Face Your Fears

I'm an artist. I've been an artist ever since I was a little girl. I used to draw my own comic books and staple them together, I used to make videos with the few friends I had, actual ongoing plot based videos, and a whole lot more. I'm not averse to art, I absolutely love art and I think it's crucial in our world, especially in todays world which is filled with nothing but ugliness, we need that beauty and that simplicity. But then...every once in a while...there's a piece that's created that's utterly terrifying and baffling. Take, for example, this mask which I've named The Lovely Terror. This appears to be a homemade craft made on, what looks like, an old paper plate. Those rough kind your grandparents would generally have around the house. I could be totally wrong, especially seeing as I only have this singular image of said mask to go off of, but that's just my guess. The fact that there's an entire smile but only a small slit in the m...

There's, on the surface (and, I suppose, underneath too) not really much to say about this mask in terms of it's design and it's spooky factor. It's not really bad, it's not really amazing, it's not really much of anything, but there is one thing I want to discuss and that's something I sort of touched on in my Grandpa Jones post, which is the concept of aging. For some reason, for as long as I can remember, there's been one particular type of Halloween mask that has been around, and that is the old person mask. Sometimes it's more grotesque, other times it's not really all that interesting, and sometimes, like here, it's sort of disheveled but still rather tame. And this doesn't stop at just masks, this goes all the way to the film industry where they age people using makeup to make them look older. This just...it sort of rubs me the wrong way. We live in a culture of youth. Everything always has to be new, or else it isn't ne...

So, cause it's almost Halloween, I figured I'd do something a little bit different before doing a new real post. I have a real love for two things: vintage photography and vintage Halloween stuff, be it promotional work, decorations or, of course, masks. So I figured I'd start doing these once in a while when I want to highlight some of the best old vintage mask photos I could find in one big post. So let's take a look at this first one and try and assess what exactly it is we're seeing here. I get a sort of "sheep herder" vibe from this, which is an impressive thing to get a group to go along with, especially when the only actual costume that's different can only be the herder themselves, but at the same time, it kind of says a lot of group mentality. I refuse to accept the word "sheeple" but in this context I think it'd be hilarious. This one, though, isn't really scary of unsettling or anything like that. Sure, it's weird , b...

I've been holding back, but it's finally time for you to experience something traumatic. I didn't want to start this blog on a negative note, because I already do that with two others, so instead I started off with two relatively cool masks, but now...now the time has come. The day of reckoning is upon us, and you will be judged accordingly to your sins. Hopefully they are not as severe as the very evident sins this ungodly thing has put upon the world. There is a very strong unsettling vibe that comes with this photo. Take away the mask and let's just look at the surroundings instead, shall we? It appears to be sat upon a small metal device that I believe was made specifically for presenting this mask, which is weird enough, but then it's sitting on a table with the most bland tablecloth in existence, yet the background of this photo itself is almost grandparent like. The wallpaper, the giant cabinet full of old fine china, the willowy curtain in the side ro...

Imagine telling your mom that you want to go out treat or treating dressed like a sentient unflushable turd made up of peanut brittle and corn pops. Throw in an unhinged jaw and two goofy cartoon eyes and what you have, my friend, is what I've come to name Jawesome. Listen, I may be a tad harsh on these blogs, but most of the time it's for comedic effect. I actually have tremendous respect for anyone who makes anything, because it means that it mattered enough to them to put any effort whatsoever into said thing to create it, and that's more than most people will ever even conceive of going through. A lot of people can't even wash their own dishes in the same night they have dinner. So anyone who creates movies or books or even bad masks deserves at least some small bit of my respect, because they had a dream and they saw it through, even if nobody else was happy about it. That being said, it's the same level of respect one would have for, say, a bank robbe...

There's absolutely no way to categorize this type of mask, so I have just come up with the categorization of putting this mask, and all masks that fall into the look a like of it, as "mother fucking awesome". Because this thing is mother fucking awesome. I mean, back before Halloween became nothing but licensed franchised superhero costumes and cosplays of all kinds, this is what you did. Companies had to actually try and make an effort to get your attention, and we got some great shit because of it. And look, I'm not going to look down on anyone who cosplays, because those people have tremendous talent and are better than a lot of actual costume designers in Hollywood I'd say, but I do miss when Halloween was more of a "I'm a bug eyed chainsaw armed mummy" and not "I wore my Shazam costume again this year." Not that there's anything at all wrong with Shazam, it was a great movie, but come on man. Bug eyed chainsaw armed mummy sounds...

Sometimes I wonder what fuels hobbies or collectors. I myself am both a hobbyist and a collector, and yet I am simply confounded at the hobbies and collectibles that other hobbyist and collectors are involved in. Recently, I've taken to Ebaying a lot of old things because I desperately need the money,  but in doing so, it's made me search for some pretty weird things, like Swatch's and now masks. But why would I make a blog about bad masks? Well, it seemed only natural, I mean, I've already got sister blogs "Be Kind, Rewind" about bad VHS box art and "Crackin' Spines" about bad book covers I find in thrift stores, so it just makes sense to start making a blog everytime a new awful interest pops into view. But there's something different about this one, and that's that there's much more to masks than just making fun of them. There's more genuinely cool masks I think than bad ones, there's masks from other cultures, ther...