"[This song] will go on"...apparently.

One of the best things about Europe is the abundance of street performers. My favorite is when they play the accordion-that’s when I know I’m really in France. The problem is, the performers aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be. Take “The Cat Man,” who stands on street corners in Revolutionary garb blaring My heart will go on and dancing with his two very mangy felines.

Listen, I know that the Titanic film was a huge deal…in 1997.  I get that it broke all sorts of records and still holds some of them to this day. It’s Kate and Leo, so magic was bound to happen. But I’m starting to realize that whereas in the US, the popularity of the theme song (Celine Dion’s My heart will go on) has waned ever so slightly over the past decade and a half, it’s still going strong in the rest of the world.  

I was a volunteer ESOL instructor last semester in Maryland. I had a class of 15 students, most of whom were Latin or South American. The bulk of the students were middle-aged women, but there was one young Venezuelan guy who never said a word. He just stared with a big goofy grin. One day in class we were playing a variation of tic tac toe that involved asking and answering questions and I noticed him scribbling furiously in his notebook. I was a little confused since there was really nothing to take notes on, but there he was practically writing a novel. At the end of class he slipped up to the front, handed me a piece of paper, said “this is for you,” and then ran away. Slightly baffled, I opened the folded letter and realized he had written out all the lyrics to My heart will go on. I’m not saying the situation wasn’t strange, but my neighbor informed me that when she was in Ecuador recently, that song was still a huge deal. From a cultural standpoint, this type of behavior was perfectly normal, the choice of song and all. [From this point, things just went downhill, finally ending with a failed marriage proposal and a terry cloth towel as a parting gift.] 

So yesterday I was walking home from school and passed another performer wearing a Native American headdress, blaring the Titanic song through a giant speaker, and playing along with a set of panpipes. This was unfortunate. While I admire the cahones on this guy for putting himself out there in the most public of all public squares in Nice, it just wasn’t good…in fact, it was borderline painful to hear. But there he was, serenading all of us with his screechy cacophony. So here’s to you, Native American Titanic Panpiper...one brave soul!

Ok, it wasn't quite this bad, but you should check out this link anyway: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2WH8mHJnhM