I couldn’t help but laugh at the uproar over Barack Obama’s pitiful bowling score, mainly because I, too, know what it’s like to bowl a 37. My friends and I used to bowl occasionally in high school, at the bowling alley in White River Junction, Vt., and I was always awful, as I am at most games that require accuracy and hand-eye coordination. I loved basketball, but I was never a very good shooter, except for that crazy game in eighth grade where I scored 20 of my team’s 26 points, and the even crazier game where I miraculously sank seven of eight foul shots. (Struggles at the free throw line — that’s the one area of life where I can actually relate to Shaquille O’Neal.) It’s not that I didn’t work on my foul shots. I worked on them quite a bit. I just didn’t have an aptitude for shooting.

In college, I turned my attention to a new set of games. I’d never played darts before, but midway through my junior year a friend of mine, returning from a semester in England, wanted to play all the time. I was terrible when I started — I hit the wall more often than not — but gradually improved. Then when my friends proposed starting a bowling team, I was excited. Not necessarily about the bowling — when I play games I like to win, which is tough to do when you’re worse than everybody else — but about the cool shirts we got. They were aqua colored, with our names stitched over the front pocket, and a matini glass and our team name — Shaken Not Stirred — printed on the back. Nobody else had shirts. (We only got them because a member of our team has an uncle who makes customized bowling shirts.) We joined a handicap league; teams were ranked according to how much they improved over the course of the season. This put us at a distinct advantage, because there was a lot of room for improvement. Each week we got better, and eventually I raised my average score to 106. I even had one brief moment of glory, when, to the astonishment of everyone, including myself, I bowled a 178. By the end of the season, we had a lot of confidence; when we entered the bowling alley, it was with a bit of a swagger. (Of course, the cool shirts helped.) To our shock, we finished second in the league. Presumably, Obama has other things to do right now than learn to bowl. But I’m here to say that bowling is like most anything. If you work at it, you’ll get better. Maybe not a lot better. But a little bit better. I’m living proof of that.

Coming in Sunday’s Gazette is my story about Ukulele Night at Moon and River Cafe in Schenectady, a monthly event where ukulele players from throughout the Capital Region get together and jam. I first checked out Ukulele Night a couple of months ago with a guitar-playing friend who was interested in learning about the ukulele and maybe even buying one. My editors seemed to think Ukulele Night would make a good story, and so this week I returned to Moon and River with my reporter’s notebook. There were about a dozen ukulele players, and when they played together the sound was rich and bouncy, even melodious. You can read more about the resurgence of interest in the ukulele in Sunday’s paper, but in the meantime, check here for a YouTube clip of Hawaiian uke player Jake Shimabukuro playing a killer version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

No. 12 on the list of things I don’t care about: Katie Couric. I don’t even know where to begin with Katie Couric. I assume there are people who care about her, and watch her on TV, and are sad that her stint at CBS has been such a resounding failure. But I don’t know those people. I’m not sure anyone under 40 cares about Katie Couric, because I’m not sure anyone under 40 watches the nightly news. The whole concept of the star news anchor seems like a bit of an anachronism to me, and maybe the Couric failure will inspire the networks to think long and hard about whether this approach to news delivery is really the best model. (Because it’s not like I care about Brian Williams, or any other anchor, either.)

I asked a friend of mine, who is a TV news producer in a major market, what TV people think about this whole Couric fiasco. My friend speculated that the network evening news risks becoming irrelevant — “There is no reason to wait until 6:30 p.m. so someone who gets paid an awful lot of money can tell you what you could have found out hours ago” — and suggested the networks are beginning to question “big salaries” for anchors who can’t draw viewers. “On the ground,” she said, “I don’t think most people are worried about the fate of the ‘star system’ ... with the exception of the stars.”

So there you have it. No one cares!

Following up Monday’s entry: My friend Steve from high school e-mailed me to report that the B-52s show at Dartmouth was also his first concert. He also remembered something I had forgotten, the name of the opening act. It was Julianna Hatfield. It’s tough to remember whether she was any good, because of course we had hoped to see the Violent Femmes.

By the way, this is my last entry until I return from my vacation on May 1.