijing and review the big push they had made to produce English signs and menus, etc.

It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it quickly became apparent that Beijing’s English language campaign had suffered what flight controllers call a catastrophic failure. According to an Associated Press report, the first sign that no English-speaking visitor could possibly miss was in the Beijing airport: “Careful Landslip Attention Security.” Hmm. I’m guessing it has something to do with a wet floor or a step up or down, but are we supposed to attention security or do they attention us?

Other notable quotables around Beijing included this sign in a tobacco store window: “An Excellent Winding Smoke,” and a huge billboard that read: “Shangri-La is in your mind, but your buffalo is not.” You know, that is so true. We get so focused on Shangri-La sometimes that we take our buffalo for granted. It’s just not right. I say the gold medal for indecipherable English goes to this sign in a Beijing hotel elevator: “Pease lead your child to tare the life.” I like that. It shows the Chinese are as concerned about traditional values as we are. If you don’t lead your child to tare the life, who will?

There was also an intensive two-day workshop on English phrases that every Beijing cabdriver had to take before the games. The first two phrases the cabbies had to master? “Welcome to China” and “I love you.” Really? Are you sure about that last one? I’ve never been to the mainland, but I’ve been to Hong Kong twice, and I don’t recall one cabbie in Hong Kong saying he loved me, and I’m pretty sure I’d remember that. Clearly, there are some major regional differences between Hong Kong and Beijing. “What do we owe you?” “Fifty yuan. I love you.”

That’s it, then — Misty May, Mike Villani and the Beijing Olympics, up close and personal. Remember, your kids are counting on you to lead them to tare the life, and would it kill you to pay a little attention to your buffalo once in a while?

I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.