It’s long been known that cells accumulate flotsam from the wear and tear of everyday living. Broken or misshapen proteins, shreds of cellular membranes, invasive viruses or bacteria, and worn-out, broken-down cellular components, like aged mitochondria, the tiny organelles within cells that produce energy, form a kind of trash heap inside the cell.

In most instances, cells diligently sweep away this debris. They even recycle it for fuel. Through a process with the expressive name of autophagy, or “self-eating,” cells create specialized membranes that engulf junk in the cell’s cytoplasm and carry it to a part of the cell known as the lysosome, where the trash is broken apart and then burned by the cell for energy.

Without this efficient system, cells could become choked with trash and malfunction or die. In recent years, some scientists have begun to suspect that faulty autophagy mechanisms contribute to the development of a range of diseases, including diabetes, muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer’s and cancer. The slowing of autophagy as we reach middle age is also believed to play a role in aging.

Most metabolism researchers think that the process evolved in response to the stress of starvation; cells would round up and consume superfluous bits of themselves to keep the rest of the cell alive. In petri dishes, the rate of autophagy increases when cells are starved or otherwise placed under physiological stress.

Exercise, of course, is physiological stress. But until recently, few researchers had thought to ask whether exercise might somehow affect the amount of autophagy within cells and, if so, whether that mattered to the body as a whole.

After reading this (at 4am, as I was unable to get back to sleep), I had two thoughts:

1. Yup, definitely gotta exercise more, and
2. Those poor mice.

I would make a lousy biology researcher.

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

Today’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional

I don’t remember the first time I heard about the concept of gay marriage. As I recall, dimly, through the mists of my memory, it was something Andrew Sullivan proposed. Or maybe he was just the first well-known proponent with a large megaphone to speak through. Or maybe I’m wrong entirely, I don’t know.

I do remember thinking: Gays getting married? Wow, that sounds kind of weird. Then, about 30 seconds later, my attitude was pretty much at Yeah, whatever.

And that was before I realized all of the social and legal benefits that go along with legal marriage. I know, I know, I’m slow sometimes and need some things pointed out to me. When you’ve always had a privilege, you don’t think much about what it must be like to not have it and sometimes you need things explained to you from different viewpoints. Everything I take for granted as a result of my marriage, other people — who are just like me in every way, except the gender of their partner — do not get to have.

That is ridiculous.

That is wrong.

We, as a society, have to be better than that. We have to have higher aims.

I’ve never heard an argument against gay marriage that didn’t boil down to: my religion says it’s wrong, or the whole idea makes me feel icky so I want it go away.

These are bad arguments. There’s no two ways around it: if you’re against gay marriage, you want to take rights away from other people for no better reason than you think they shouldn’t have them.

Here is an accurate distillation of my feelings about social progress:

You know our motto here at Kung Fu Monkey: Everybody who wants to live in the 21st Century, stand over here. Everybody who wants to live in the 1800′s stand over there. Thanks. Good luck with that.

John Rogers, Kung Fu Monkey, “Prop 8 Overturned” (2010 edition)

The day started a little weird: I went to Starbucks, which was packed. The giant handicapped table near the power outlets had one guy at it. So I said, “Can I sit here?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, and he moved his stuff out of the way so I would have more space.

I put my coffee down and started unpacking my things to get working.

“What kind of coffee did you order?” he asked, pulling my cup of coffee away.

“What?” I said. I reached for my coffee.

“What did you order? I need to get you another one. I wasn’t paying attention and I drank your coffee.”

To the best of my knowledge, since I began hanging out in cafes in 1986, that’s the first time that’s ever happened.

“Grande Americano, no room,” I said.

A few minutes later he came back with my new coffee (undrunk, I hoped) and a table nearby opened up, so I moved to it.

And then no writing occurred.

(Shortly thereafter, an actual handicapped person came in and asked if they could have that table, so that guy ended up moving to the table next to mine.)

How could that be? On Sunday, when I’d had some writing time, I’d written lots. I’d left myself a cliffhanger. I knew what the next scene had to be.

Nothing happened. I wrote one sentence, practically hacking the words out of stone. The next sentence was hiding, somewhere, afraid to come out.

Oh no.

At 12:30 I finally decided I would go to the gym, work out, get the blood flowing… I checked my phone.

Four calls from Sophia. I hadn’t heard my phone once. Stupid Starbucks music system.

She wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home. So instead of going to the gym, I went to the school, picked her up, took her home. She went upstairs to lie down. I opened my computer.

Couldn’t write.

Tried playing Tropico 3.

Hated every scenario I tried.

Read a friend’s story to send some feedback. Thought perhaps this might not be the best day for that, because nothing else seemed to be happening. Sent it anyhow.

Sophia came down an hour later to get some lunch.

One of Darin’s great gifts (or strengths, or abilities, or whatever) is that he can concentrate through anything. I can’t. I know I should work on that. But if one of the kids is home, around for any reason, only half of my concentration is present. (And it hadn’t exactly shown up earlier in the day, anyhow.)

I finally called it a day at about 3:30 or 4. I played some Civilization IV. The civ I built annoyed me and I quit the game.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get started.

• Super what? No, I’m not going to be all self-congratulatory. I hate it when people are all “Modern culture’s got nothin’ on me, man.” I honestly have zero interest in professional football and it really wouldn’t occur to me to spend 4 hours watching a commercial fest interspersed with bits of a football game. I used to watch baseball, but that ended in 1993.
• I ran on Thursday. I ran this morning. I didn’t run far, but given that I think I may have run twice in all of January, I’m feeling pretty good about it. You don’t have to plan out your exercise regime for the rest of your life. Just for today.
• I’m starting BJ Fogg’s Tiny Little Habits program tomorrow. When he sent out the materials on how it works, I said, “Ohhhh.” Yeah, duh. Anyhow, I picked a few things to work on. I’ll report back later this week as to the program’s effectiveness.
• Man, if you want to get a lot of hits on your blog, just talk about ebooks versus physical books. Also: the curly hair method.
• I drove to Union Square yesterday to have lunch with a friend. Getting into San Francisco is a pain in the ass. Getting out of San Francisco requires wiliness and stealth and maybe rocket launchers. If you’re leaving from Union Square garage, what in the best way to get out of the city? It took me about 25 minutes to get to the freeway on-ramp on 4th Street and I was a nervous wreck by the time I got there.
• Turns out everyone else in town decided this Starbucks was a good place to spend time during the game as well.
• This Nissan travel mug is basically the greatest travel mug ever.
• I didn’t have my phone with me today. It’s amazing how naked and out of touch I feel now without it. My phone, my self.

And maybe someday I can get mine to be as lusciously curly as hers is.

Of course, mine will be a solid grey by then. But I’m working on it.

(That’s Lenora Crichlow from the UK Being Human.)

So I asked him to answer a few questions about how he got started in playwriting.

§

Did you really start writing plays in Carol’s class, or did you do it before that? 

I wrote a play, once, when I was in second grade. It was about three pumpkins on a fence before Halloween. That’s all I remember about it and it never got performed. My hiatus lasted until I took the playwright class with Carol Wolf.

My fifth grade play was about the Hope Diamond. It did get performed but nobody had any idea what the Hope Diamond was, so it wasn’t a successful production. Did you do a lot of other types of writing before you started writing plays?

I did. I wrote short stories infrequently and a rough draft of a rough novel.

Why did you decide to start writing plays?

So the first assignment was to write a three page play. I brought it that next week to class and I was terrified that people were going to laugh at me and tell me what a horrible piece of garbage it was. It wouldn’t have mattered. Just seeing people standing up and reading my words, reacting to them as they read was instantly addicting.

How did you decide to start sending them out? Lots of people took Carol’s class and never sent their stuff out.

This was Carol’s fault. I had one short play and she said I should send it to Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre’s Eight Tens @ Eight competition. If she hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have and that might have been the end of it. But, the play got accepted and I was like, “Wow! Where else can I send plays to?” So I began looking for places.

Where did you find the places to keep sending them?

I started on the internet. I use Yahoo! because I have a sentimental streak. And just type “ten-minute play submissions.” Then I started clicking through the results and found places that way. I joined the Chicago Playwright Center (www.pwcenter.org @ $60/year) because they have a “playwright opportunities” posting site where places looking for plays post their openings. I purchased a book, A More Perfect Ten, by Gary Garrison, which has about a dozen opportunities in the back. Also, the Dramatists Guild Resource Directory lists opportunities. And lately I’ve been watching a form En Avant Plawrights (http://enavantplaywrights.yuku.com/) Where opportunities are also listed.

You’re 4 for 4 (I think?) with the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theater 8 10s at 8 Festival, and your play “The Fruits of War” has been performed on 6 continents. I assume you’ve had other plays performed in various venues. What makes your plays so awesome in terms of getting produced?

6 continents? You flatter me. But, three continents, 5 countries.

Dammit. Really thought you had the 6 continent thing going.

No other play has been [as] successful [as The Fruits of War]. But most of them have gone on to have several productions. I don’t know for sure, but I think that it may be a simplicity of set requirements in most cases and a universal appeal. Most of these plays don’t take place in a specific place but they touch on values and ideals that exist around the world and the directors and actors can put their local touch on the play. For The Fruits of War, although it’s always the same script, it is seen very differently in Brisbane, Australia compared to Chennai, India to Oakland, California.

How do you go about writing your plays? I assume like most of us you get your inspiration from that small “Writers’ Ideas” store in Madison, WI. How long does it take you? Yes, it’s the horrifying “Your writing process” question.

Depends on the play. In every case except for the first play I spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of the play, what it is that I’m feeling and what it is I’m trying to say. And I try to think of a way to say it that might give it a twist. The Fruits of War is about the stupidity of retaliating against an enemy because they retaliated against you. The concept would pass as a farce if so many lives didn’t pay the cost.

So how do I make people see it differently. Then I write. The Fruits of War was written in a week of mornings as I sat in the truck I used to drive. I wrote furiously until it was time to drive. Then I typed it up and took it to class. I got feed back, rewrote, got feedback, sent it to Short + Sweet and the rest is, well, interesting.So ideas come from everywhere. I listen and allow myself to react to what I hear and read. Then I ponder and sometimes it’s short and sometimes I may ponder on an idea for a year or more. Oh, and I often try to write more than I need since it’s easier – my opinion – to edit out rather than to fluff it up.

I always find the plays that I write the fastest tend to get the best reception. Does it work that way for you, or do you rewrite a lot?

Mostly, yes, I agree. I think that’s because those plays are coming straight through from the sub-conscious straight to the fingers. But bad plays happen like that, too. The real trick is to be willing to abandon the play/idea when it turns out to be a dud. On my computer I have 30 files for 30 plays. I’ve only have 9 ten-minute plays that have been produced. Half those files hold stinkers that I may never work on again. There isn’t any reason to go back when there are new ideas already percolating in front of me.

What about for sending them out? Do you keep a schedule or a checklist? Like, “I must send out 5 plays per month…” 

I keep a submission record for each play in the file with the play. I keep track of when I sent the play, to whom I sent it, and when the production is. Most places don’t tell you you’ve been rejected. So when I go through the file and see a date has passed I know the play has been rejected. You should also not be afraid of submitting to multiple places at once. Everyone wants an unproduced play. I figure that if I hit the jackpot and two or more accept the play at the same time, the table are reversed and it is I, the playwright, that gets to do some rejecting.

Best thing about writing plays?

Seeing the play on the stage. Knowing that I am part of a creative process that includes other people who are compelled by what I’ve written to bring it to the stage and in turn affect an audience. (Or should that be infect an audience? Hm.)

Worst? 

A constant fear that I’m going to run out of ideas. It’s a constant fear that eats at me while I am hastily writing down yet another idea for a play that I won’t be able to get to for a year or more because of the dozen other ideas I’ve already committed myself to.

You’ve clearly done well with your 10-minute plays. Are you going to move into one-act or full-length plays? Or is it simply easier to get produced writing 10-minute plays?

I’ve written three full-length plays and they have gotten progressively less awful. What’s nice about ten-minute plays is that you have a greater chance of getting produced. (In Short + Sweet Sydney they produce over a hundred plays in a five week period. That would never happen with full-length plays.) There’s not much call for one-acts that I can see. I’ve written a couple and they haven’t been produced. But I do submit them when I can. Also, consider my production resume – which theatres ask to see when you submit a full-length play. I have 9 plays and 30+ productions. That looks good and I hope will improve my chances of getting a longer look when my play lands on some artistic director’s desk.

Every screenwriter in Hollywood was first a playwright. (Seriously. First thing out of their mouths.) Any plans to start screenwriting? 

As an evolution of writing I think that would be a step after I have had a full-length play produced somewhere. It’s a different mindset as I look at it. With a screenplay you can literally be in Paris and then in Moscow in moments and jump back again. You can have characters with one line and are never seen again. Frugality does not seem to be a watchword for screenplays. And the formatting is different and the guardians of the gates are different. But, yes, I’d like to try to write a couple screenplays to see how that feels.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how useful is “I’m the playwright” as a pickup line?

I’m married so I don’t have to worry about it. But, I think when it comes to being in the theatre world, in small theatre, to say – and of course casually, as if almost by accident – “I’m the playwright,” will indeed get you attention. I’ve been taken out for coffee and inundated with questions. I will say this, though: if my play was the worst one of the night, I’d keep my mouth shut.

So…has this happened to you yet?

No, it hasn’t happened to me. I have had directors come and tell me that the actors are scared/nervous once they find out the playwright is in the theatre. That makes me wonder what kind of playwrights they’ve dealt with before. I’ve been fortunate so far.Oh, in one of the Short + Sweet festivals my play did get the lowest votes by the audience. But I wasn’t there.

(In fact, I had a discussion with a friend that I can’t even remember the last time I found an actor so attractive I’d like to get trapped in an elevator with him. Hers: Alexander Skarsgard.)

I think the first time I discovered Matt Damon was the most interesting guy on screen was in Dogma, when he and Ben Affleck were so much more interesting than the crap going on around them* that I decided that they were in a different, better movie, one I wanted to see (a whole hell of a lot more than I wanted to sit through any more of Dogma). I love the Bourne movies to pieces. I even liked The Brothers Grimm, which is a textbook case of taking an interesting screenplay and knifing it through the heart.

But the movie that sealed the deal for me in terms of “a Matt Damon movie is practically an auto-buy for me” was Ocean’s 12. Did you see this? Don’t. It’s a completely terrible movie. I’m amazed reading my own review of it, because as time has gone by, all I can remember is how much of a paycheck deal this was for everyone involved. But Matt Damon totally showed up in Ocean’s 12. Everyone else is reading their lines off of cue cards and Damon is selling his part, unbelievably horrible plot and all.

Here’s the tricky thing about the “Matt Damon” character: his shtick is that he is a regular guy. He’s not pretty like Pitt and Clooney, he’s not flashy like Tom Cruise. Damon is never going to play the psychopathic serial killer on Dexter. Given my general rule about Hollywood actors (that they’re always hiding a big secret), I’m pretty sure that Damon’s regular guy persona means he is a serial killer in real life. You know. It happens.

So. Matt Damon. Love him. Even in really middle of the road family flicks like We Bought A Zoo.

You know everything you need to know from the title of this movie. Guy’s wife died, his children are really lost and aimless, guy decides to buy a house out in the country, which turns out to have a run-down zoo attached to it. Guy decides to save the zoo, discovers he was also lost and aimless but now has a purpose. Of course, he might lose everything as a result of trying to save a run-down, crappy zoo. Tell me: how do you think this movie turns out?

The most annoying thing about this movie is that it has bad language in order to win the coveted PG rating. The rest of the movie is totally a G.

Thomas Haden Church plays Damon’s brother and he is completely frickin’ hilarious. He has maybe 5 minutes on-screen and he’s hilarious in all of them.

Also in the movie: the most charming 7 or 8 year old actress ever, Scarlett Johanssen (fully clothed, sorry guys), and Angus Macfadyen being a loud, drunken Scot. (But I repeat myself.)

Anyhow, if you’re looking for a halfway decent (albeit predictable and non-earthshattering) family flick, We Bought A Zoo is pretty cute.

*You’d think that Dogma would have taught me to avoid Kevin Smith. But no. I’ve seen a couple since then. And now I have totally sworn off seeing movies Smith may have also viewed, let alone directed.

“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring.”

and

If printed books do become obsolete in the next 50 years, Franzen is pleased that at least he won’t have to see it. “One of the consolations of dying is that [you think], ‘Well, that won’t have to be my problem’.”

Here’s to hoping that Mr. Franzen was quoted wildly out of context, because there’s nothing to say to that other than, “Oy gevalt.”

Let me help you out with this, Jonathan: the medium is not the message.

A physical book is just a thing.

(Also, Luddism isn’t nearly as cute as Luddites seem to think it is. But I’ll save that for another time.)

When Darin and I moved from Los Angeles back to the Silicon Valley, I think we donated about 30 boxes of books to whatever charity organization we were gifting with our things. When we moved from the house into the rental house at the beginning of the remodel, I think we got rid of another 30 boxes. When we moved from the rental back into the house, we were so determined to get rid of physical objects that even though we’d started to move to mostly e-books, we still had another 20 boxes of books we gave away.

We didn’t give away the ideas.

We didn’t give away the amazing writing (or lack thereof — you know who I’m talking about).

We gave away the things.

We had several bookcases built into our house, mostly by the front door and in my office), and that’s pretty much all the bookcases we need. If I really went for it, I could get rid of at least a third of the books in my office and not even notice.

Here’s the thing, Jonathan: in today’s brave new world, you can still have a book on paper if you really need it. There are tons and tons of print-on-demand places — in fact, your big fancy-schmancy publishers are probably using the same POD outfits that self-published authors are. We just don’t have to, anymore. Now I can have my books any time, anywhere I want.

You know what else I can have, Jonathan?

• Bigger print anytime, if I want it, without having to pay the exorbitant large-print edition prices.
• A copy of the book seconds after I hear about it.
• Books that have been out on the market more than 3 months. Try that in a bookstore, these days.

I don’t want to fill my house with more stuff. I still want to read lots of books. E-books are an awesome way to fulfill both of those needs.

Besides which: bookstores are not really great places right now. For one thing, they’re hard to find: here in Silicon Valley, where we’re all living in the future, there’s a Barnes and Noble at the Pruneyard, and a Barnes and Noble over on Stevens Creek and…uh…yeah, that’s all I got. The biggest independent bookstore in the area I can think of (actually, to be honest, its the only indie bookstore I can think of) is Kepler’s, which closed once in 2005 and, now with the retirement of the owner effective today, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it went out of business again real soon now. There are NO Barnes and Nobles in the entire city of San Francisco (although they do have more independent bookstores).

I knew Borders was going to go out of business when I realized that their entire floor design was built around their bargain books giveaway, which was always placed right inside the front door, no matter what Borders I went to. Barnes and Noble, which I always liked better because they were far, far more likely to actually have the book I was looking for, has replaced its yards and yards of bookshelves with games and caps and other knickknacks most decidedly un-booklike.

Making it far more likely that they don’t have the book I’m looking for anyhow. Chain bookstores haven’t made discovering new books a better task for the past number of years. An independent bookstore like Kepler’s is great for that (always found something on their tables), but they’re 25 miles away. And I don’t like to be the kind of person who discovers something in a shop and then buys it online — if I discover it in your store, you deserve the sale.

And as I’ve said: I don’t want physical books any more.

So we’ll keep our collections of Terry Pratchett books and Patrick O’Brien books and the Harry Potter series on paper. And a really kickass beautifully laid-out and photographed cookbook collection. But 99% of the time I don’t need actual physical books to enjoy them, Jonathan. I read them for the words. That’s what I remember about the experience. Not how whatever device — Kindle, iPhone, or paper and cardboard — felt in my hand.

Oh, and that book smell people are always yammering on about? Glue and mold, among other things. You’re welcome.

§

Update: There’s an article in the paper about Kepler’s challenges and how they’re planning on facing them.

One thing I really needed to figure out was what to do about my laundry room.

Pre-remodel, all I’d had was a hallway for the washer and dryer, which meant I usually ended up doing the laundry in the dining room. Which we therefore rarely used because there was always a huge pile of laundry on the table. I also had a gigantic clothes rack installed in the corner of the dining room for all of the air-dry stuff: my workout clothes, my unmentionables, my sweaters… Basically, our dining room was the laundry.

After the remodel, enough space was added to make the laundry room an actual room, with cabinets and things.

My new laundry room, complete with laundry

And the best part is the one that most people don’t even notice.

Go ahead, look for it….

No, not the Amazon box. That needs to go out the side door to the recycling bin. Ignore the box.

No, not the huge quantity of cabinets that I haven’t even filled up yet. I know, right? How is that possible? I have no idea. I’m not trying especially hard to fill them; I figure that will just come with time.

Oh, all right, here it is:

The clothes rack

I did lots of research, trying to find a)an indoor clothes drying rack that b)could handle lots of laundry and c)would get the hell out of the way when not being used. Lots of people have walked through my laundry room only to have me point out the rack and then they say, “Whoa! I noticed your piles of laundry and your empty Amazon boxes, but I did not notice that.”

I eventually ended up on a Swiss site, because I couldn’t find anything domestically made that fit my requirements. I almost went for a British kitchen rack, but I decided the sleeker Swiss German model fit our needs better. I can’t find the exact model we got online, but I’m pretty sure it was a Stewi.

This thing is awesome, particularly as 92% of my clothing now requires air-drying.

It works like this: you lower the rack from the ceiling using a very high-tech “twine” system.

The rack, lowered

Then you open the wings.

Prepared for flight

Then you load it up, however you like, either with things hanging on one of the rungs, or laying flat out over several, and retract the whole thing up to the ceiling.

I will have clean clothes again soon

I am very fond of my Miele washer and dryer, and the long counter over there on the left-hand side, currently loaded with many baskets’ worth of laundry is quite nice too. But this drying rack is DA BOMB.

It was such a thrill to be chosen for the production! It’s nerve-wracking when you’re in the theater, waiting for the show to begin: What if it isn’t any good? What if the other plays are so much better that mine just seems stupid? What if other people think it’s great and I think it’s stupid?

Long story short: I thought my play turned out pretty good. I’m never going to be able to see my work cold, though: I always know what was going through my mind when I wrote something, and I know that certain things I wanted to achieve aren’t there (and maybe it wasn’t clear to any of the participants that they were there). The guy I went to the show with (I’ll call him “Darin”) liked my play very much, which is always quite a relief to me, as he is what they call in the business “A Very Tough Critic.” I know what he’s like critiquing my work, and I’m his wife; I can’t imagine what it’s like to work for him.

Still: it’s always easier to see other people’s work from a distance. It’s completely difficult to see yours without knowing how the sausage was made.

Although I did know something about the production of the play in the festival written by a friend of mine, something that affected the final staging quite a bit. I didn’t tell Darin until the play was over, and he was shocked. “My God, that was the worst thing about that play!” he said. Apparently it was an element obvious to everyone except the director, who insisted on running with it anyhow.

One of the “nice” things about being a playwright is that you are, in fact, the final say on how your work is staged. No one can change a word without your say-so. Actors are on book, dammit; there is no “improvisation” or “inspiration” with the text as there is in movies and TV. The playwright has the right to pull the play at any time, because they own the copyright on the play. Screenwriters traded that power for money, so screenwriters get paid a lot to get shoved around and shat on; playwrights make no money whatsoever but are considered the author of the work.

Just depends what you think is important, that’s all.

Anyhow. It’s really exciting to see real live people saying words I wrote in a situation I dreamed up. I can’t imagine getting tired of that.