So me and Sid currently attend the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution located in beautiful West Philadelphia. According to this year's US News Best Colleges list, we are also the 6th best university in the nation. However in spite of the accolades, there is one thing we truly lack and is something I feel a lot of undergrads are bitter about: our complete inability to get name recognition. We already know that we're not Harvard or Yale (old money + old rich donors = fresh), but it's unacceptable that normal people are more likely to know about Dartmouth or Brown than us. Our name doesn't help either, especially during the countless occasions when we're confused with another top tier institution of learning.
Anyway, because we don't get too many props from the national media, you can imagine our surprise when we saw this last week:
Meet Scott McGann: West Coast computer programmer-turned-scrap metal artist-turned-homeless dude-turned-national headline. Oh, but that's not the real story. The real story is the shirt he is proudly donning in this photograph. If you look closely, the upside-down phallus actually contains the names of all of Penn's college dormitories (Harrison FTW), and the head is our school emblem. These shirts were handed out for free during the end of this past fall semester, and were all the rage since every third person I saw everyday on campus was wearing one. Shockingly, Mr. McGann is not a Penn alum and I could not find anything about a possible connection on Google (if it's not on Google it doesn't exist). This has led to a few possible theories about how he acquired the shirt. I will list them from 1 to 5, with 1 being the least likely just because I like to confuse people and make them read unnecessarily long blog entries.
1. He got it as a gift from a friend or relative who goes/went to Penn.
This is the most unlikely scenario because nobody in their right mind would give away such a majestic article of clothing. Its beauty lies in its simplicity and versatility. How many other shirts can you wear on a hot date, to Stat 111 recitation, AND while getting tackled by a cop? Exactly.
2. He dated a Penn girl and kept the shirt as a souvenir.
Mr. McGann would be quite the catch for Penn girls who like the scraggly, unemployed/unwashed indie rocker look so this scenario is not that unlikely. Although after noticing how that shirt looks on him I would hope, for his sake, that this wasn't what went down...
3. A drunk Penn kid working over the summer in Manhattan took this shirt off and threw it out the window of a cab right before he/she puked. McGann found it the next day and jizzed. in. his. pants.
This is a more viable explanation because the sheer number of Penn kids working in Manhatten over the summer significantly increases the chances of finding one of those badboys lying on the ground somewhere over there. It is also more likely because alcohol can really mess you up, man. It can make people do crazy shit like punch best friends, cry or giggle spontaneously, punch complete strangers, and throw away bad-ass T-shirts.
4. He scoured the internet looking for this particular shirt, and paid top dollar for it when he found it on Craigslist.
We're getting warmer. A lot of Penn kids are intelligent and resourceful so it would not be a surprise to me if some clever bastard somehow managed to procure not one, but TWO of these glorious shirts. Seeing that one was already way too cool for him to handle, he decided to share the love with a lucky stranger by selling the second one.
So what's the most likely explanation of how Scott McGann got his hands on a Penn College House 10th Anniversary T-shirt?
5. He killed someone for it.
That's right. He saw a kid wearing one of these things, and Bolo Yeung'd his ass right there on the spot.
And there you have it, guys and girls. The first installment thus far of Penn in the News. Stay tuned until next time when we actually have an alum getting on the news for doing some wacky shit.
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