Literary Death Match

TV (pilot)

December 12, 2012 — On "The Greatest Night in Literary History," LDM TV: The Pilot's second show (LA, Ep. 18 at Florentine Gardens) began with the bow-tied and twinkling-jacketed Adrian Todd Zuniga storming the "stage" — in this case a full-size boxing ring — and with whooping Michael Buffer-like tones, he summoned the night's first pair of combatants: novelist Simon Rich (What in God's Name; Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations) and author Jeanne Darst (Fiction Ruined My Family).

Darst came ready for battle in boxing shorts, a copy of Strunk & White in her tweed jacket pocket, and a blackened eye. She read from "Painters on Bicycles" — an excerpt from Fiction Ruined My Family. A chapter she wanted to call "Unrequited Cunnilingus" in which she admitted that she was at Purchase" because I was an academic fuck-up which looks a lot like being an artist." Zuniga then turned the show over to the judges once again, with Orlean saying of Darst's work, "That was a little bit like the Bible meets 50 Shades of Grey. Two extraordinary pieces of literature and you brought them together. I bow to you." Moby was up next, referring to his notes, "I don't hear very well, so the first thing I wrote was Penguin cunnilingus. Then I wrote on a bicycle. Then I got distracted thinking about how you would do that — how you'd go down on a penguin on a bicycle." Finally, Key who found her appearance alluring. "It's like Mickey and Rocky ran into one another and became one organism."

Hammer Museum

July 11, 2012 — In what was one of the most wondrous nights of LA's literary year, Literary Death Match stormed the Hammer Museum where an energetic (and sold-out!) audience witnessed a calamatous finale that saw memoirist Jeanne Darst out-silly string fictonist Tupelo Hassman by a final score of 7.3 grams to 4.5 grams (what!?) to win the Literary Death Match LA, Ep. 11 crown!