Columnist Scott Dickensheets: 'Sick' festival isn't nearly 'Twisted' enough

SICK? HARDLY. Twisted? I've seen hairier drawings in my kids' doodle pads. In fact, the main thing to be gleaned from "Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation," appearing Thursday through Saturday at the Huntridge Theatre for the Performing Arts, is that America's shock animators have a low threshold of transgressive thrill.

When I attended Saturday's screening, I was ready for sick. I was hoping for twisted. I've seen heavy duty in the domestic trenches lately -- much housecleaning, dandling the offspring -- and I figured a sharp jolt of deviance would do me some good. I should have stuck with the Starr report. Because, with "Spike and Mike," this is what I got: poop jokes. Lots of poop jokes. People playing with it, getting smothered by it, smearing it on themselves, yes, even eating it. Of course, it wasn't all poop jokes; there was some really funny tampon humor as well.

Well, that's certainly edge city! My mother, for one, would be shocked. But not me. I found it distasteful but not particularly edgy. As I mentally drummed my fingers in the darkness, I couldn't help but wonder, Is this the state of American sick and twisted today? What a sad commentary! When you call yourself "sick and twisted," you're declaring your opposition to the presumably "healthy" and "sane" mainstream. You're a rebel, baby! But it can't be a promising sign for the counterculture when coprophilia is the best weapon you have for tweaking the squares (the few violent cartoons weren't much worse than "Road Runner" with blood).

Now, one might argue that mainstream culture is so absorbent that nearly every body-pierced, head-shaved, tattoo-etched lifestyle stance has been co-opted and served back to us in Mountain Dew ads. Perhaps the taboo functions of the human body represent the only shocking frontier of imagination left, the final cultural zone where outlaw artists can rouse their rabble. I might even agree, although it seems to me Archie Bunker's toilet flush put bathroom humor into the mainstream 20 years ago. But it still has to be smartly done; if poop is the point, well, pardon the pun, but it stinks. It's disheartening to think that an artist painstakingly drew panel after panel after panel to show ... an elephant taking a dump on a guy.

The evening isn't without a few highlights. The stop-motion enactment of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (by the same wizards who animated "The Nightmare Before Christmas") is neither sick nor twisted but has the virtue of being good. Then there are brief snippets of "South Park," including the bracingly blasphemous "The Spirit of Christmas," in which Jesus battles Santa for holiday supremacy. I'll admit, that's a little twisted, as is the undescribable "Beyond Grandpa."

Still, the only segment to really live up (or down) to the night's billing is "Yes, Timmy, There is a Santa Claus" (the holiday seems to be an easy target for the topic-strapped sick-and-twisted animator). We follow wee, adorable Timmy as he crawls out to his pile of presents and opens them. With each unwrapping, his eyes fill with disappointment; a soccer ball, a tricycle, skis -- none are what he wants. He opens the final box, eyes watering as he finds a pair of cool sneakers. We don't understand Timmy's gloom until the next shot reveals he has no legs. Soccer balls, tricycles and skis are mocking in their uselessness. As he tries to fit the sneakers onto his stumps, he sees Santa and a reindeer at the window -- laughing like crazy. This is the funniest prank they've ever pulled!

A few other cartoons -- "No Neck Joe," "Sick and Twisted Special Games" -- poke fun at disabled kids, but their wacky drawing styles and tinny music let them off the hook; you know they don't mean it. "Yes, Timmy" is different. It never winks. It's penciled in a large-eyed, lovable, Disney-like style, and in its solemn, unsentimental tone, the gentle drawings and savage content merge to form a truly unsettling piece. Days later I still can't dislodge the damn thing from my head. I cringed when I saw it -- the deeper I get into fatherhood, the less inclined I am to laugh at crippled children. Which is exactly the point! It's sick! Twisted! Another square tweaked, if only for a few minutes. For most of "Spike and Mike," though, I was simply another square bored.

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