In case you missed it, Monday was a huge night for star-studded TV appearances.

First, President George Bush showed up on Deal or No Deal to joke about how he’s “thrilled to be anywhere with high ratings these days” — unaware at the time that his episode matched Deal’s lowest-rated Monday ever. I guess we should just be happy that Bush, appearing on the Iraq War Veterans edition, didn’t tell any contestants that they’d been stop-lossed.

Then Barack Obama stopped by The Daily Show to cater to common collegians, or the one faction of Pennsylvania that he already locked up. (Or at least thought he did.) It seems that Hillary Clinton’s approach — taking a whiskey shot and embarrassing her family — had more resonance with the campus crowd.

But by far, my favorite celebrity appearance of the night came from our very own Kal Penn, who guested on Conan to talk about two things: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and “Images of Asian Americans in the Media.” (I’ll let you guess which one is a Penn course.) During the interview, Kal mentioned that he doesn’t smoke weed and that he was formerly a vegetarian — two traits fundamentally antithetical to the best characteristics of Kumar. Dude sounds more like a professor than ever.

But seeing Kal on TV got me thinking: what other celebrities do I want to interim teach here at Penn? I’ve come up with a short wishlist — along with accompanying course titles — that I can only hope come true.

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This is the first of an at-least-one-part series about how awkward professors are.

Professors get awkward about even the simplest things, like their names. When introducing themselves to students, you can actually see them furrowing their brows as they debate whether to self-identify as “Professor Parker” or just “Peter.” To some extent, it’s an understandable dilemma. The formality of one might place an icy wall between teacher and student forever, while the familiarity of the other might undermine the professor’s authority until the class devolves into an orgy — cellphones ringing, kids snorting blow off the lectern, sheer chaos.

But rather than summoning the resolve to go with one title or the other, professors invariably end up waffling between the two, plunging themselves and the entire class into a purgatory of awkwardness.

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As The DP reported on Friday, terrible actor Kal Penn will go by the moniker “Kalpen Modi” during his stay here as a Professor of Asian American Studies. I guess that’s probably his real name. Maybe the dude’s trying to get back to his roots after brutally stereotyping them for feeble laughs in so many mediocre films. (I know, I know. The Namesake. Whatever. Can’t make up for Malibu’s Most Wanted.)

Anyway, the name change means that we won’t get to see any of these gems in future DP articles:

“Penn said he was excited to be working at Penn.”

“The Director of Asian American Studies will be overseeing all of Penn’s classes to ensure they meet Penn’s criteria for excellence.”

“Penn will benefit from Penn.”

“Penn is 100% Indian.”

Honestly, reading old DP pieces like this one must have been a total mindfuck for everybody involved — the writer, the editor, and all the readers. So thanks, Professor Modi. Your classes will probably suck, but at least now it will be easy for us to refer to you without implicating the entire University.