Regular expressions and arrays and ANY() question

I am trying to figure out how to use a regex and an ANY(), without any
luck, to determine if at least one element of an array (on the right)
matches the given constant pattern (on the left).

I think the problem is because the pattern expects to be on the right
side with the target on the left, but I want to do it reversed. (ie I
want 'Corvalli%' like 'Corvallis', but for postgres the only thing is
'Corvallis' like 'Corvalli%'). Has anybody worked around this before?

See below for code. TIA. Feel free to email me directly.

or_gis=# select * from quads_w_cities where 'Corvallis' = any
(cities); -- this works like I want
ohiocode | cities
----------+-------------------------------------
44123e2 | {Albany,Corvallis,Tangent,Estacada}
44123e3 | {Corvallis,Philomath}
(2 rows)

or_gis=# select * from quads_w_cities where 'corv.*' ~ any
(cities); -- I want this to give me something just like the above
ohiocode | cities
----------+--------
(0 rows)

or_gis=# select * from quads_w_cities where 'corv.*' ~~ any
(cities); -- etc...
ohiocode | cities
----------+--------
(0 rows)

or_gis=# select * from quads_w_cities where 'corv.*' ~* any
(cities);
ohiocode | cities
----------+--------
(0 rows)

or_gis=# select * from quads_w_cities where 'Corv.*' ~* any
(cities);
ohiocode | cities
----------+--------
(0 rows)

or_gis=# select * from quads_w_cities where '.*Corv.*' ~* any
(cities);
ohiocode | cities
----------+--------
(0 rows)