John Schneider

Big money in Boo!

Americans will spend about $9 billion this year on Halloween and although the people who live in this house, near my son’s place in Noblesville, Indiana didn’t spend all of that, they gave it a good try.

The days of carving a pumpkin, buying a bag or two of Tootsie Rolls and calling it good are over. I was at Home Depot one recent day, buying a tube of caulk, when I had to stop to marvel at an animated pirate ship with a crew of skeletons. The price: $350. And where would I store it … ?

While the above display isn’t necessarily artful, you can’t say it lacks enthusiasm for the holiday. The grandsons can’t get enough of it.

Special effects

Sharon and I arrived in Indy just in time for Superhero University at the local library, which included, among other classes, Leaping Tall Buildings In a Single Bound 101.

Here grandson Colin executes the advanced single-arm glide.

As for those wrinkles in the sky, I can only say, “What wrinkles …?”

Greece is the word

On Thursday Sharon and I, along with two friends, booked an 11-day spring trip to Athens and the Greek Islands.

Aside from the two days going and coming, we’ll spend three days in Athens, three days on Mykonos and three days on Santorini.

I was in Greece 50 years ago, under wildly different circumstances - as a sailor on a 10-month Mediterranean cruise aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal.

I remember the Parthenon and Acropolis, a day-trip (via bus) into the mountains of Thessaloniki and (much less clearly somehow) the annual wine festival in Daphne, a town about 7 miles west of Athens.

Lord Huron bootleggers

Noodling around on the Internet earlier this week (another rainy-day activity), I came upon this shopping website featuring a bunch of Lord Huron merchandise I’d never see at the LH shows.

Throw pillows, blankets, coffee mugs, wall hangings, etc. - much of it actually using Lord Huron images and song lyrics.

Surely, I figured, the band was earning royalties on this stuff. I sent a link to LH’s front man, who wrote back to say it was “pure bootleg” and that the band wasn’t getting a dime on this unauthorized merch.

In a subsequent email, he said it just wasn’t worth the trouble to crack down on the infringement, adding that his strategy was to consider it “free advertising.”

New on Dish menu: refunds

If the Detroit Tigers hadn’t had such a dismal season, I probably would have gone to battle with Dish Network earlier - on that summer evening I tried to turn on a Tigers game and got a talking head dishing out Dish’s version of why the satellite-TV company dropped FS1, the station that broadcasts Tigers games.

Then suddenly the Big Ten Network also disappeared from Dish’s menu.

On Wednesday (a rainy day) I braced myself for 15 minutes of dopey on-hold Muzak and made the call to Dish’s customer service line.

Dish Rep. Armand acknowledged that many Dish customers were “jumping ship.” He cast FS1 and Big Ten as the villains, arguing that if Dish paid them what they wanted they would have to raise subscription rates. Blah, blah, blah …

The bottom line was that Armand offered me one month free ($60.99), adding that he expected both channels to be back up within that period.

I accepted, but got Armand’s direct number and told him that if his prediction didn’t come true, he and I would have another chat.