I'm as free as a bird and you float like a feather.

When I was a senior in high school, a boy from another school took me on my first date. We went to see the movie "Pulp Fiction." (If there's a less appropriate date movie I can't think of one. For an expanded list of things my parents wouldn't have let me do if they had been paying attention to pop culture, check out the collection of Guns N Roses cassettes I started accumulating at age ten.

 Tennnnnn.)

Pulp Fiction was released before the Internet, so there was no way to verify the claim made by John Travolta's character that in Europe they call a whopper a "Royale with cheese"." I've since been here and there in Europe and still haven't bothered to check this out. I took it at face value. What Vincent Vega was trying to say was that when you travel, it's the little things you notice. 

I've said it before, this year's travels are not nearly as adventurous as what I'm used to. Last year's "little differences" included observations like "hey, those aren't letters..."

This year I'm fixated on the Boston radio station. It's just DIFFERENT here. Please consider this sample from a standard rock station:

Kid rock: Sweet home Alabama

(This actually is the song that was playing when I turned the radio station on, and I absolutely would have changed the channel but as it happened I was driving one-handed while eating a burrito.

That ended up being my lucky burrito, because after I paid my kid rock tax I was treated to the following playlist:)

The Ramones: I want to be sedated. 

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Freebird. 

Radiohead: Creep

YOU READ THAT RIGHT, FREEBIRD FOLLOWED BY RADIOHEAD.

Aerosmith: angel. 

Green Day: paranoid.

Black sabbath: Iron Man. 

The killers: somebody told me. Motley Crue: girls girls girls.

The Foo Fighters. 

Pearl Jam.

I stopped clocking song titles because that killers/motley Crue one-two  punch kind of blew my mind. 

I think I've got their algorithm, after two hours of listening (I was only an hour and twenty minutes out from the campground when I found the radio station in the first place so I left my ignition on.) 

It basically alternates classic with contemporary, by which of course I mean mid-nineties,

and they choose a song that's sort of adjacent to the song you expect to hear. 

Like if it's time to play "Dream On" they reach for "Angel" instead. 

"Iron Man" over "Crazy Train." 

Know any Killers songs? Right, "Mr Brightside", "Human" and...that other one. Play that one. 

It JUST occurred to me that a Boston radio listener would come to my hometown and be like "HOLY SHIT THEY'RE PLAYING CRAZY TRAIN."

And then, "I just heard 'When I Come Around' ON THE RADIO."

And eventually, "IN THIS TOWN, FREE BIRD ALWAYS PRECEDES A COMMERCIAL BREAK."

What, you mean they never go straight from Free Bird to a radiohead song? Weird. 

It's the little differences, man.

title credits Lynyrd Skynyrd and Radiohead