Email Author Michael Leaverton

2012 Stories by Michael Leaverton

• A Series of Unfortunate Questions

  published December 5, 2012

  At author readings, young fiction writers often leave disenchanted, because people are always going on about the book. Who has time to read? You... More >>

• Spelunking in the City

  published October 31, 2012

  Much is made about our city's storied history in subversive art, with iconic groups like the Billboard Liberation Front, Survival Research... More >>

• May the Farce Be with You

  published September 26, 2012

  We never watched the The Fifth Element, in theaters or anywhere else. But we noticed the posters, to be sure. Milla Jovovich wearing... More >>

• Literary Doucebag-Fools Pantheon

  published September 12, 2012

  When Brett Easton Ellis began reading D.T. Max's Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, he got the... More >>

• Trash Talk

  published September 5, 2012

  Despite periodic efforts, hipster boxing has never become a lasting trend. Part of the reason is that pain doesn’t give a crap about your... More >>

• Bottles Up

  published August 29, 2012

  Years from now when you move from the city (and you'll move from the city; everyone does), you'll look back fondly on these days when everything... More >>

• The Hard Data Indicates Laffs

  published August 29, 2012

  With Tripping on the Tipping Point, Human Nature, a musical comedy theater troupe from northern California, is currently underway on... More >>

• War 2.0

  published July 25, 2012

  Much of the war against computer freedom has centered on things like copyright, net neutrality, and SOPA, but Cory Doctorow argues that... More >>

• The Sure Thing

  published July 18, 2012

  Some people don't like to go to sketch comedy because they're scared. Are they scared sketch comedy is going to kick their ass? Partially. But... More >>

• "Ballplayer: Pelotero": How the MLB Sausage Gets Made

  published July 11, 2012

  One of out every five professional baseball players in the U.S. comes from the Dominican Republic. Take a second with that stat. Here's... More >>

• Par for the Corpse

  published July 11, 2012

  In the zombie novel Zone One, the undead action starts on page 13, with a military crew sweeping a New York office building for skels --... More >>

• Sometimes a Cigar Box Isn't a Cigar Box

  published June 27, 2012

  April Chartrand is a fiberalchemist who wrote a book called Angel's Destiny: A Novel Story of Poems & Illustrations and received her own day in... More >>

• Neck Beards, Yea or Nae?

  published June 20, 2012

  God bless filmmaker Laura J. Lukitsch; she spent six years talking to people about beards. She found, wonderfully, that all men have a beard... More >>

• Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Worry

  published June 20, 2012

  It's been more than 20 months since "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed, and across the -- wait, hasn't everything gone to shit yet? Wasn't the... More >>

• Smarty Plants

  published June 6, 2012

  Tonight’s lecture, What a Plant Knows, is based on a book of the same name by Daniel Chamovitz. We’re really excited, because... More >>

• Twain Shall Meet

  published May 30, 2012

  It says something about our culture that young adult books keep blowing up. We’re not going to say what it says; we like reading them as... More >>

• Buy Local — Mostly Beer

  published May 2, 2012

  As a manufacturing outpost, San Francisco doesn’t make very much. We make people click ads, mostly. And we make a lot of coffee. But... More >>

• Celebrity Muscle

  published April 25, 2012

  If fitness trainer Jillian Michaels suddenly appeared next to you at the gym, crushing standing calf-raises, would you work harder? How about... More >>

• Right on Time

  published March 14, 2012

  Few choreographers have stood downtown and not dreamed of staging the morning commute -- all that hustle and bustle, all those people slipping... More >>

• Remotely Composed

  published February 29, 2012

  When we first heard Terry Riley’s “In C,” our minds left us -- all those instruments, in all those minutes, all galloping after... More >>

• And Then Came the Next Idea

  published February 29, 2012

  With the Six-Word Memoir publishing juggernaut, Larry Smith of Smith Magazine discovered a lot of stories need only six... More >>

• Bloomsday

  published February 22, 2012

  Orchids used to appear wonderfully rare and exotic, a specialty plant hunted by romantics, hobbyists, and thieves; today, pallets of hardy,... More >>

• There Wolf

  published February 15, 2012

  Anne Rice is one of the most read modern authors, which is not surprising, because that’s how pacts with Lord Satan work. It’s... More >>

• Four Out of Five?

  published January 4, 2012

  It’s been our experience that a few drinks will benefit any game of Rock Paper Scissors, because then you don’t feel quite so... More >>

• Don’t Make Your Own Ketchup

  published January 4, 2012

  We often wonder whether it’s better to make things at home instead of buying them at a supermarket, especially when we’re buying... More >>