ALTOONA, Pa - Fans of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama might swoon at his speeches. They might stand in awe of his judgment and echo his call for change. But they probably are not impressed by his bowling skills.

The Illinois senator, who is on a six-day bus tour of Pennsylvania to “introduce himself” to the state’s voters, dropped in on a bowling alley in Altoona late on Saturday and, after chatting with some people, put on a pair of bowling shoes to try his hand in a competition with Sen. Robert Casey, who has recently endorsed him.

The candidate’s first attempt was a gutterball.

“I’ve got to get at least something,” he said as he turned around to face a growing crowd.

His next attempt, another gutterball, showed little improvement.

“No worries,” he said. “I’m not done.”

In his defense, Obama pointed out that he hadn’t bowled for 30 years.

Fellow bowlers — even Republicans — lined up for pictures and autographs, surprised that a presidential candidate was hanging out at their local alley. Obama probably is hoping that Pennsylvania voters are like the pins: once you get to know them, they fall more easily.

Obama eventually got a spare but it came after Casey had scored a strike and long after Roxanne Hart, a regular who joined the senators on the lane, had put them both to shame.

“I was terrible,” Obama said, smiling as he emerged from the Pleasant Valley Recreation Center bowling alley.

Hart put it a little more charitably: “He has a lot of potential.”

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PITTSBURGH - Sen. Barack Obama held a campaign rally on Friday in the Soldiers and Sailors museum in Pittsburgh. No drama there? Well, the building was used to film a crucial sequence in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs.”
For anyone not familiar with the 1991 thriller, the scene occurs when serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, is locked in a large cage from which he toys with Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster .

It’s in this scene that she discloses to him her childhood memory of finding a slaughterhouse for lambs.

The cage is super secure but not secure enough to hold Lecter, who escapes by clubbing his guards to death, stringing one of them up from the walls and then ….

Actually, you should see the movie for yourself. It didn’t win five Oscars for nothing.

Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Casey held a news conference to explain his decision to endorse Obama in the very room where the cage was constructed, a spacious, opulent chamber with an ornate balcony.

Obama, who is running for the Democratic nomination, made no reference to the film in his speech in a hall downstairs.

But there was a distant echo of one of its most chilling lines. Lecter taunts Starling when she visits him in the cage with the words: “People will say we’re in love.”

During his speech, a supporter shouted to Obama: “I love you, Obama.” And he replied smoothly: “I love you back.”

Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Cohn. Obama (L) shakes hands with Senator Bob Casey at a campaign event at Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 28, 2008.