Saturday!

Here in Chicago, it is a beautiful Saturday. It is a little warm, but these ARE the dog days of summer. People are outside enjoying the weather, there are live bands playing, and the smell of grilling meat permeates the neighborhoods. This sounds like a great day, right? Well, I was lucky to enough to experience all of these things on my way to the library for an afternoon of studying. Although there are quite a few upperclassmen here, I have only seen a few of my classmates. Either (1) they are well ahead of the game and don’t need to come in on the first weekend or (2) I am actually ahead of the game. Either way, I really don’t care. I am here to succeed, and I think that by approaching this as a 7 day a week proposition and spending some time with the material outside of class, I will gain a better understanding of the issues. Don’t get me wrong…I would much rather be out having fun, but this is something I have chosen to do. It is a responsibility that I do not take lightly. Many of you have written to me about how you are rooting for me, and for that I thank you. Messages like those are wonderful motivations for days like these.

There was a palpable sense of relief when we finished the last class of the day yesterday. Of course, I went to the student lounge to get some of my reading for Monday out of the way, but I gathered with the rest of my classmates after a couple of hours to toast the end of our first week with a cold Bud Light (read glorified water). I went home, showered, and met up with a former Bio-Rad co-worker of mine who was in town for the day’s Cubs game. I called it an early night. The week had taken a lot out of me, but I was looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday. I woke up at 10 (!) and watched a movie that I had recorded on my DVR, RKO 281. This is one of my favorite films now and should be a companion film when anyone watches Citizen Kane. The film is based on a documentary (the Battle for Citizen Kane) that outlined the behind the scenes struggle to get the picture released. The genius of John Logan (the screenwriter who also wrote a little film called Gladiator) was to place Welles in the position of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate who was also the basis for the character of Charles Foster Kane in Welles unsurpassed masterpiece of American cinema. Logan succeeded in drawing some parallels between Hearst and Welles to the point where the watcher gets a new appreciation of the nuances in Welles’ performance as well as idea of who Hearst really was. Liev Schreiber portrays Welles and is magnificent. He has the same voice and mannerisms, and he is close to being a dead ringer for the young Welles. John Malkovich is Wolf Mankewicz, the tortured drunken screenwriter and close confidante of Welles who rises up like the proverbial phoenix to write the masterpiece that few thought he was capable of writing. When you add James Cromwell as Hearst, Melanie Griffith as his mistress, and Roy Scheider as the head of RKO, the result is nothing less than stellar. I highly recommend this film. If you can, watch this film before watching Citizen Kane.

After watching the movie, I got myself ready, came downtown, and was at the library by 12 PM. It is now 4:30, and I am getting ready to get out of here. I plan on playing tennis with my friend Susan and then relaxing for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow is another day at the office!