"South Park" has established Parker and Stone -- who say they don't get Woody Allen but love Jerry Springer -- as the kings of a new, nonsnobby but bluntly smart fin de siecle comedic sensibility. Neither highbrow nor lowbrow, it's a sort of humor that's distinctly no-brow -- an edgy, rude point of view that can get pretty trippy.

"We did an appearance at UCLA recently," Parker says. "All these kids asking, 'Where did you get the idea for this? And where did you get the idea for that?' And we were like, 'Acid. Acid and, uh, acid.'" "South Park" has proved intensely popular with critics, teens and college kids, and has even become something of a cause célèbre with assorted showbiz big shots. Early booster George Clooney was willing to bark the small role of Sparky the Gay Dog in the moving "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" episode.

When the two attended a KROQ Christmas concert in Los Angeles, they found themselves treated like real stars by assorted alterna-icons such as Fiona Apple and Beck. Tiger Woods has volunteered his vocal services, and, according to Parker and Stone, Jerry Seinfeld's representatives expressed interest in Jerry's playing a role on "South Park." The Seinfeld people were put off, though, when offered the Turkey No. 2 role in the Thanksgiving episode. As Parker recalls, "The manager said, 'This is Jerry Seinfeld. Call us back when you have something bigger.' " How about Turkey No. 1?

"South Park" is just the beginning of the pair's wise-ass world domination. Up next is Orgazmo, an uproarious but shockingly sweet film recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In the movie, Parker stars as an earnest, soon-to-be-married, martial-arts-obsessed Mormon who gets caught up spending boogie nights in the porn game in order to pay for a church wedding; Stone effectively plays a dopey, horny porn stagehand and photographer. And last month, Parker and Stone went into production on Baseketball, a new comedy by one of their idols, David Zucker of Zucker brothers fame (Airplane! and The Naked Gun). Parker, Stone and longtime pal Dian Bachar star as pioneers of a new sport mutation that takes over America. As if that weren't enough, Parker and Stone also have a band. I've seen rock & roll future, and its name -- for the time being, at least -- is DVDA. "It's a reference from Orgazmo," frontman Parker explains. "We learned that as a female in porn, you get paid for different things you do. If you do straight, you get so much. If you do anal, you get so much. If you do double vaginal, double anal -- well, that's the highest thing you can do."

"As soon as we heard that, we said, 'That's our name,' " says drummer Stone.

Though their schedule leaves little time for rehearsal, DVDA are the greatest and certainly the funniest band you've never heard of. Their originals include the hairy anthem "I am Chewbacca" and the protest number "Fuck That Guy From Bush" (which decries the fact that he's "fucking that girl from No Doubt"). It seems unlikely that DVDA -- featuring "South Park" audio producer and one-time Cher sideman Bruce Howell on guitar -- will stay unheard for long. A recent gig at the ultragroovy Spaceland in L.A.'s Silver Lake drew a gaggle of record execs bidding for the "South Park" soundtrack. Of course, there may have to be a band-name switch first. They're toying with Dude, That Middle Part Kinda Sounded Like Deep Purple.

Two years ago, Stone says, "We were seriously starving. Down to a meal a day." Salvation came in the form of "The Spirit of Christmas", one of the least likely big breaks in Hollywood history. The obscenity-laced five-minute short was commissioned by booster Brian Graden, then a Fox executive, as a Christmas card. He gave the pair $1,200 to spend. "They pocketed half of it," Graden says. The result found Jesus and Santa Claus kicking each other's asses and featured memorable lines like, "Dude, don't say 'pig f***er' in front of Jesus!"

Passed around within and without the industry, "The Spirit of Christmas" became an underground smash. "Right after "The Spirit of Christmas", it got to the point where we were doing three meetings a day and getting offered multipicture deals from every studio," Parker recalls as the limo pulls onto the NBC lot. "I got a call from my agents saying, 'Trey, you've been offered to direct a picture for a million and a half dollars.' And I said, 'Wow, what's the movie?' And they said, 'It's Barney: The Movie.' I said, 'Who the hell wants me to direct Barney: The Movie?' They said, 'They want it to be a G-rated thing, and they that you can make really funny stuff with kids since you did "The Spirit of Christmas.'"

"South Park" is a poisoned place in the heart, a taste-free zone where kids say the darnedest, most f***ed-up things. If Seinfeld made television history by positing that adults are petty, nasty, self-serving beasts, "South Park" has, during its nine-episode history (four new episodes are due this month), suggested that lousy behavior doesn't begin at the age of 18. By facing the ugly truth that our inner children are baby-faced sadists with big eyes, the show has broken our sweetest taboo and revealed childhood as a dangerous and obscene place. As the warning before the show explains, "The following program contains coarse language, and, due to its content, it should not be viewed by anyone." "That's how we pitched the show when we went around town," says Parker. "There's this whole thing out there about how kids are so innocent and pure. That's bull****, man. Kids are malicious little f***ers. They totally jump on any bandwagon and rip on the weak guy at any chance. They say whatever bad word they can think of. They are total f***ing bastards, but for some reason everyone has kids and forgets about what they were like when they were kids." "It's a total projection of what I remember," says Stone. "I remember making the poor kid eat the worm. I remember thinking, 'What's the meanest thing I could possibly do here?'"

As the success of The Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill demonstrates, hard truths go down more comfortably in cartoons. "I think it's definitely easier to take the truth in animated form," Parker says. "It might be hard to make live-action little kids dying funny. That would be difficult to do, even with special effects. But since it's a cartoon, we can control these kids in a way you never could with a real kid. We can make them act the way real kids act. A kid actor would try to be all sweet, and then you get Webster, and who needs s*** like that?"