Traumafessions :: Traumafessions :: Michael Clark of Vast Cyclopean Vistas on V

Hi Aunt John,

I have another confession…maybe the Catholics have figured this all out. This is very therapeutic.

All right, picture this:

It's 1983. I'm 11 years old, up in my bedroom, curled up in front of a 13" black-and-white T.V. with rabbit ears and an Atari 2600 hooked up to it. The great miniseries "V" has held my young attention for a whole hour, and I'm totally hooked. Especially interesting is the character Diana, leader of the Visitors, who I find completely hot in that prepubescent-boy-with-a-crush-on-your-fourth-grade-teacher kind of way. Yes, even with her '80s hair and weird Grandma sunglasses and refugee-from-a-Devo-video uniform, there's something, I don't know, smoldering about JANE BADLER'S look and performance. (I didn't know what hitting that was at the time, but I know now that I'd hit that.)

Then comes the scene. You know the one I'm talking about. Where MARC SINGER is crouching in some kind of ventilation shaft (where would action movies be without ventilation shafts?), watching some boring conversation between Diana and some other faceless space Nazi…and suddenly, beautiful, smoldering Diana turns to a cage in the wall, picks up a frickin' guinea pig, and without blinking tilts her head back and swallows the whole thing. Her mouth drops open like a snake swallowing an egg, and she kind of licks her fingers and gets back to the argument.

Imagine my hormonal horror as the discreet object of my bewildered desire proved that she had both a three-tennis-ball mouth and no gag reflex.

Again, it doesn't sound so horrible now, lo these many years later. But then…oh, MAN.

Of course I've looked it up on YouTube…and the special effect is, shall we say, quaint.

I'm dialing my therapist now…

Thanks again for the laughs.

— Michael (aka Vastcyclopeanvistas)