On the "rough life" end of things, I left the house at 8:30am to go for a ride, thinking I'd duck up to Alice's, have some breakfast, head home. It turns out I really, really don't have the gear for even mildly chilly weather (wind chill's a bitch), so I bailed on going up the hill, bought a newspaper and ate too much breakfast burrito at Buck's. (The place is amazing, by the way. Besides the menus and the piles of crap decorating the place, it's famous for being a hotbed of Silicon Valley VC and startup activity. Great conversations to eavesdrop on.)

I just watched Gimme Shelter, originally meant to be about the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour, but ending up being mostly about the disastrous Altamont Free Concert, where a guy in the crowd pulls a gun and is stabbed on-camera by one of the Hell's Angels hired as security. NPR had a recent review of the movie for some reason, talking about how the film became about Altamont instead of about the Stones, and about the moments surrounding the stabbing, and the feel of that experience re-created by the film. I think the film is quite well-done, and well-crafted to build up to that violent climax; I can't really comment on its appropriateness, because as I learned about these things 30 years after the fact, I only think, "Of course they're going to make the movie be about the violence and what an horrifying train wreck the concert was." To me, it's unreasonable to think they would do anything else, to pretend that that extraordinary event was just another day in the life of the Rolling Stones: "Oh, and by the way, we had this wacky show where the Hell's Angels beat people up with pool cues, knocked out a musician while he was playing, and then stabbed a fan in front of the stage." But according to the NPR segment, that seems to be what some folks were expecting.

I cannot describe the sheer joy of having nice new tires on my bike. It's like a different bike. It just falls into turns now, and I don't have to wrestle it any more. I'm all excited to take it up in the twisties this weekend.

Some emotional instability after a couple of drinks on Tuesday night. Really irritating: I wish alcohol's effects were predictable. I'm settling down again, though. Aikido last night helped, even if I rolled my ankle and someone sat on my head while I was on the ground (further encouraging my belief that motorcycling is safer).