Head of the Class

If you've been wondering whatever happened to Spike & Mike, the touring three-ring-circus anthology of animation – sick, twisted, and otherwise – that used to regularly sell out the Alamo Drafthouse every year around this time, you're not alone. Thirty-two years after its conception as the Festival of Animation at Riverside, Calif.'s fabled countercultural haven "Mellow Manor," Craig "Spike" Decker and the late Mike Gribble's ongoing mission of animated outrage, splendor, and beauty finally fell victim to – you guessed it – YouTube and its online ilk. All those manic and magical snippets of 24-frames-per-second madness that were yearly revelations prior to the advent of LOL-monster YouTube in 2005 went, almost overnight, viral via the Web, changing the face of short-form animation forever and causing Decker to retreat and reconsider his iconic festivals.

"Definitely. I haven't really been focusing on the theatrical shows over the past couple of years, thanks to [the Internet]," admits Decker, speaking from his home in California. "We've been working on some deals with iTunes and other avenues, but you've just kind of got to go with the technology, you know?"

So what does this mean? No more wild nights at the Alamo with the perversely daft Dr. Tran; the squirrelly, X-rated antics of the Happy Tree Friends; or – say it ain't so, G.I. Joe! – Don Hertzfeldt's heartachey, hand-drawn, stick-figure genius in a voraciously ribald theatrical setting? That's harshing the holiday mellow for sure. But, dear viewer, all is not lost. Something's coming. Something less sick yet still twisted, something not yet, but almost certain to one day be, well, classic: Spike & Mike's New Generation Animation. And take it from someone who's been grooving on the Cali animation icons' Austin runs since the days when the Dobie Theatre was a two-screener: Spike & Mike is back and better than it's been since the millennium dawned. This, my friends, is the good shit.

"For years now I've had films that didn't fit into the Sick & Twisted category, films that are more sophisticated and artistic but at the same time are very cool, humorous, and accessible," says Decker. "And that's the vein I'm tapping with the New Generation Animation."

And, for the first time in a long time, the new Spike & Mike is a revelation, a globe-spanning collection that runs the gamut from – we kid you not – the best Bill Plympton short ever made ("Santa: The Fascist Years," which tips its furry red hat to no less than Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator) to one of the most heartbreaking and accurate depictions of thwarted romance since Bambi Meets Godzilla (the très French "11 Roses"). From the already classic stop-motion absurdist masterpiece A Town Called Panic to the swoopingly comic live-action/traditional cel animation combo "The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl" (courtesy of Metalocalypse's Mike Roush), this new collection includes pretty much every conceivable style of animation and storytelling in between. This is, finally, Spike & Mike's laugh-out-loud, shed-a-tear, and to-hell-with-YouTube return to form that also returns short-form animation to the silver screen, where, unfettered from your 13-inch MacBook monitor, it soars. Spike & Mike MIA? Not on your overanimated life, friend. As Mr. Porky Pig so eloquently puts it, "Th-th-th-that's not all folks!"

---

Spike & Mike's New Generation Animation screens Dec. 7 & 9, at Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz, and Dec. 18-22, at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek. For more info, see Special Screenings.