My friend Dan, encircled by two crazed little dogs who quickly drew in my own crazed little dog, said, “Come on in.”

He understood completely my need to spend a moment communing with his velvet Kenny Rogers painting.

If that seems puerile, well, I’m comfortable with that. Walking into that living room provided more than just a moment in which to ask, “Should I count my money when I’m sittin’ at the table?”

“Check out the new one,” Dan said, grandly gesturing toward an unassuming little version of the most common (if nonetheless satisfying) icon of the velvet painting, the velvet Elvis. It was small enough for a discerning collector, around the size of the “Mona Lisa,” and possessing something of the same air of mystery—had the artist employed a malformed Elvis imitator as a live model? Was he smiling or experiencing gastric distress?

I complimented Dan on the acquisition, but before I finished my sentence, I noticed something yet grander. Dan’s wall held a velvet Big Bird. I could only think of Ali G’s ultimate endorsement: “Respec’!”

I understand, even celebrate, the desire to acquire such things. Really, really bad art of every kind, from awkwardly canted songs to manglings of canvas and film disasters, manifests something every bit as pure and wonderful as the rarest masterpiece. It’s also much cheaper.

I’ve spent many an hour drawn in by the most readily acquired form of bad art: bad film. I recently suffered through Battlefield Earth for the first time—one of those films that transcends mere mediocrity and reaches for a grander goal of almost non-stop dreck. It takes a perfect convergence of bad decisions to bring such a flowering of awfulness into the world. Battlefield Earth exhibits that kind of bad decision-making in every frame; there is not, the filmmakers have proudly pointed out, a single level shot. Everyone, including John Travolta atop stilts resembling KISS boots, goes ambling around at an angle all the time, delivering lines full of grade-school wit and the emotional depth of an engineering textbook. One sometimes wonders why they don’t slide over to the bottom of the frame.

But what amazed me most arrived in the special features section of the DVD. Bad art requires a solid earnestness and a genuine belief that the product of that earnestness will be a masterpiece. The film’s British director speaks of his work with an aloof air, confident that his creation is about to revolutionize science fiction filmmaking, if not the very enterprise of filmmaking itself. Travolta natters on at length about the importance of finding his character’s look—basically an anguished choice between versions of a beehive wig, S&M gear and fashion from the bargain rack at a biker store. (I, for one, am confident he made the right choice.)

Here’s where things get tough to explain to those who don’t comprehend why anyone would spend time watching Mothra or Manos: The Hands of Fate. Watching such stuff and making fun of its creators isn’t the point at all. The point is paying homage to a glorious flowering of squandered intentions. The same passions create masterpieces and perfectly wrong artistic conceptions. Anybody can do mediocre; it takes real talent to get everything wrong.

That’s why so many artists of every stripe sometimes seem a little pinched: they wonder if they’re really as good as they think they are. The most passionately arrogant among artists tend to be maddeningly right in their estimation of their talents, or completely, wonderfully wrong.

To see John Travolta tromping around like Dee Snider in outer space is to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

That is powerful stuff.

In a sense, wallowing in the worst creations is about honoring the work of fellow travelers—those who engage in the creative process necessarily run the risk of devoting themselves to a creation, to going all-in, only to find that their poker hand is a complete loser.

And that’s why I have to get a dose of that velvet Kenny Rogers. It’s humbling to stand there, crazy dogs yapping, and ponder the contours of Rogers’ curiously Elvis-esque collar and gray cascade of hair. I’m holding a hand, you see, and the Gambler initiated Kenny in the final and most important of the artistic mysteries: when to hold ’em, and when to fold ’em.”