I left America for THIS?

I find myself saying this a lot, because (like in many parts of the world, thanks to globalisation) traces of America are EVERYWHERE in Paris. Every time I get on the metro, there's at least one banner overhead that blares "SAUVEZ BRITNEY" (Save Britney!) and a tabloid picture of Miss Spears in a straitjacket. The first day I arrived at AUP, the tabac next door had a huge poster advertising Britney's breakdown in the window. Also, my host mother likes Ne-Yo (NE-YO, for God's sake... I like him too, but it's so much funnier coming from her); there's a McDonald's on the Champs-Elysees (which I HAD to eat at) and a Pizza Hut down the street from my school; French girls in cornrows and tracksuits pushing their similarly corn-rowed and track-suited toddlers in strollers always show up in TV documentaries about The Troubled Youth of France; MTV France is essentially the American channel but with French people speaking over the English (which you can still hear underneath); and my host family always watches a TV channel that exclusively plays American films (the last one I saw was "Meet The Parents") dubbed (mercifully, without the English track playing underneath) in French. The worst offense, though, is the music.

I love, love, LOVE Euro-dance music and hoped that I would hear much more of it in the clubs and on MTV France. I'm talking Bob Sinclar, Yves Larock ("Rise Up" is my official Paris anthem), Cassius, Daft Punk, etc., etc. But when I went clubbing last week and yesterday, it was the same old undanceable American (c)rap that I hear at home. Now, I love hip-hop; I grew up in the milieu and heyday of gangsta rap (WEST COAST REPRESENT!) and I have a special place in my heart for 1980s rap, freestyle, and breakbeat music. And while the first club I went to was kind of OK (they had a Eurodance period, a Reggaeton/Hip-hop period and a disco period) the club I went to yesterday felt like a high school dance and even played the kind of stuff I used to hear at my high school dances (example: they played Chingy's "Right Thurr". CHINGY. When the hell did Chingy last come out with a hit? I remember "Holidae Inn" playing on the way to my post-debut party... which was indeed at the Holiday Inn. IN 2005.) which disappointed me because I was hoping they would play better, more danceable club music here. I think it was because this was an AUP event and so they were trying to cater to the American audience that they played a lot of rap, but also the DJs kind of sucked on a technical scale: specifically, they kept trying to crossfade two songs with different BPMs (beats per minute) so the rhythms overlapped and sounded kind of discordant/off-beat.

I did, however, find some amusement in trying to teach a Swedish girl (who was a very enthusiastic learner) the Soulja Boy dance. And in the fact that there was a black guy in a Superman t-shirt at the club doing the Soulja Boy dance as well.