Spike and Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation (2001)

Well, kids, the Spike & Mike S & T fest is a little tepid this year. True, there’s a lot of impolite language for those who can still automatically snicker at such, but not a single fellating crack whore or grossly fleshy person wallowing in feces to be seen. Sort of makes you wonder what the world’s coming to.

Aside from that, the most inventive offering this time out is Bill Plympton’s Eat, with its delicate lines throbbing against a muted pastel backdrop and its odd perspectives — a couple set at a table that slants into infinity, two young boys have an escalating food-artillery fight with mountainous and disapproving parents looming in the background — but it all disintegrates into a bunch of boring vomit stuff. Two variations on a VH1 perennial, Behind The Music That Sucks, seem promising, but get hung up on the simple and unenlightening joke that Britney Spears seems kind of trampy and Eminem seems like kind of a moron. Not exactly cutting-edge.

The sex stuff is blunt but not really sick (let alone twisted). Love That Pussy is self-explanatory (and with the expected pun at the end); Bad Phone Sex is built around an excerpt from a Chris Rock CD (and seems like an advertisment for same); Fuck Her Gently is an animated rendition of a song by Tenacious D, featuring Jack Black (seems like another ad) and Choke, Spot, Choke is a naughty version of the old-school primer. That last one, I suppose, could be considered marginally sick since it wants to piss all over innocence, but still I think you have to be pretty repressed to get a big chuckle out of somebody saying “fuck” or “cock” or “cunt,” whatever the context. Or pretty stoned.

Showing exclusively at the Magic Bag (22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale), December 19-30. 18+ for shows before 10 p.m., 21+ afterward. Call 248-544-3030.

Richard C. Walls writes about the arts for Metro Times. E-mail him at letters@metrotimes.com.