PUBLISHED:October 30, 2009

Duke Law student appears on Food Network Challenge

It’s official. Duke Law student Andrew Blumberg ’11 is a “Simpsons’ superfan.”

Blumberg will be appearing in “The Simpsons Mystery Cakes” episode of Food Network Challenge on Sunday, Nov. 1, at 8 p.m. (EST) in an episode that pairs “superfans” with professional cake designers to create cakes resembling one of the animated show’s main characters: Homer, Marge, Bart, or Lisa. Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, will judge the competition.

Qualifying as one of the show’s four “superfans” took more than just logging hours in front of the television, though. “One of the things I said that I think resonated with them was that I incorporate the Simpsons into the rest of my life,” Blumberg says.

Take, for example, the project he has been working on with Duke Law Professor Barak Richman to create a DVD that explains contracts using clips from Simpsons episodes. “That was one of the things that made me stand out from the crowd,” he says.

Blumberg has invited the Duke Law community to join him in the Star Commons on Sunday evening for a viewing party and he’s promised to bring items from the show and cake — though not in the form of a Simpsons character — for everyone to enjoy.

And although he can’t reveal the outcome of the show, Blumberg says that the experience was “amazing.”

“I don’t think I could have ever imagined that I’d be flown out to make a cake devoted to my favorite show, that it would be on T.V., and that I’d get to meet one of the people who was a voice actor on the show,” he says. “It was sort of surreal.”