When you venture out into the world and study abroad, you are bound to experience a few introspective revelations, such as, “These people talk funny” or, “What’s the metric system?” One such epiphany I’ve had is that Spain and America are the same but different.

Don’t get me wrong; Spain is one bodacious place. Compared to the United States, its culture is the Shakira to our Avril Lavigne, the Peyton Manning to our Jason Campbell, the Cinnamon Toast Crunch to our Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran. Spain harbors some of our country’s richest cultural relics.

CiCi’s Pizza, for example. OK, we all know that would be too good to be true, but Valencia does have the next best thing: Telepizza. When my Spanish exchange student, Tamara, and I went looking for a place to grab lunch, I asked her what the neighborhood had to offer. After listing some relatively pricey, local restaurants, she mentioned a place with all-you-can-eat pizza for less than five euros. “¡Vámonos!” I shouted.

Telepizza has it all: an endless supply of mediocre pizza, an unmotivated crew of chronically pissed-off employees, a failing sanitation grade and so on. The customers, however, separate it from Cici’s. Walk into your local Cici’s in the States and you’re guaranteed to find a crowd of greasy folks shoving caramel-covered sausage pizza slices into their mouths, all the while smelling like John Goodman’s undergarments. At Telepizza, the crowd mainly consists of well-behaved, small-waisted college students and even a few middle-aged businessmen wearing ties.

But what really stands out is everyone’s proclivity for American movies, TV and music. For example, nearly every Spaniard I’ve encountered is obsessed with “The Simpsons.” They love it as much as they love spiked hair, tight jeans and “I Got a Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. Just the other day, I came home and found my 60-year old host mother and her 37-year old son chilling on the couch and staring very intently at the television as if they were watching Haiti news coverage. Nah, they were just watching “The Simpsons.” Awesome.

Meanwhile, if you walk into any cinema in Valencia, you’ll find nothing but American flicks. I witnessed the corruption Hollywood has forced on these people the other night at dinner. When I mentioned the startling fact that my Spanish name, Nicolás translates to “Nicholas” in English, the first thing out of my host brother Nacho’s mouth was, “Like Nicolas Cage!” Somebody shoot me.
The music also comes largely from the States, though federal law here seems to require that these songs be infused with the same ear-aching Euro-techno beat. Europe’s tendency to corrupt once-listenable American music is epitomized by what Spain did to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” last year. Upon hearing the song and seeing the music video for the first time, the Spaniards determined that, though it was a nice song, it was not nearly obnoxious enough. So they dubbed Beyoncé’s vocals with some intoxicated local villager belting out, “Paco, Paco, Paco que mi Paco, Paco, Paco!” The worst part is that the Paco song was literally one of the most popular tunes in Spain in 2009. YouTube it!

I had my own little encounter with distorted American music last week as I was walking through a relatively empty plaza late at night. As I neared a homeless man playing his guitar, my ears heard something strangely familiar. Could it be? Yes, indeed. The crusty old Spaniard was playing “Sweet Home Alabama,” or at least attempting to do so. The guitar part was just about right, but the lyrics sounded like, “Seet hoooo, Ala-bah-mah! Lord I am come home on you!”
Those are just about all the similarities between these two great countries that I can think of at the moment, so I’ll sign off with our weekly segment of The Spanish Palabra of the Day! This week: Cacahuate (n.): peanut, monkey nut.

Example: “Pepe! These cacahuates you purchased smell like monkeys!”

Oh, and I just remembered another similarity; Spain has Burger King. The difference? They sell beer! Hooray!

Nick’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. He can be reached at n.eilerson@cavalierdaily.com.