Today, two remarkable objects came into my possession.  Gifts of a beautiful ring or a long wanted book can inspire joy and surprise, but these pieces, call them in an imaginary auction, Lot #1, American Christmas Kitsch 1970s Folk Artless, are beyond ordinary crap art.  So utterly godawful are these Christmas ornaments it's as if their maker were inspired by a movie director to design and fabricate the worst possible hideous bulky Christmas ornaments for a scene set in the living room of characters with no taste whatsoever. 
     A coworker of mine, going through old boxes of decorations by past (and probably passed in the cemetery sense) volunteers, found a cardboard box, about 15 inches by 20 by 18, labelled Velvet Balls.  She hung a few on one of the remaining decorative Christmas trees to see how they looked.  All of my coworkers invited to take a look at them found them curious.  "Retro" was the common comment.  In the box were at least twenty to twenty-five of these things, each wrapped in white tissue paper.
     The "velvet" balls are actually variously colored lenticular felt cuttings glued onto Styrofoam spheroids, each section divided by faded gold braid running vertically from pole to pole.  A braid loop at one end allows the insertion of an ornament hook: at the other end a gold tassel (such as might depend from a mortarboard) has been cut with sharp 1970s scissors, leaving decorative angel hair pasta-thickness tassel dangling, almost drawing the eye away from the ornament's overall hideousness.  Most of the ornaments, about four inches in diameter, would be hard for anyone with small hands to pick up one-handed.  A few of them are relative miniatures, reflecting, perhaps, the unknown artist's possession of some smaller balls, and a desire to use up all the felt, putting them into disharmonious color combinations such as pale blue next to dusty orange next to purple. 
     The felt pieces, furthermore, are uneven, making some sections quite wide, others narrow.  When the larger balls, especially, hang on a tree, their Jupiter-like bulk pushes them outwards, the tassels, which should be jaunty, drooping rather than hanging straight. 
     My coworker, who uncovered this find, offered the entire box of Velvet Balls to anyone who wanted them.  It was a day of getting rid of crap in the storage rooms.  Others took sundry items of Christmases past; no one bit on the temptation of the Velvet Balls. 
     "I don't like them," I said, "but I can't stop looking at them."
     A minute later, still staring at the ones on the tree in growing awe, I started laughing and I couldn't stop.  It became the kind of laughter that tightens the body.  My eyes became wet.  Like the tassels I couldn't stand up straight.  My coworkers were amused, I think, although maybe a few who don't know me well found my amusement odd.  I opened the box and took out two wrapped Velvet Balls, the big kind, moving aside the paper to see the clashing colors.  Satisfied, I stowed them in my work area.  Encouraged by the coworker who found them to take the whole box, I replied, truthfully, "I can only handle these two."
     I carried the Balls, one in each hand like kings' orbs of sovereignty, to the car, ten below wind chill, placing them on the passenger seat where one of them rolled and bonked against the door during a sharp turn. 
     I couldn't explain while at work why I laughed, but now I know.  Some creative endeavors yield great art.  More often, a range of mediocre to good work is produced, in whatever medium.  This leaves (I know I'm generalizing) the bad and the even worse.  As the saying goes, though, "There's no accounting for taste."  It's true.  Plan 9 From Outer Space is often called, sometimes reflexively, "the worst movie ever made," but I love it.  I've seen it five or six times and it never disappoints me.  I notice different things about it each time I see it.  It was made by its director and writer, Edward D. Wood, Jr., with loving enthusiasm.  This "worst film" has lasted after nearly sixty years, still watched and enjoyed while thousands of films of the same period are forgotten. 
     Are the Velvet Balls a kind of Plan 9?  Something so bad they're good?  I don't want to use the word "good" to describe the Balls.  They do, however, achieve something unusual: their lack of sensible construction, their non-existent color harmony, their repulsive appearance overall, the fact that they aren't velvet, push them, incredibly, so far beyond common horrible art they manage to land, or dangle awkwardly, in a realm of aesthetic sublimity.  If beauty has its archetypes, its models, then so does crap art, and that should be respected.
     Plus, unlike with the Venus de Milo, it's okay to laugh at Velvet Balls.

                                                                               Vic Neptune