Crazy National Anthems

The Olympics are here! Weren't those opening ceremonies great last night? Leave it to the Chinese to spend 300 million bucks on an event that lasts 3 hours.

Last week I read a great piece by former Sports Illustrated Writer Rick Reilly. The article is titled My favorite Olympic sport? Translating anthems. Here are a few highlights.

Andorra. I look forward with great zeal to the day when a 350-pound Andorran shot-putter with phone booths for arms stands on the podium and sings: "I was born a princess, a maiden!" Hey, with today's medical breakthroughs, it's possible.

Syria. Someone must have written this one in a hurry, or bought it at a discount anthem store, because it contains this verse: "A land resplendent with brilliant suns, becoming another sky, or almost a sky." I would've loved to be inside the mind of the guy who wrote that. Let's see. We have so many suns it's like a whole 'nother sky. No, wait. Nobody's going to believe that. I'll just add, "or almost a sky." Hell, what do they expect for $9.95?

Australia. Aussies cannot quite decide between the stodgy, government-approved "Advance Australia Fair" or the one they really like, the folk song "Waltzing Matilda," the country's official anthem at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. It'd be like our dumping "The Star-Spangled Banner" for "Old McDonald." "Waltzing Matilda" is all about a swagman who sits under a coolibah watching his billy, then drowns himself in a billabong to avoid a squatter. And who doesn't love a story like that?

I often think we should change our anthem to America the Beautiful. Our current anthem is pretty cool but it's incredibly hard to sing and it ends with a question.