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Inspiration on occasion strikes, lightning in a bottle-like, those utterly devoid of talent and/or shame. Even repugnant hacks who spew hackneyed product designed for mass consumption strike gold once in a while on something that is both an artistic and commercial success. These works are as frustrating as they are rewarding, coming as they do from people who stumbled upon greatness, almost despite what they set out to do. Or maybe they just generally suck and got lucky. It’s a reminder of the capricious nature of inspiration in art. And it’s these fluky works of greatness that spring from the seed of fuckwittery that you are identifying in this draft. You’re looking for a memorably good movie, song, album, performance, book, painting, etc. from an otherwise lackluster or forgettable body of work.

30rockksk

My first pick is “30 Rock”. The artist: Tina Fey

There are more outrageous examples of hacks striking gold, but this one is particularly knotty for me, as it’s been difficult for me to reconcile my admiration of this show with my distaste for Tina Fey. Fey’s reign as the head writer for SNL presided over some of the worst years of the show. She was incredibly obnoxious on the Weekend Update desk, where she would get bubbly and high five Amy Poehler after all the jokes. It was grating. What made it worse were the scores of media profiles extolling her job as anchor and lead writer, glossing over the generally horrible quality of the shows. That treatment followed into her other projects. Mean Girls, however uninteresting, was generally well received and a box office success – though in a country where Night at the Museum 2 pulls in $70-plus million in a weekend. I’ve never seen Baby Mama and probably don’t need to. Recently, Fey got heaps of praise for the Sarah Palin character during the election, but has there ever been lower hanging fruit in comedy? I mean, people were already saying the Palin and Fey looked alike before one sketch was ever produced. The association was there, people just needed it to be actualized. That’s not to say Tina didn’t get the impression down, it was sound, but it hardly warranted the overwhelming pan-pop-cultural recognition.

But “30 Rock”. Ouf. It’s very, very good and only so much of that can I explain away with Alec Baldwin’s and Tracy Morgan’s genius on the show. Not as much as I would like. Bottom line, the show is very well written, and Fey deserves a lot of credit for that. And, Fey, after all, is the creator and star as well. A friend of mine and I are vocal in our dislike of Tina Fey, but we’re both dumbstruck and quiet on the subject of “30 Rock”. We just have to shrug and give her her due.