Entries for September 2008

Nadine Velazquez, the übersexy Catalina from NBC's My Name I s Earl, has been featured on lists like USA Today's "Five rising stars to watch closely" and Variety's "Ten Actors to Watch." Oh yeah, and don't forget Maxim's 2007 "Hot 100"—she was No. 61. Here, Velazquez looks back at her days as a marketing student at Columbia College in Chicago, where bad hair was ubiquitous and graduation day couldn't arrive fast enough.

Name: Nadine Velazquez
Occupation: Actress
Major: Marketing
Graduation Year: 2001
Favorite drink/midnight snack: Water, fries, and Doritos

Impressionist Frank Caliendo, host of TBS's late night comedy show Frank TV, has mastered impersonations of people like President George Bush, John Madden, Al Pacino, and nearly the entire Seinfeld cast, among others. His uncanny impressions and political satire have also regularly appeared on Fox NFL Sunday and Mad TV. Now, Caliendo revisits his days at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he studied broadcast journalism.

Name: Frank Caliendo
Occupation: Comedian/Impressionist
College Attended: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Major: Broadcast journalism
Graduation Year: 1996
Nickname: I was always the one giving nicknames, and I stayed away from me.
Favorite drink/midnight snack: I've never been a drinker, but I'm definitely a snacker! Pizza or some type of ice cream brownie always works. Ha.

Erinn Hayes, who plays a devoted girlfriend in CBS's new fall comedy Worst Week, takes us back to her University of Colorado days, when she studied hard, played harder, and napped just about anywhere she could.

Name: Erinn Hayes
College attended: University of Colorado at Boulder
Major: Bachelors of fine art in performance
Graduation date: 1998
Grew up: Just north of San Francisco
Favorite drink/midnight snack: My friend worked at a deli, and we would go in after the bars closed, and she would make us gravy cheese fries. It is not the diet of a Hollywood actress, strictly reserved for college students.

Shonda Rhimes, creator of ABC's Grey's Anatomy, is the first African-American woman to write and produce a top-rated TV series. In addition to her Emmy-winning medical drama, she's launched the spinoff series Private Practice and written screenplays for such films as Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Crossroads, and Princess Diaries 2. Here, Rhimes revisits her years at Dartmouth, where she discovered her love for theater and confidence as a writer. The only thing she couldn't find: A hair salon.

Name: Shonda Rhimes
Occupation: Television writer/director/producer
Grew up: University Park, a southern suburb of Chicago
College attended: Dartmouth College
Major: English literature with creative writing
Graduation date: 1991