Flirting the surreal and dancing with the bizarre

OCT 1: If you stumbled unprepared into Sydney's Olympic Park during the last two weeks, you could have been forgiven for thinking someone ...

OCT 1: If you stumbled unprepared into Sydney’s Olympic Park during the last two weeks, you could have been forgiven for thinking someone had slipped something into your drink — or that you’d landed on the set of Salvador Dali’s directorial debut.

In the pool, Eric the Eel’ Moussam bani, a 22-year-olds wimmer from Equatorial Guinea, thrashed his way to fame by finishing the 100-metres freestyle more than a minute outside the World record just nine months after learning how to swim.

After losing a quasi-unprecedented three-straight on their way to an eventual gold, the US Softball team decided Voodoo’ was to blame and jumped into the shower en masse one night to exorcise their demons.

On the track there was the perpetually bouncy Maurice Greene licking his chops and thumping his chest on the way to two golds.

But there was also the Greek sprinter no one had heard of — Konstantinos Kenteris — coming from behind to win his country’s first athletics gold in more than a century, stunning even his own countrymen.

Off the field of play, Olympic Park — where the madness was centered — occasionally unfolded like a Daliesque tableau.

Gold medallists lined up to have their photo taken with Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, an alternative, cross-eyed, stuffed mascot offered up by irreverent late-night television show The Dream’.

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The stands at Stadium Australia turned into a scene from rba the Greek as everyone from the tanned and toned Swedes in their blue-and-gold warpaint to the kimonoed Japanese danced to bazouki music during intermissions in the play.

And though its monotony was stunning by the end of the Games, country after country — and even IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch — adopted the Australian war cry of “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! … Oy! Oy! Oy!”

Outside the Olympic Superstore’ where thousands lined up each day to buy mementoes there was the occasional dry-land synchronised swimming tournament in which eager souvenir buyers hummed along as pair after pair of sunburned tourists improvised a routine.

A few steps away, in the flickering shadow of the Olympic cauldron, visitors by the dozens thrust their hands and chins and cigarettes into the air to pose for the snapshot of choice.

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It came in a few derivations featuring either the holding of the flame, the snuffing out of the flame, or the lighting of a cigarette by the flame thanks to a little clever camera work and the resulting optical illusion.

The weirdness all got to be a bit much, of course, and by the end people were starting to show the strain.

Take the young Australian dressed in the red and yellow of a lifeguard with the children’s swimming ring around his waist who was directing the crowds near the Nike store going into the final weekend of the Olympics.

The weird thing? He was being paid to do that.