Gabe Oppenheim | Can you tell Amy Gutmann from Goldie Hawn?

We at The Daily Pennsylvanian have always figured that few people read the paper on the day before Thanksgiving. And so this column has often been used to take a break from serious questions - like how much pressure a couple exerts on a window when fornicating in public view.

For instance, in 1978, Greg Manning imagined what it would be like to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the University's luminaries.

At the Undergraduate Assembly's meal, "everyone sits around doing nothing," he wrote. "Eventually, the turkey gets bored, stands up and walks off the table."

Of course, the DP was equally jocular on the day before Thanksgiving in 1912. Then, it published a front-page story on the football season that was headlined: "New Rules - Fewer Deaths."

Truly a laugh riot.

And one cannot use the words "a" and "laugh" in the same sentence without mentioning former DP columnist Melody Joy Kramer, whose pre-Turkey Day piece last year was a Penn-focused trivia game meant to entertain travelers. I played the game myself as an Amtrak train hurled me into the horizon, an hour and a half late and $1,200 poorer.

Good times.

In fact, they were such good times that I decided to weave Manning and Kramer's ideas together to create a new monster: The first annual Powerful Penn People Picture Game.

It went like this: On Monday night, I ventured onto Locust Walk with several photos of major figures in Penn's present and past. Then I asked passersby whether they could identify those in the photos.

In the first round, "Spot the Penn Student," I held two photos of real terrorists and one of a costumed Saad Saadi, the Engineering senior of Halloween infamy. Most were able to spot the Penn imposter, though Engineering graduate student Savi Basavaraj was fooled by Saadi's authentic-looking dynamite, and he picked a real suicide bomber. Whoops.

In the second round, contestants were shown a picture of a smiling woman with gold earrings, a white suit and slicked-back blonde hair. They also got five choices. Once again, Basavaraj tripped up, choosing "Nancy Pelosi" as his answer. Engineering graduate student Ketaki Bhawe also stumbled, choosing "Amy Gutmann's sister."

Alas, it was former Penn President Judith Rodin.

Indeed, the second round proved difficult for many. College senior Adam Bromberg said, "Damn it!" when he found out Judith Rodin wasn't in fact Pelosi, and second-year Dentistry grad student Matt Joosse thought Rodin was my mother.

Next, I showed contestants two more blonde women and asked which was older. All correctly picked Goldie Hawn, who turned 61 yesterday, over Amy Gutmann, who turned 57 on Sunday. Yet afterward, one student asked me who Gutmann was.

Then came the sneaky fourth round, in which I displayed photos of two bespectacled men and asked: "Who's responsible for our nation's defense?" Those who recognized the now-retired Donald Rumsfeld (and not all did) chose men's basketball coach Glen Miller, assuming he had replaced Rummy, and not Dunphy. "That's dirty," College junior Peter Logan said when I told him it was a trick.

Well, Peter, life's dirty - and besides, Miller's team allowed 74 points to Florida Gulf Coast on Saturday. You call that D?

Next, I flashed a picture from a friend's Facebook.com profile. Three students thought the friend was "Rick Santorum," two thought he was "Provost Ron Daniels" and another believed him to be "Amy Gutmann's husband."

As for the friend, well, I hope Editorial Page Editor Evan Goldin can take solace in being mistaken for Gutmann's beau.

I subsequently charged students to identify the portraits of two old men and decide which had better luck with women. All my fellow Quakers proudly pointed to Ben Franklin as a Lothario, but the other chap posed a problem.

"Was he a president?" Logan asked. One student wondered whether the man was Thomas Jefferson, adding, "You better not put that I said Thomas Jefferson." Basavaraj said he "looked like a lady."

Ah, poor Christopher Columbus. You almost feel bad for the guy who launched a genocide against the indigenous.

Finally, I flashed the Facebook photo of a student wearing aviators and holding a pumpkin, with five choices. Some thought he was "Robert Downey Jr., picking pumpkins." Others chose "Amy Gutmann's son, preparing for [the] school Halloween party." But Joosse correctly picked "A TEP guy who's important." How did he know that this was none other than Austin Pena, the Wharton junior who was just elected to lead the InterFraternity Council?

"He's got The North Face jacket," Joosse said. "He must go to Penn."

Gabe Oppenheim is a College sophomore from Scarsdale, N.Y. His e-mail address is oppenheim@dailypennsylvanian.com. Opp-Ed appears on Wednesdays.

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