Quick! Print, Cut Out, and Terrify!
IT’S A NEW Halloween, with a whole new set of fears to absorb. Please enjoy, for your last-minute costume needs, our annual offering of extremely time-appropriate print-your-own mask concepts.
AARON RODGERS' ACHILLES TENDON: Sometimes the fates punish mortal hubris elaborately and cruelly, as when the New York Jets tried to win a title by signing the washed-up Hall of Fame–bound Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, only to see it all slowly collapse in failure and scandal. This year, remind everyone that sometimes the fates are too contemptuous even to bother, as when the New York Jets tried to win a title by signing the washed-up Hall of Fame-bound Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, only to see his ankle—specifically, in case no one got the point, his Achilles tendon—immediately explode, four plays into his Jets career.
THE GAVEL OF DOOM: Who wants to be the most powerful legislator in the most powerful country on the planet, second in line for the presidency? Who wants their ability to hold that job to be entirely at the mercy of Beavis-browed lunatic Matt Gaetz and the Jan. 6 Caucus of raging cranks and weirdos? Step right up—no, not you—no, not you either—nope—!
A NETFLIX ENVELOPE: Once, you carried the warrant of death for the video-rental-store industry, offering access to a near-infinite shelf of movies, available anywhere, in digital clarity. Now, you have met your own obsolescence, in the form of—well, a lot less movies, on a much worse medium, but without going to the mailbox. The future comes for all of us!
MARTIN SCORSESE: Is this man passing judgment on your taste in movies under his furrowed brows? Is he saying that maybe there is, or should be, more to cinema than endlessly iterated product coming off a fan-service assembly line? Are you going to have to sit through a three-hour movie with no pee breaks if you want to take the side of Art? Don't let your moviegoing friends off easy this scary season!
A LOCKED SHELF OF PHARMACY PRODUCTS: What if a consumer society made it impossible to buy stuff? Welcome to the prison of contemporary capitalism, where selling the story of runaway retail theft is more important than selling you deodorant. Just press the button, someone will be with you shortly—or will they??
WHITE HOUSE CERBERUS: Who will safeguard the Secret Service protective detail? Not this triple-headed presidential hellhound! Keep the Treasury cops on their toes with three sets of snapping jaws, belonging to wayward and high-strung German shepherds Commander Biden and Major Biden, and to their endlessly permissive boss. Grrowr! Rrrragh! Down, boy!
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Think fast! Talk faster! Harangue your pals and back yourself into the rightmost corner of the Halloween party, knowing that the future of politics is telling the people what you think they want to hear, as quickly as possible, without pausing to breathe or reconcile it with what you might have said 30 seconds before. Red meat for Red America, crammed into the meat-chopper and set on spray!
SHROOM PILOT: Wow, sure are a lot of levers and buttons and dials in this cockpit. Too many! Making too much noise in your eyes! Mayday! Mayday! Time to turn some of them off... Make your bad trip into a bad trip for everyone!
AN N-95 MASK: Whoooooo wants to remember the virus? Not anyone at the Halloween party, or on the subway, or at the doctor's office! Ruin the vibe for everybody by bringing back the spectre of actually trying to do something about pandemic disease. Then go bobbing for apples. Nothing to fear but fear itself! You do you! Arrooo!
STUDENT LOAN DEBT: It's buried—it rises from the grave again! The more you try to reduce it, the bigger it grows! Put a damper on everyone's costume party, and the next 40 years of their lives, as the implacable specter of unpayable loans.
Download the whole set here.
All images are phantasmagorical photo illustrations, arrooo! Photos: Scorsese: Siebbi CC 3.0 via Wikipedia, Biden: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images. Ramaswamy: Gage Skidmore CC 3.0 via Wikipedia. Psilocybin: Leoboudv/Sasata/Arp from Mushroom Observer, CC 3.0 via Wikipedia.
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