Seattle, snow, and sports (or, my feeble stabs at alliteration)

And now for the first edition of Casey’s Magical Bout of ADD. Please keep all limbs inside the cart at all times, and remember to silence your cell phones (or, if you still think it’s 1995, your pagers an AOL dial-up).

- The Sydney Opera House sucked. There, I said it. See below for further details.

- Ok, no, the Opera House didn’t really suck. In fact, the first glimpse of the spectacle (whose financer, due to a glut of porn, was deported before its construction) is what will finally attune you to your arrival Down Under. Everything leading up to that point is either too similar to America or, if you’re somehow caught in the bush, likely to kill you and thus ruin the memories. It’s the Opera House, whose celestial shapes and harbor-side prominence draw the eye within moments, that truly caps the prominence of Sydney.

o That being said, the proprietors of Opera House photos must be whizzes at Photoshop, because the gleaming white spectacle I was expecting seems to be found only in magazines. When we crossed the Sydney Harbor Bridge - the arching steel behemoth known to the locals as the ‘Coat-Hanger’ - I originally thought the Opera House was for some reason covered in moldy netting. (‘Perhaps it was to symbolize the fishing culture of the water-based economy,’ I slyly thought.) Unfortunately, on closer inspection, I found that the lines of netting were in fact runs of gout spanning the entire outside of the conical high-rises. The more we circled the building, the more it dawned on me - the Opera House was just a glorified bathroom floor. And not even one privy to Oxy-Clean. Still, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t mind grabbing a smaller tile and affixing it to my Mom’s new kitchen floor (which should be in the works now that my Dad finally has his hog).

- Other than the Opera House letdown - and since the opera tends to grate my ears worse than my brother’s selection of rap, I won’t be heading inside anytime soon - the remainder of downtown Sydney remains a beauty. With sparkling skyscrapers, a free-standing needle pointing skyward, and a breathtaking 4bay of water, the city has ‘Seattle’ written all over it. Sydney may be a bit bigger and, due to the Olympics, more well-known, but the resemblances between the two towns is striking. And throw in the fact that both are cosmopolitan cities filled with genuine, caring people - I’ve yet to be snubbed when asking an irrelevant question (or which beer is best) - and I don’t feel so embarrassed walking around in a Mariners sweatshirt. (Hey, at least it’s not a Brett Favre jersey. ZING.)

- Speaking of bars, I believe I went to, quite literally, the coolest drinking establishment this side of the Arctic Circle. As part of the ‘Sydney Party Bus’ last Saturday (should have been nicknamed the ‘Sydney Eat-My-Money-In-The-Name-Of-A-Good-Time Shuttle’), a group of us decided to head to the Circular Quay to check what had become a frequent inside joke: 5-Below. No, this is not a term for the depth of the sharks patrolling the harbor; instead, it’s just what you think it is: a frozen bar. Cool, right? (Ok, that’s the last one, I swear.) The only thing hampering my dreams of shivering hands clutching a frozen cocktail (or, if my Mom is reading this, a Coke) was the price. Thirty smackers. Yeesh. Enough to buy ten pizzas from Dominos, or about four gallons of gas (seriously, we have it so easy in the States). Fortunately (Un-?) my friend Sean used my argument against me - you’re only in Sydney while you’re 20 once - so my conscience was soothed and my wallet was lightened. Anyway, the novelty of the experience - wearing knee-length parkas paper-thin gloves while trying not to get your tongue stuck on the ice-glass - soon wore off, and as soon as the manager told me I could slide on the floor, my vote was cast. Yes, it was a story I will tell for years to come (and probably embellish, as the bartender of future stories will have said, “Ice to meet you”), but, as with anything this side of Spiderman 3, it failed to live up to the hype. (There’s nothing memorable - [laughs to self] - about the rest of the night, other than drinking with middle-aged Aussies at the Fortune of War, the oldest pub in Sydney. And yes, I pulled out all the stops on the older women, just so that I could tell Tracy.)

- Question of the day: Aussies love calling Americans ‘seppos.’ Five bucks to anyone who can describe the origin of this word without Googling it.

- I’m not sure if it’s the water, the sun, or some type of airborne toxin á la The Happening, but Aussies are obsessed with sport. Look at this stat: Of the top four countries with the most medals from the 2004 Athens Olympics, Australia won one medal per 408,000 people, while the next closest, Russia, earned one medal per 1,532,000 commies heads. (Meanwhile, the US was clearly the laziest of the West, with only one medal per 3,000,000 Yanks.) That’s pretty impressive, no? Hammered into them from an early age, young Aussies idolize sport as much as American compatriots idolize Happy Meal (or maybe that was just me). Certainly they are the most sport-oriented, ‘sporiented,’ of the Commonwealth countries, or at least more clear about their passions than Canadians (they gotta keep warm up there somehow, I suppose):



Still, the only real exposure I’ve been allowed is the first Australia-New Zealand rugby union match since last spring’s World Cup. Sitting with a trio of Kiwis, I learned that the current Wallabies coach, Robbie Deans, is actually from NZ, a turncoat of sorts yet also one on his way to bigger and better things (such as coaching the All-Blacks when ‘that bloody wanker John Hart’ leaves). Unfortunately, I sat at the wrong table that evening in Cairns, as the All-Blacks, who ‘only lose on the biggest stage, those bloody wankers,’ caved under the pressures of the Sydney crowd. As the cavalcade of scoring went Australia’s way, I watched the match with the soundtrack of, ‘wanker, bloody wanker, fuckin’ bloody wankers!’ playing in my ear (and in surround-sound!) When the final whistle rang, I looked down to see my NZ mates had disappeared. And I thought we were friends! Bloody wankers…

- For further photos, you can check out this link. And if you have a Facebook account, don't hesitate to friend me, because it'll be super-great for my ego.