I finally got to see Obama in person last night at a rally at Assembly Hall, which is where the basketball games are played. I've never been to a rally before, and it was decidedly more rambunctious than, say, the Dalai Lama's trip to Assembly Hall. It was fun to see people I knew having roles there, like the econ department's bookstore rep was the guy in charge of throwing the beach balls back up into the stands if they came down to the floor. There were a lot of people there. Both Clintons and the Lama only had half of the hall, they put a curtain in lengthwise to make it more intimate, but this was a surprise visit and everything was already set up for graduation, so Obama had the whole Hall, and I'd say about 85% of the 17,500 seats were filled. By contrast, I think I read that about 3,000 people showed up for Hilary.

Highlights include:

• Obama making fun of his bowling (in)ability, saying he's going to take out the bowling alley in the white house and put in a basketball court and play basketball with IN rep Baron Hill (who's in the Indiana basketball hall of fame. Yes, Indiana has it's own basketball hall of fame)
  
• Seeing the correspondent from the Daily Show (the ex-marine who went to Iraq) do some filming. If it wasn't on last night, keep an eye out for tonight.
• Bookstore rep guy getting help throwing the beach ball up into the stands from a 5 year old
• Obama's speech was pretty interesting. He didn't talk a whole lot about policies, but it was a rally to get out the vote, not a stump speech. He gave a lot of information about where to early vote, like locations and times the buildings are open. He is also a very good speaker, I don't know if you've heard. Everything was either memorized or off the cuff (no prompters) and there were times that I felt myself close to tears because I really really want a lot of the things that he was talking about trying to do, and it feels like the Bush administration has let us all down on those things. I guess it was bitterness combined with hopefulness. Anyway, this isn't a political blog, so I don't want to get into it, but he's a good speaker.
  
• It was funny, although in poor sportsmanship, when the crowd would boo when Obama first mentioned the names of his two opponents and Bush. I didn't boo. I'm not a booer, except for important things, like Dallas Cowboy draft picks.