When Dr. John Money and other scientists began studying gender-variant children, says Gregory Lehne, an assistant professor of medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University, they found that instead of becoming transgender adults, many of the kids were growing up to be gay males and straight or gay females. They also found that most transgender adults didn't report having gender-variant childhoods. That's why, today, Lenhe is bemused by the sudden emergence of transgender and gender-variant children.

"Almost all of these gender-variant children are gay children," he says. "What we're seeing before our eyes is evidence that the origins of sexual orientation are very real in life. These are gay kids."

So how about it, everyone? Known—or raised—kids you thought might be gay or trans? If you're gay or trans, when did you start realizing it?

"Televangelists no live forever?"

The Reverend Jerry Falwell, who stood firm for hetero-decency amid an invasion of purple Teletubbies, has gone to the great straight white world in the sky. In lieu of flowers, write your own caption.

In this week's Voice, sports writer Allen Barra takes on a potential legend in the making—Mets shortstop and 23-year-old phenom José Reyes. Barra writes:

Like Mickey in 1951, Reyes is reputed to be the fastest player in the game, and like Mantle, he is a switch-hitter, which conjures up all number of possibilities. . . .

Rickey Henderson—the greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history, the game's all-time leader in runs scored and stolen bases, second only in walks to Barry Bonds, and collector of nearly 300 home runs—pays Reyes what, considering its source, might be the ultimate compliment: "He might end up being as good as me."

Or as good as Alfonso Soriano.

Stealing Mickey's Mantle
Podcast with Allen Barra

('Voice' page-one illustration by David O'Keefe, 02.07.07)

In this week's Letters, a player with TV on the Radio calls the 'Voice' Pazz & Jop cover racist—not to mention simpleminded, mean-spirited, and snarky. Says saxophonist Martín Perna:

Nowhere in the consciousness of Voice editors or illustrator David O'Keefe can we find memories of James Byrd, a black man who was dragged behind a truck to his death by white racists in Jasper, Texas, in 1998, or Arthur "J.R." Warren, who was run over four times and killed for being black and gay in West Virginia in 2000, and all the other lynchings that happened in the U.S. before and since. These events are still fresh in the minds of black people, as well as in the hearts and minds of the rest of us who may not be directly victimized by these particular lynchings but who are nonetheless endangered by racism and committed to social justice and healing America of its sick racist condition.

O'Keefe and his colleagues may not have meant to intentionally be racist. They probably meant to be funny, like the University of Texas law students, Clemson University undergrads, or white college students nationwide who plan and publicize their blackface or "ghetto parties," then act surprised that people find their actions offensive and unacceptable. That this picture could be drawn and not questioned or vetoed by any of the people who saw it prior to publication shows the level of ignorance and racism that persists in leftist institutions like the Voice that continue to posture as hip and progressive. It reveals that among decision-makers at the paper there is not one single person with any sort of racial consciousness or sensitivity who had the power or courage to send that picture back to the drawing board.

Anybody out there agree with Perna—or think otherwise?

Reviewing the new documentary about Ralph Nader, An Unreasonable Man, Jim Ridley says debate over the two-time presidential candidate boils down to whether the world should blame him for the election of George Bush. Ridley asks:

Knowing what they know now, do Nader supporters regret their vote?

Well?

Village Voice 2000 endorsement: A Green Light for Nader

The Voice introduces a new sex column this week, Married, Not Dead. Nora Shelley and Essie Carmichael live in Brooklyn, are raising kids, and are determined to get lucky with their husbands.

Carmichael leans toward me and whispers in my ear, "Doing it without a child in the house is really hot." This is when I burst into tears.

"Carmichael," I say, "I have three kids. And one of them is usually in my bed."

Cover story: Married, Not Dead
Audio: An interview with the authors

So this construction worker, two young daughters at his side, walks into the 137th Street subway station yesterday. Wesley Autrey, the dad, sees this other guy having a seizure and joins a couple of women trying to help. The ailing man, Cameron Hollopeter, falls to the tracks seconds before the downtown local enters the station. From the New York Post:

"He landed between the tracks," Autrey said. "Do I let the train run over this guy? I saw the ladies had my two daughters, so I hopped over on the tracks."

Outcome: Autrey lived, albeit with a little train grease on his hat. Pressed by Autrey into the shallow space between the rails, Hollopeter lived. The kids say their father's a hero. Question: Would you have jumped, too?

Subway Angel's Daredevil Leap

Eeeewww. That's about all we're going to say on the uncomfortable subject of blood-sucking bedbugs, starring this week—however gloriously—on the cover.

After reading the tales of misery in Mara Altman's article, we figure, you'll have your own iiicks to add. Be our guests.

Further reading: Bed Bugs & Beyond: Outbreak of Paranoia (and Lint) Sweeps the City

You didn't have to be in New York City on 9-11 to know how bad the air was for your body. The acrid smoke and dust, in shades of gray, brown and yellow, poured out from the rubble and covered vast tracts of the city. People in Brooklyn would later report finding high levels of asbestos in their apartments. You could hardly be surprised that the dust created chronic respiratory problems for those with prolonged exposure.

But what Kristen Lombardi writes about in this week's cover story is another matter. Some 75 recovery workers—people who spent weeks and months around the pile of rubble—have developed cancers of the blood. Enough people have gotten sick that scientists are beginning to suspect we may be looking at a cancer cluster—a 9-11 cancer cluster.

Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action, reported on a cancer cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, which many believed was caused by industrial pollutants in the water. Harr says that it's hard to prove what causes a cluster, and that you have to approach them with a measure of caution. "The criticism is that you wait for proof and meanwhile people are dying," he argues. "But proceeding on the basis of alarm is also the wrong thing to do."

How about you? Need more evidence? Ready to sound the alarm? Wondering whether it's too late?

Ferguson writes that Will was a constant presence on the protest scene, always showing up in one place or another:

In 2004, I remember him being everywhere during street protests surrounding the Republican National Convention in New York, video camera in hand. He reveled in these clashes, always returning with tales of glory, folk songs about resisting the police, and reports of the free food and fun he'd had along the way.

We invite your thoughts about Will's life and death here. Did you know Will personally? Have you been in protest situations that felt dangerous? Is the risk of death or injury in a demonstration worth it? How do you make sense of this loss?

Whether you love Saturday Night Live or think it sucks (or are one of the many people I spoke to who said "SNL sucks now. I haven't watched it in years"), there are clearly a lot of people who care about it. There's no shortage of cultish adulation on the web — there are blogs and websites and alt-listservs and chat boards dedicated to dissecting every episode, going back to the dreaded 80-81 season (which, interestingly, is the only season absent from video archives on the official NBC site) all the way back to the legendary opening night on October 11, 1975 (when Chevy Chase yelled out the first-ever "Live From New York, It's Saturday Night!"). Groupies and comedy nerds know all about the SNL Transcripts page, which provides a near-ridiculous library of old sketches (searchable via Google in case you can only remember one thing about that Dillon Edwards sketch), and the SNL Archives page can get you exactly what you need if you happen to be looking for impressions of people starting with the letter "Y" (Yassert Arafat, Yoko Ono etc.). YouTube has an ever-growing cache of SNL clips and classic moments (for example, here, here, and here). A Google search for the phrase "more cowbell" yields 1,030,000 results.

John Belushi, sorely, sorely in need of a little help from his friends

Then there are the critics. To save you hours of Googling, I have chosen a few good ones, recappers and reviewers who clearly watch the show with a Kremlinological attention to detail. There are the forums at TV.com and Saturday-Night-Live.com, but my picks are Eric Friesen at Backward Five and Jason Nummer at Whatevs.org. Friesen's recaps are minimalist but thoughtful, with good, wonky analysis folding in other factors (for example the YouTube issue here) and tart observations of what he liked (Al Pacino checking his bank balance scored a hit), hated (racist  employee in Colonial Williamsburg: "It passes as comedy") and what it means for the season (Friesen thinks the new slimmed-down cast is a good thing, invigorated by the new blood: "Suck it up, SNL community. And be a little nicer to Seth Myers"). Nummer's (with partner Heather O'Neill, now retired from active duty) are far more comprehensive, with a rating system, sketch-by-sketch analysis, and minute attention to detail (for example: "Don Roy King, the show's new director, also seems more apt to shooting live television in a high definition environment since the camera blocks and angles are much tighter than last year's rather clumsy transition into widescreen"). Nummer told me via email that he agrees with Michaels' decision to pare down the cast: "The recurring thread through my reviews since 2002-2003 was that the veterans were well past their prime and just gobbling air time away from the more energetic newbies. . . . Cast members should take around five years, then call it a day."

Well, perhaps — though that would cut off people like Phil Hartman, who spent eight seasons on SNL coming up with classics like "I've got chunks of you in my stool" (note the contrast with real-SNL and fake Studio 60: Here, Sting plays a sneering Billy Idol in leather and studs; there, Sting plays Renaissance music on a lute). Falling into the trap of linking a few classic SNL moments is too easy, but I'm totally going to do it anyway (a whole lotta time was spent on the internet here in the name of "research") — just by way of scratching the surface it behooves me to mention, in no particular order, the Samurai Deli; the Church Lady; Roseannadanna and Emily Litella; chopping broccoli; The Penis Song; Celebrity Jeopardy (fyi: This Saturday features "The Best of Darrell Hammond" which marks the first time that a sitting cast member gets the best-of treatment); Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor play Word Association; Drunk Girl and Goat Boy (Will Forte: "People compliment me on Goat Boy all the time") ; the Festrunk Brothers (echoes of whom were visible in this weekend's Borat opener); first female solo anchor, Jane Curtain (with what might be best described as gravita-tas)(sorry); "Not Gonna Phone It In Tonight"; the Sweeney Sisters; digital shorts (Lazy Sunday to Laser Cats); Star Wars (if they should bar wars, plus screen tests); Hands on a Hardbody; Two A-Holes; and Always. Be. Cobbling.

This is a non-exhaustive list; please post links to your own favorites in the comments, because there are 32 seasons of SNL to choose from. Apologies in advance for all the work you're not going to get done today.

Village Voice cover story: That '70s Show

"The market's overly saturated and, you know, there's things you need to do to sort of—some people gotta do what they gotta do," said one music marketer. "You know? It's the society that dictates it. It's not the rappers that dictate it."

Kim Osorio, right, just won a $15.5 million sexual harassment verdict against the Source.

The only thing that sets these students apart from kids at any other school in America—aside from their special-ed designation—is the electric wires running from their backpacks to their wrists. Each wire connects to a silver-dollar-sized metal disk strapped with a cloth band to the student’s wrist, forearm, abdomen, thigh, or foot. Inside each student’s backpack is a battery and a generator, both about the size of a VHS cassette. Each generator is uniquely coded to a single keychain transmitter kept in a clear plastic box labeled with the student’s name. Staff members dressed neatly in ties and green aprons keep the boxes hooked to their belts, and their eyes trained on the students’ behavior. They stand ready, if they witness a behavior they’ve been told to target, to flip open the box, press the button, and deliver a painful two-second electrical shock into the student at the end of the wire.

The school's founder, Matthew Israel, says that the shocks don't hurt much and that sometimes so-called aversive therapy is the only method that works. New York state inspectors, Murphy writes, say the school goes too far, administering shocks "for behaviors that are not aggressive, health dangerous, or destructive, such as nagging, swearing, and failing to keep a neat appearance."

Just asking: Does shocking kids seem okay to you, under any circumstance?

No matter what.

Nicholas Burham photo via villagevoice.com

Lombardi writes:

Two years ago, his landlord, Larry Tauber—by accounts, neither a sleazy slumlord nor a chummy pushover—offered Peckham $75,000 to leave his $1,007-a-month West 21st Street one-bedroom, so that he could begin a gut renovation of the building to convert it to swanky rentals. Peckham's refusals led Tauber to up the offer; by this summer, he'd tried to tempt the tenant with an $800-a-month lease governed by rent-stabilized guidelines on a renovated one-bedroom on West 69th Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway, a five-minute walk away from the apartments of Steven Spielberg and Bruce Willis.

But Peckham kept saying no. . . .

Apparently, a rent-stabilized apartment--on the top floor, at the back of the building, facing south--is worth that much to Peckham.

But would it be worth that much to you? Would you take the deal? Is Peckham crazy?

"I agree with his politics," one told a reporter. "But what I remember about that meeting was that he seemed most interested in showing me this book he had just written. It's too bad. He's just a little too full of himself."

Anyone else got last words for candidate Green?

Wherever you were that morning, wherever you are today, how you doing?

In this week's Voice, Bernice Yeung writes about a woman who lost her son in the World Trade Center on 9-11 and ended up befriending the mother of Al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. That's Phyllis Rodriguez, at right below, with Moussaoui's mom, Aicha el-Wafi.

"I felt for her as a mother," Rodriguez says. "I thought, 'I'd like to meet her.' I knew I would like to reach out to her because I felt sorry for her. And I also thought, 'Good for her, fighting for her son.' "

If you were in Rodriguez's shoes, could you imagine taking that same step?

Allen Barra investigates why A-Rod has become the player Yankee fans (and tabloid headline writers) love to hate, despite being one of the best players in baseball history--and a Washington Heights-born Dominican-American with good manners and movie-star looks to boot. Is it because he became a star while in an enemy uniform? (So did Reggie Jackson.) Because he can't hit in the clutch? (His postseason stats are better than Joe Dimaggio's.) Or because at $25 million a year, as BP's Nate Silver puts it, "Babe Ruth would have been overpaid"?

Meanwhile, I take another look at how the Yanks billed city taxpayers for millions in front-office expenses, including the salaries of several of George Steinbrenner's relatives and the fees for attorneys who drew up the sweetheart lease in the first place. City comptroller William Thompson knew about the dubious charges, but never called attention to them in public; meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg bargained away a chance to recoup "stadium planning" costs from the Mets and Yanks when he redid Rudy Giuliani's original stadium deals--effectively adding an extra $46 million to the two stadiums' cost to taxpayers.

So for A-Rod and the new stadium project—Bronx cheers or the regular kind?

Of the myths that have persisted about 9-11, perhaps the most stubborn are that firefighters are superheroes and Rudy Giuliani saved the city. This week, a pair of Voice writers approach those legends, one tenderly, one with a two-by-four.

In his cover story "Blunt Trauma," Jarrett Murphy profiles three firefighters for whom the attacks aren't really over—even as the rest of the FDNY is moving on. Of one, Joe McMahon, pictured above, Murphy writes:

"He looks a little tired because he spent a restless night sweating and chasing sleep, but he took an extra anti-anxiety pill this morning, in addition to the three he takes each night. He's a little tense because he's waiting for a phone call to learn whether or not he can retire from the New York City Fire Department on a disability pension."

Meanwhile, in their new book Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani, Voice writer Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins advance the once unspeakable proposition that Mayor Giuliani (pictured below) actually made the situation worse—by failing to prepare the city properly, for one, and by putting the emergency bunker under such an obvious target as the World Trade Center. The authors appeared Tuesday morning on the WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show (audio here).

Have we stiffed the people who did their jobs on 9-11 and sainted the ones who didn't?

Last week, Voice cartoonist Ward Sutton envisioned Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman losing the Democratic primary and becoming a short-order cook.

But Lieberman, who indeed lost yesterday to anti-war upstart Ned Lamont, envisions Lieberman as an "independent Democrat" determined to run and win off the party line in the general election.

We're asking: Should Joe keep running?

In this week's Voice cover story, "How Not to Pay Rent," Maria Luisa Tucker reports on tenants who live in illegal lofts and just stop paying. The legal situation may be changing, but until now landlords have had little practical means of collecting. She profiles one group of roommates, in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood, who suggest that it's their landlord who's falling down on the deal. (Pictured below is Puge Ruhe, who put his bartending tips toward launching a record label while living in the illegal building. For a tour of their loft, click here.)

"When it rains, it pisses in over here," says Puge Ruhe as he motions to a corner of their loft. "We have clumps of stuff falling from the ceiling. . . . There are no fire escapes in here. We would die if there was a fire."

Is your rent worth it? And have you ever had the nerve to stop paying?

Belgiorno writes:

"According to the Siverlses' complaint, Dahn lures members with free classes and then pressures them to spend big on retreats, workshops, and healing sessions, an allegation based at least in part on the more than $15,000 Julia paid out to Dahn. An annual membership in New York City runs almost $2,000; in its Brooklyn Heights center, Dahn charges $29 for an initial consultation. The hour is capped by an aggressive sales pitch to become a member, complete with instructions to 'feel' the decision to join, rather than think about it, and a warning that choosing the gym over Dahn will lead to the buildup of toxins in the body. The session ends with a hug."

A spokesperson from Dahn denied all the family's allegations.

Now we're asking you: Anyone out there done Dahn?

The Voice's new list of the 10 worst landlords in New York is in, and it's a doozy. There's the landlord who "threatened tenants with a bat" and the one whose business associate claims "it's not wrong to be wrong if you're wrong." (Tell it to Francine Andrews, below, who's taken to filling holes in her wall with plastic grocery bags. More pics here.)

But the winner, of all possible culprits, is the federal government. As in HUD. From the report comes this description of a HUD building:

Byrd's building has mice crawling through gaping holes in its walls, bare plywood floors, and until recently, no working refrigerators or stoves. With its dim halls, leaking ceilings, and decrepit stairways, it looks like a crack house, and until the dealers left last June, it was one.

Anyone else out there living in hell? We invite you to tell all.

The Falls bar, the Soho nightspot where poor Imette St. Guillen had her last drink, in February, came under fire from alcohol enforcement officials yesterday. Reports New York Metro (H.T. Gawker):

The State Liquor Authority formally accused the operators of the Falls bar of seven infractions, including providing false or misleading information during a police investigation during the initial days of its investigation into the St. Guillen slaying.

The primary suspect in the sexual assault and slaying of St. Guillen is a bouncer working at the club the night she disappeared. A convicted felon on parole and violating his curfew by working at the bar, he escorted her from the Falls and has since pleaded not guilty in her murder.

Friends of St. Guillen have joined with neighborhood activists to try to close the bar, picketing it on a regular basis. They might get their wish now, as the Falls stands to lose its liquor license.

We ask you, Fair or not?

On Monday night, New York City's Rent Guidelines Board voted to crank up the monthly checks to landlords. By how much isn't yet clear, as the board plans to keep mulling that over. The Daily News provides this snapshot:

"Despite outraged protests, the board voted 5-to-4 to review a range of hikes over the next few weeks: from 3% to 6.5% for one-year leases and from 5% to 8.5% for two-year leases.

If the board goes for the big numbers, reports the News, the hike would be the largest since 1990. The prospect of paying more outraged 55-year-old Mary Allen, of Brooklyn, the paper says.

"You don't know what it is to have no hot water," she told the panel. "Can I come to your house and take a bath?"

Any of you feeling her pain?

Do you have a story of survival on 9-11? Tell us.