Highly Miscellaneous

1. Trump admires Putin for his "82 percent approval rating." That's peanuts. Kim Jong-Un enjoys 100 percent approval. Why not aim your bromance that direction?

2. There's nothing in sports that beats a men's Grand Slam tennis final. Sunday's US Open final featured Stan Wawrinka emerging victorious over world number one Novak Djokovic. Since three sets are required to win, great physical endurance is required. But the mental game is even more important. Over the course of three or four hours you can't let it enter your mind that maybe the other guy just has too much game, and you're not up to putting him away.

3. For my money, the biggest music loss this year wasn't David Bowie. I'm torn between the passing of Merle Haggard and the death of the great Rudy van Gelder, engineer of the classic Blue Note jazz recordings of the 50s and 60s. The sound was spacious and immediate, and defined forever what the heart of modern jazz is.

4. Will do a full post on this soon, but have been listening closely to Born To Run. The truth is that as a record it is more impressive than it is great. As Bruce will freely admit, the creating of the album was labored over and tortured. Instead of feeling felicitous and propulsive, many of the songs just feel busy. The many classic songs on this disc found their true life on stage, where they could breathe and cook.

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