If you’re one of those people who can’t bear standing in place and pasting on a fake smile when someone is taking your picture, new Los Gatos photo studio imotion may be right up your alley.

The company was born about a year and a half ago, when photographers Annie Doan and Simon Bannister, both of whom have backgrounds in wedding and portrait photography, discovered that they have two other things in common: their mutual dread of going in to be photographed as kids, and their shared opinion that most portrait photography is just plain boring. It was then that they hit on the idea of merging portraiture with a journalistic style of photography that would, as Doan puts it, “capture people just exactly the way that they’re living, interacting with each other as a family, capturing their spontaneous and intimate moments together.”

As the photographers put their vision into motion, they made an unexpected discovery: Their fun, informal style of portraiture worked well with autistic children, who generally have a hard time sitting still for photos. “When we encourage them to run around and play with their family members, it makes an enormous difference for them, and the result is obvious,” says Doan.

In a venture that began in April and continues throughout the month of May, imotion is inviting families with an autistic member to come in for an hour in the studio (worth $95), after which they’ll be given a 12-inch by 18-inch canvas of their favorite photo (a $240 value), all for free, with no strings attached. “When [the parents] come in for their preview, they’re just in tears, because they’ve never seen pictures like that of their kids together before,” Doan notes. She adds that this emotional aspect of her work is what makes it all worthwhile. “For me, the best part is when the mom and dad are cuddling up, obviously caring a lot about their family and each other, and they look at the pictures on the screen, and they’re in tears because it’s captured them in a wonderful way that no one else has been able to.”

imotion, 15055 Los Gatos Blvd., Ste. 200, Los Gatos (408) 356-3333 www.imotionphotos.com

Cell Mates
Stanford and Berkeley unite in the name of stem cell research.

Stanford University School of Medicine is teaming up with UC Berkeley in the hopes of finding cures for illnesses like cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Made possible by a $9 million gift from the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, the Siebel Stem Cell Institute will provide a forum for collaboration between biomedical scientists, engineers, chemists and computer scientists from two of the country’s top-ranking universities, as well as other scientists from around the world.

Dr. Irving Weissman, director of the Stanford portion of the institute, believes Stanford and Berkeley can accomplish a great deal together that they couldn’t separately. “We have the whole clinical enterprise, and Berkeley doesn’t have a medical school or hospital,” he says, “so every time one makes a discovery that could move to a diagnostic, or lead to an idea of how diseases are caused or how stem cells might regenerate tissues, we have the sort of partners right here who want to take it and translate the next step.”

One of the possible long-range outcomes of this interaction is the development of a diagnostic test that can determine where cancer stem cells are and where they’re going, in the interest of wiping them out. Weissman mentions a potential collaboration with Dr. Gang Logan Liu, who as a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley developed nanoparticles that can be attached to cancer cells, allowing researchers to track the cells’ movement by external imaging.

“The biggest problem with cancer is that it spreads,” explains Weissman. “As a surgeon, if you knew where it was, you could cut it out; as a radiotherapist, you could zap it. But because the cells tend to wander out of the cancer into the bloodstream and land somewhere else, we would love to be able to know where they went by imaging, and test whether we could use radiotherapy or surgery to cure the metastasis.”

Stanford University School of Medicine, 300 Pasteur Dr., Stanford (650) 723-4000 med.stanford.edu; Berkeley Stem Cell Center, University of California, Berkeley (510) 642-5722 stemcellcenter.berkeley.edu

A Stand-up Journalist
Funnyman Will Durst adds “author” to his list of many jobs.

We mostly think of Will Durst as a stand-up comic, radio personality (his talk show with Willie Brown is back as a podcast via willandwillie.com) and political satirist nonpareil. But he’s had his share of odd jobs – 103, to be exact. Why so many? “I have always, still have and probably forever will have an eensy-weensy, teeny-tiny, itty-bitty problem with authority,” Durst confesses in his new book, The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing (Ulysses Press). “Of course, I was always aiming for Big-Time Headlining Comedian, for which there is no apprenticeship program, and it was necessary to keep my nights free.”

Durst is at his edgy best in All-American Sport, a witty collection of short riffs that skewer partisan politics from every conceivable angle. The Bay Area icon has several events lined up, including the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz (May 9), Books Inc. in Mountain View (May 21), the Punch Line in San Francisco (May 20-24, 26) and Greenfair Silicon Valley in San Jose (Jun. 7).

The Wave: What made you focus on political comedy?
Will Durst: Just has to do with when I grew up. I was in high school when Vietnam was going on. When I started doing comedy in 1974, I was 20 years old, and you had to be political.... That’s just the way it was. Also, my dad read five newspapers a day, and I thought everybody did that. That’s how I got into it. It’s kind of like a cross between journalism and stand-up, what I do. I consider myself a stand-up journalist.

TW: In the book you say that you “can’t wait to call George W. Bush Mr. Ex-President.” But, as a comedian, will you miss him?
WD: Oh, yeah – for political comedy he’s been like a father to me. I mean, we’ll all miss him. Thirty years from now we’ll talk about whoever the president is, and we’ll say, “Yeah, this guy’s bad, but remember George Bush?”

TW: Is the presidential campaign way too long, or not long enough?
WD: [Laughs] Well, it’s captured the attention of the media because we have a pundit-ocracy that’s built-in now, and they need something to talk about. With 24-hour news channels, that’s just the nature of the beast. Yeah, it’s too long, but the way they frontloaded it, this was designed to be over in February. And it just so happens that Hillary is not going to quit. It’s gonna take a wooden stake to the heart and a silver bullet and a noose and maybe a decapitation, and she would still be there! She’d run as a talking head. Literally.

TW: Gotta ask, of the 103 jobs you mention in the book, which one was the worst?
WD: Oh, gosh... it might have been the foam plant in Wisconsin. This was around ’74, ’75 [before I came to San Francisco]. I worked there three days. There was something in the foam, where I kept hacking and couldn’t breathe and couldn’t sleep at night. I thought it was me, and that I’d get used to it, but oh, my living God, I almost died. Finally I said, “I’m sorry, I just can’t do this.” They said, “Don’t worry about it. Turns out, one in five people is allergic to this sh*t.”

The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing was released May 1. For tickets to upcoming shows and events, visit www.willdurst.com.