Hit It and Quit It!

Paragraphs by Paul Miller

The least likely neighborhoods for kids to get Halloween treats if they are dressed up with the distorted masks of Thrush Limp Baugh or Glenn Beckerhead or Fail'un Pal'un are Ross, Tiburon and Belvedere.  

Kids may have a better chance at free Republican candy wearing masks of Much Ego Olbermann or Mighty Brain Maddow or Anti-Christ Obama.  Speaking of candy, the only sugar we got in treats when I was a youngster was in homemade goodies, like popcorn balls, walnut brownies, and chocolate chip cookies.  Life was good for awhile in the last century until reports floated that razor blades and horse shoe nails were being hidden in treats.  But nowadays if you are a parent, the only allowable treat for children trick-or-treating, is corporate-manufactured sweets.   Suburban Novato parents, who suffer swarm after swarm of dressed up trolls on Halloween night, must buy a Costco pallet-size load of safely wrapped candies, which are full of a danger much more menacing than horse shoe nails-- corn syrup.

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Long time Marinite Paul Miller was editorial cartoonist for the Marin IJ, sports cartoonist for the Novato Advance, a cover cartoonist for the Pacific Sun, and is currently a cartoonist illustrator for The Ark.   He's had cartoons published in the San Francisco Chronicle and his surf paintings have been published on the Surfriders Foundation website. He joins MoreMarin as a contributing editorial cartoonist.

Miller, a former Marine and UCLA graduate, taught a cartooning course in the art department at the College of Marin. His paintings and drawings are in private collections in California, Arizona, Washington, Hawaii, Texas, Florida and Provence, France. Miller's book, A Cartoonist's Guide to Prostate Cancer, was described by Dr. Dean Edell as "a must for any man facing prostate cancer!"

Comments

[Karen]

Soo true! I remember Trick or Treating in Texas as a child, and we loved getting popcorn balls, candied apples, and chocolate chip cookies! It is so sad that the real horror does rest in the effects of processed sugar on the little tykes (and their parents) running up and down the neighborhoods!

[Lisa]

I had my son (age 6) separate his candy into "good/better" and "not good/bad". Chocolate pieces went into the "better" pile, while all of the corn syrup, taffy types went into the "bad". I asked him what we should do with the bad pile and he said we should give away next year. Ha. I think that we shall donate it, and even then, I am not so sure as to where.