All posts in: Greek

07 Mar 2021

Blog Roundup

  • 13 Things A Designer Would Never Do In Their Living Room [My Domaine]
  • The 43 Breathable Face Masks to Shop Now [Vogue]
  • FKA Twigs Discusses Shia LaBeouf Allegations in Gayle King Interview [The Fader]
  • Margaret Zhang Named Editor-In-Chief of ‘Vogue’ China [Fashionista]
  • Marin County May Be the Fakest ‘Woke’ Place in America [The Bold Italic]
  • Ten Years Later, ‘Greek’ Remains TV’s Gold Standard for the College Experience [The Ringer] not my college experience, but a series I loved!
  • Trailer for Michelle Obama’s Waffles + Mochi [Source]
  • Why I’m No Longer Staying Silent About Anti-Asian Racism by Sophia Li [Vogue]
  • Chloe Zhao’s America [Vulture]
  • We said goodbye to Daft Punk after 28 years
  • Swallowing Our Bitterness [The Cut]
  • The Future of Work Might Look Like This [Surface Mag]
  • I Love You, Please Get Vaccinated [The Cut]
  • The Invisible Artistry of Asian Actors [The Atlantic]
06 Dec 2014

Congrats Amber and Andrew!

Oh my gosh you guys, Ashley (Greek) and Gareth (The Walking Dead and also from Greek) got married last night and their photos are amazing. I know I’ve always said that Seth and Summer were alway my favorite tv and real-life couple, but they just couldn’t last. It’s something that Amber and Andrew managed to do and I’m pretty overjoyed (from someone that doesn’t know them at all) that they’ve decided to make things official by becoming husband and wife. I had a really unhealthy addiction to watching Greek on ABC Family.

The two were married on Friday night at the Carondelet House in Los Angeles.

“I could not imagine a better send-off into the rest of our lives together. Amber was beaming all night,” West, 31, tells PEOPLE. “We were surrounded by so much love.”

Adds Stevens, “It was the most magical night of my life. I wish I could rewind and play it again, but I’m so looking forward to our future together.”

The two met on the set of ABC Family’s “Greek” when Andrew was selected to be Amber’s boyfriend:

“He came in to play my boyfriend on the show. We were introduced by the casting director, and I remember I went back to the hair and makeup room immediately and started Googling him. I was like, ‘Well, that guy was cute!’ ” Stevens, 28, said on Conan in June.

Amber walked down the aisle in a gorgeous CB Couture gown while Andrew donned a J. Crew tux.

Throwback to the time I blogged about their engagment here.

[Source]

18 Aug 2013

Engaged: My Favorite “Greek” Couple

greek

photo cred | Amber’s Instagram

Congratulations are in order for my favorite television  on-screen and off-screen couple Amber Stevens and Andrew West! The two didn’t end up together in the television show “Greek,” but they ended up together in real life so that’s all that matters, right? Congrats to the both of them!

17 Sep 2012

School: 10 Favorite Posts

Earlier this afternoon, I received my school’s quarterly magazine and instantly missed everything about being back in school. This past week, I have been feeling all sorts of nostalgia. I wanted to be a freshman again. I wanted to see my friends. This time last year before class started, I was doing happy hours every day (not just for the drinks y’all! Happy hour food is my guilty pleasure.) It also didn’t help that some of my favorite professors that I’ve ever had were featured in this magazine’s issue too. So all of these mixed emotions led me to looking back on my college days and selecting my 10 favorite “school-themed” posts to highlight.

It’s time for a blast from the past! And when I say past, I mean three months ago.

  1. What I’ll Miss About “Greek” (Because I lived vicariously through these characters who had a Greek system)
  2. From One Post Grad to Many Undergrads
  3. Work With Me, Mentee
  4. {Guest Post} By Ashley de Leon
  5. Pickwick Surprises
  6. Prom Season Is Coming Up
  7. Dorm Life
  8. Meet: Brendan Leonard
  9. Smart
  10. Connie is a Graduate [from my idol Connie Wang]
20 Dec 2011

Remembering Television in 2011…

As some of you may have noticed, there wasn’t so much postage going on this past weekend. The reason for that is because I was recovering, but I also came across a post on Ohnotheydidnt about the television shows that ended this year. One of them – near and dear to my heart – was Greek. After reading that post, the only sensible thing to do was watch an entire marathon of the show starting from episode one throughout the whole weekend. So I didn’t write anything for Yow Yow, but I became reacquainted with a show I once loved and can still relive through NetFlix – thank goodness. It was a weekend well spent.

And now, here’s your second end of the year recap post of shows that I will personally miss.

Greek: July 9, 2007 – March 7, 2011

I was deprived as a college student from the Greek system and the only way for me to feel like I was not missing out on anything was to live vicariously through Casey Cartwright. This show is extremely special to me for reasons I can’t explain. These kids barely did any school work and their entire lives revolved around the Greek system social calendar. Naturally, I was envious. The show has taught me a lot about love and friendship and karmic synergy, but they all couldn’t stay in college forever. At some point, every one of them needed to graduate and it was at that point that I had to let them.

Read more “Remembering Television in 2011…”

05 Nov 2011

In the News…

Fashion

– I love this shot of Chloe Sevigny impersonating photographer, Terry Richardson, on the cover of Candy Magazine. [Source]

Tom Ford will design the costumes for the next James Bond film. [Source]

Sarah Jessica Parker is trying too hard with this hat. [Source]

Prince and Nicki Minaj will perform at the H&M x Versace launch party. [Source]

Levi’s suggests that we freeze our jeans instead of washing them. [Source]

Kanye’s kilt causes a stir. [Source]

Music

– Listen to The Flaming Lips‘ 24-hour song. [Source]

Franz Ferdinand will return in 2012. [Source]

– Former Quadstock performer, Dan Deacon, has signed to indie label Domino. [Source]

Television

– What the series finale of Greek could have looked like with this alternate ending. [Source]

Lady Gaga will sit down w/ Katie Couric for a holiday special called, “A Very Gaga Thanksgiving.” [Source]

FOX has decided to renew The X Factor for a second season. [Source]

60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney passed away last night at age 92. [Source]

Movies

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecLYhvu_WQY&feature=player_embedded]

– Is “Project X” our modern day “Can’t Hardly Wait?” Ehhh probably not.

Seattle

– Could a “Bruce Lee Action Museum” be moving into the International District sometime soon? [Source]

EMP’s Sound Off! entry deadline is Monday! [Source]

– Is anyone else aware of how many restaurants are popping up in Seattle recently? There’s way too many to count for me to post about all of them so just check out Seattle Met’s Nosh Pit blog for everything that you need and more.

Seattle rock group, Visqueen, will be playing their last show ever on Saturday, Nov. 26 at the Neptune Theater. [Source]

Other

Beyonce and Jay-Z’s fetus is a girl! [Source]

The New York Daily News decided to place a media ban on The Kardashians. [Source] I’ve only had to do that for Heidi and Spencer and Jon and Kate, but I adore the Kardashians too much.

– On a related note – Kendall Jenner is getting a Sweet Sixteen special on E! Not shocked. Still excited. [Source]

Pippa Middleton is writing a book. [Source]

– Want your brown eyes to be blue? Want a laser to take care of that for you? [Source]

– One footballer decided to name his son “Trendy” because he loves Twitter. In the words of my friend Tina, “You F-A-I-L FAIL!” [Source]

17 Jun 2011

In Things I Learned Today…

Nora Kirkpatrick (Greek and Dorm Life) plays the accordion in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.

– Toenails grow one millimeter a month. I wish I would’ve known that before I wrecked my feet at Dance Marathon four months ago.

Did you know you can now use Google Images as a search function by uploading a picture you have to find similar results? I tried it. It’s actually pretty cool. [Source]

[Learn Something Everyday]

10 Mar 2011

What I’ll Miss About Greek…

On Monday night, I watched my last episode of Greek ever. After four seasons, the ABC Family series finally came to an end and I just wasn’t ready to let it go yet. This is going to sound super silly, but I find myself getting incredibly attached to certain television shows. I can accept growing apart from television series like Grey’s Anatomy because I went through the stages of not having time to watch it, then falling so far behind that it was impossible to catch up. In my eyes, it was a mutual break up – sort of. However, I’ve watched Greek for the past couple of years and though I did not start watching the series when it first started, I spent a whole summer day watching the marathon to get caught up. The students of Cyprus-Rhodes have always had a spot in my Monday night TV time and a place in my heart. [swoon]

I think a large part of why I enjoyed the show so much was because I went through my entire college career without being in the Greek system. Well, Seattle University doesn’t have one so I didn’t really have a choice, but had I gone to another university, I’m almost sure I would have been involved. Through Greek, I was able to live vicariously through their experiences. At some point, I knew this day had to come. You can only attend college for so many years… In honor of Greek, I would like to dedicate this post to what I will miss most.

Casey and Ashleigh’s friendship was the epitome of all friendships! I’m pretty sure everyone was envious of this relationship, but the best part about the two of them was that they were relatable. They were the friends you fought with and had spontaneous adventures with. It was easy to identify with either Casey or Ashleigh and if you didn’t you probably wished you had a best friend just like them.

Read more “What I’ll Miss About Greek…”

24 Jan 2011

Meet: Chris Smith

In the middle of finals week last quarter, I discovered a web series called “Dorm Life.” Not to be confused with MTV’s failed reality series, “College Life,” – Dorm Life is a fictional short series that revolves around a dorm floor and their crazy antics. You have the overly-excited about everything resident, the best friends from high school, the sheltered geek who hopes to branch out in college, the funny guy, and then there’s the dreaded RA that everyone can’t stand. Sound familiar? Maybe even like your own college experience? As soon as finals week was over, literally the first thing I did was catch up on this series. I spent the first week of my winter break watching both season 1 and 2. As soon as I had finished, I started researching when a third season would be in the works. I contacted a couple of the actors from the show, and managed to get in touch with the main character Mike Sanders played by former UCLA alum Chris Smith. Dorm Life is a refreshing series with a whole lot of wit, charm, silliness and nostalgia. I guess I can’t technically say nostalgia yet since I’m still in college, but hell – nostalgia for my older readers.

Q: Hi Chris! How old are you and where are you from?

Chris Smith: I’m 25 years old and grew up in South Lake Tahoe, CA.  I was born in Hillerod, Denmark.

Q: What was your major?

C: Theater Acting from UCLA and I graduated in 2007.

Q: Tell us a little bit about Dorm Life and how it was created.

C: “Dorm Life” came about pretty simply actually.  Me and six other friends who were part of an on-campus comedy troupe decided that we wanted to keep making funny videos together after graduating.  We brainstormed through a number of ideas, but “Dorm Life” kept sticking around and making us laugh.  We all had unique dorm experiences and we really bonded over that.  I had been in communication with the Social Media Studio “Attention Span Media” and we both partnered on the creation of the first season.  Attention Span served as the production company and the rest, as they say, is history!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtmIClzoRV8]

Q: How did you come up with these characters? Were you imagining certain stereotypes of college students at all or were some of their traits based off of the actors or maybe even people you knew in college?

C: The characters in Dorm Life were like mosaics from our collective dorm experiences.  Early on in the writing process we brought in lists of our individual “Dorm-Lives” and basically sat around telling stories.  Naturally, certain common traits and characters started to rise from the crop.  From there, we decided on which characters we thought would be most fun to pair together in rooms and started to play in their interactions.  After we cast the show, the actors started to add their own layers and we found a fun rhythm through improvising on set.

Q: You play new freshmen Mike Sanders, were you anything like him at all in college? How were you similar or different?

C: Haha, truthfully I was similar to Mike as a freshman…but I think I had a twinge of Josh in me as well.  I was a theater major and was voted ‘floor entertainer’ in my floor government.  I drummed up a lot of adventure and pranks on the floor but I was much sillier than Mike I think. Mike is more ‘movies and TV’ where Chris is more ‘circus’.

Q: I read that all of you were students at UCLA, but assuming that the show was created after you guys were finished with school, how were you able to film it? You didn’t actually film on their campus did you? How were you able to film “the res hall” scenes?

C: Because it was way too expensive to film on UCLA’s campus, we started looking into hostels and welfare hotels (no joke!).  When that didn’t yield any results, we almost didn’t get to make the show!  We only had a small window of time where we could use all the actors and the opportunity was closing.  But at the last minute, Attention Span spoke with representatives from a small Buddhist college in Rosemead, CA that had a dorm wing available to film.  We checked it out and it was perfect.

Q: Were any of the storylines from the show based off of your own experiences?

C: Many of them were sparked by our experiences.  One of my favorite storylines was the ‘Mystery Hot Girl’ pursuit. My college roommate was a bit ‘new-to-everything’ and ended up falling for a girl down the hall.  He didn’t know how to tell her, so I devised that he write a note and we would attach it to his Roomba and send it to her.  I’ll never forget piloting the remote control vacuum with the fate of his love life on its back.  We smashed it a few times into her door, and when she opened it, we bolted.  I’d like to say that they ended up getting married….but it didn’t work out.  Instead, we used it as inspiration for one of the sequences in the show.

Q: Give us your craziest college story.

C: My craziest college story (or at least the one that comes to mind right now) actually happened my freshman year at UCSD.  (I was a sophomore transfer to UCLA).  Me and a buddy on my floor really wanted to explore the UCSD campus at night.  So we decked ourselves out in black and armed ourselves with flashlights to see what back alleys and secret passages we could find.  We ended up staying up all night and brought our exploration to the edge of campus near Blacks Beach where there is a long winding path that leads you down some cliffs to the ocean.  We decided to run down and catch the sunrise, but along the way, I saw this strange mass climbing up the path towards us.  It looked too big to be a person and was moving in a strange gait.  We were both convinced that we were approaching a strange ocean creature that had wandered up the path- a sea lion maybe?  We both got really freaked out and debated going back.  But after we decided that it was for the good of science that we document this creature, we pushed on.  We got closer and closer to the ‘thing’ and saw that it was black on both ends with a large white stripe in the middle, but it was still too dark to see clearly.  Finally, we got close enough to really see it and saw that the white stripe wasn’t a pattern of fur or anything, it was actually a bare butt.  The ‘creature’ was a super-drunk surfer who was wandering aimlessly up the path with his surfboard and his pants around his ankles.  We asked if he was okay, and all he could mutter was, ‘rough night’ and then kept walking.  I later found out that that person was Jim Brandon from Dorm Life.  (Okay, that last part is a lie).

Q: What was your favorite episode?

C: I think my favorite episode is ‘Pranks’.  Early on in the writing of that episode, I was a huge advocate for the ‘Window of Pane’ (the glass prank Mike pulls on Marshall).  A lot of other people thought we should come up with something a bit easier to do, but I fought tooth-and-nail for it.  We ended up finding a polycarbonate dealer who cut a piece to fit the doorframe perfectly.  It was our most expensive prop on the first season and we knew we were only going to get one take to pull it off.  While we were shooting it, we had all of the cast and crew gathered around to watch.  When it worked, everyone broke out into cheers.  I think that episode is a lot of fun, and also brings up one of my favorite on-set memories. [This is also one of my favorite episodes!]

Q: College is the best four years of your life. True/False?

C: Tralse.

Q: If you had to give advice to a new freshman student living in the dorms, what five things would you tell them?

C: 1) Hang out with your floor.

2) Play floor bowling as often as possible.

3) Don’t IM your roommate while they’re sitting across from you.

4) Bring a surprise pizza to one of your floor government meetings, even if you’re not in it.

5) Watch Dorm Life!

Q: What do you think college has REALLY taught you?

C: To be a sponge for new experiences and people.  Having an open mind in college sets a precedent that you can carry with you into the ‘real world’.

Q: I recently acted in a friend’s five-minute movie and until that experience, I never really understood how much work and time went into something like this. We spent about two days filming for a five minute short film. For Dorm Life, the episodes ranged from 5-14 minutes, about how much time did you actually spend filming per episode?

Both seasons of Dorm Life were shot like feature films- meaning that we shot most of the episodes and scenes out of sequence so that we could be most efficient with people’s schedules and each new location.  Season 1 was shot in 16 days (about 12 hour days with one day off) and season 2 was shot in 21 days.  After production, I spent about two months editing season 1 and about five months editing season 2.

Q: Can you tell us any behind-the-scenes secrets from Dorm Life? Any juicy gossip?

C: I’m pretty sure that every cast member in Dorm Life has, at one point, kissed each other.

Q: The show was incredibly popular on Hulu and it was even nominated for awards in which you had won a couple. Did you ever imagine Dorm Life to become this successful? What has the success done for you and all of the cast?

C: I think we all knew we were tapping into something special when we set out to make the series.  Not in a ‘let’s make this and get a bunch of awards!’ way, but rather, doing our best to make a college show from the college student point of view.  I think the success of Dorm Life stems from that sense of familiarity for people who went to college.

Q: This is off topic, but can you tell me a little bit about That Juggler Guy?

C: Haha!  Absolutely!  “That Juggler Guy” is my ‘juggling persona’.  Yes, I said that right.  I have been a juggler since I was twelve years old and started a juggling group with my brother and a friend called ‘The Tahoe Jugglers’.  We performed around town while I was at high school and did a bunch of charity events and street performing.  When I went to UCLA, I was ‘The UCLA Juggler’ (a position me and my friend came up with) and performed at the football and basketball games which got me to travel with the basketball team to three final four tournaments and a couple football bowl games.  I went on to juggle in Hong Kong, Beijing, Copenhagen, and just got into Cirque du Soleil as a physical actor.  Like I said before…I’m a bit more circus than Mike Sanders.

http://www.thatjugglerguy.com

Q: Do you think the webisode could ever be turned into a television show? Would you push it if you had the chance to?

C: We’ve always considered pushing Dorm Life to TV and would love the opportunity.  Hopefully it comes sooner than later before we need to turn it into ‘Retirement Community Life.’

Q: I spent the first few days of my winter break off from college to watch both seasons of Dorm Life. I was so mad that the last season was actually released back in 2009 and that I was almost two years too late. Any chance of a third season?

C: It’s definitely possible!  I know the third season is still being pitched around.  It’s just a matter of the right pieces falling into place.

Q: Chris, what are all of you and the cast up to now? What can we expect from you in the future?

C: All of us dorm lifers are still pursuing careers in the arts.  Jim Brandon and Brian Singleton just finished the NBC Writers on the Verge’ program in hopes of getting staffed as TV writers.  Jessie Gaskell is the head writer for E!’s TV show “The Dish”.  And the rest of us are still pursuing various creative paths in acting, writing, and producing. [Note: You can also catch Nora Kirkpatrick on ABC Family’s Greek!]

I spent my 2010 getting agents for acting and writing and am excited to start creating again.   I’m going to be making a bunch of comedic shorts (with some Dorm Lifers) this year while writing a feature film to make next year.  My first feature film (which I made when I was 18 in tribute to my late father) just came out on iTunes last week.  It’s my first filmmaking attempt, so I still cringe a bit at it, but it’s a great feeling to get it distributed.  Plus all the proceeds go to a scholarship I set up at my old high school for kids who have overcome adversity and pursued a career in the arts.  You can rent or buy it here:

Beyond that, the Dorm Life group is still chugging away in LA.  After all, season 3 is always a possibility…

To watch every single Dorm Life episode, click HERE! Your ability to be unproductive begins now.

03 Jan 2011

Pretty Little Liars Pumped

The Pretty Little Liars marathon will begin at 11AM today! (January 3rd)

Oh I am so there…

If you have not caught on to the series yet, but are interested in finding out what it is all about, you might as well start tomorrow. In fact, there’s no better way because it is the ONLY way.

New episode begins at 8:00 PM and catch the new season of Greek at 9:00PM right after.