Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival

When you hear the title, Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival, you may think it's just a gaudy, violent and crude occasion for low-lifes who laugh at poo poo jokes to come out in public and scare the normals. I was hoping for that more than anything when Spike and Mike came to Flagstaff's Orpheum theater and it more than delivered.

But more than just inappropriate humor, Spike and Mike have aimed to showcase short animation that is foreign or independent, the type of artistic sweat that you may never see otherwise. The aim of the hosts may just be to act indecent, but they also warm the artistic heart.

It's also a throwback to a forgotten culture. I remember growing up that there used to be short animations before feature films. Now what do you get? Bradford fucking Howe, the Screenvision guy trying to sell you a damn cellphone or shell your soul over to the Navy. Unless it's Pixar, you don't get an appetizer before the main event. You get commercials and that's disgusting, not to mention soulless.

The 70's and 80's were full of independence: independent theaters, film fests, underground comics and animated shorts. These days, everything is a cookie-cutter chain store selling you shit from China. Things like Avatar and Wall*E should have big stickers that say MADE IN TAIWAIN all over it. Our entertainment is fake and boring and it's always been this way, but at least thirty years ago we had other options.

Spike and Mike (and little theaters like the Orpheum) are keeping ideas of independence alive. Their festival is brilliant, inspired and above all, controversial. It's not some bullshit, wiped-up and glossed over film about how we all need to be nice or save the environment. It's a feeding frenzy for those feverish primal urges everyone gets and a damn good excuse to get drunk while enjoying "the simple pleasures" in life.

It began with the eerie "Who's Hungry?" by David Oochs, which luckily I have found on YouTube. It's an eerie, dark retelling of Hansel and Gretel, perhaps the way it should have been told, but with some strong imagery invoking Hostel, a hand reaching from a blender, grabbing at a little girl's skull.

There were a lot of zombie flicks, such as Chainsaw Nurse and Touchdawn of the Dead. Zombies are just so easy to film, yet (as Shaun of the Dead proved) so good for humor. There were also rambunctious owls, dogs with electric collars and all the things you can dream of.

There were the occasional penis cartoons, satisfying the most primal desires, and maybe it's mindless entertainment. It's still beautiful and funny and important. Animation is an art that modern audiences are losing, Pixar nonwithstanding. Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival is a celebration of an unappreciated, underground culture. We need more things like this in the world.

Outside Forces

October 23, 2009
2:10 a.m.

Lately, I feel so many outside forces attempting to disarm me of my dreams.
But now, in this moment, I have one that fights for me -- ironically, insomnia.
Insomnia is what gives me my hope.
All a concoction of too much alcohol and caffeine.
Maybe a few nightmares.
I adore my nightmares, but they're generally stressful dreams that wouldn't transfer to others.
Running from the cops. Trying to solve all my problems in an afternoon. Insects devouring me.
Maybe those would translate, maybe they wouldn't.

I want to write something about a lactose intolerant kid who is hiding from the zombies in a deep freezer. Oh, God, that's got to be the worst zombie scenario ever. Nothing but ice cream to eat, nothing but cold, no light, no windows and no way out. I mean, the poor kid could have picked a latrine to hide in instead. That'd be preferable. And when the power goes out, when all that ice starts to freeze and the meat starts to smell, God, that will be the worst.

Nixon had his coma.
Dracula had his funeral.
I too, must rest once in a while.

My mentality is a beehive that never sleeps.
Awake, my thoughts never find a home.
I can write it down, as Kafka did, and as he said, it loses meaning.
But sometimes it gains a new meaning.

A seaside home sighs for occupation again.
Sheets cover the furniture, boards over the windows.
How the home lies in disrepair, exactly as revisited memories.

Nothing important hasn't been done.
Nothing important won't be done.
When God turns off the light, everything will be in its right place.
I hope that for myself.
Like a cup, taken from the cupboard, drank from, rinsed and replaced.
I would come from the earth and be placed back beneath the ground.
Like a seed.
I too, must rest once in a while.