My NPR affiliate is doing a piece on the Free Press’ endorsement of Barack Obama. They’re running down its bullet points as I write this. It’s not a long piece — it’s over now — but still: I am agog.

Never mind the dog-bites-man element here. The Freep has a left-leaning editorial page; for them, endorsing the Democrat is like the Wall Street Journal editorial page touting free enterprise. OK, it’s Monday, slow news day blah blah blah — that is, if you consider the unraveling of world financial markets, coupled with a potential GM-Chrysler merger that will likely be the death blow to the local economy, just two of today’s stories, “slow.” Never mind that. I have worked for newspapers, and I know how the endorsement process works, and all I can say is, why should the public give a shit who any editorial board thinks should be elected to any office?

Endorsements made sense when there were more newspapers in the world, and they had real authority, and great people behind them. Then, you wanted to know who Charles Foster Kane was backing for job one. Whether or not endorsements actually changed a single vote has always been a pretty theoretical question, and even the most generous estimates put the number of endorsement-led voters at tiny-to-miniscule. And yet, newspapers continue to make endorsements, like Brits gathering for high tea nomatterwhat. Looked at one way, it’s sorta charming. Looked at another, it’s a symptom of the problem at the root of the industry — their maddening, “this is the way we do it because this is the way we’ve always done it” attitude.

As I recall, editors like making endorsements about as much as readers like reading them, i.e., not so much. People don’t realize what goes into them; they think it’s all about gathering around a pastry-strewn table and arguing, when what it really involves is weeks of interviews with some of the most boring candidates you’ve ever met. Because the paper doesn’t just endorse for the big races — those are only the ones that make the news. No one writes about the ones headlined: “For 4th District village council: Herminghausen.” And to get to that endorsement, the editorial board chatted up Herminghausen and his opponents, Schiller and Grubman. Before that, if there was a primary, they might have talked to Herminghausen, Schiller, Grubman, Czerny, Skolnik, O’Reilly and Killeen. Multiply that by however many races there are, and you see why endorsement season is extra-martini season on the ed page.

When you think about it, the endorsements that you should pay attention to aren’t the ones that make news. Really, do you feel the need for a second opinion to make up your mind about the presidential race? But how much do you know, really, about the Court of Appeals, or the township assessor, or the 4th District rep? That’s where an endorsement can help, to the extent it says, “This person appeared before us, didn’t wet his or her pants and impressed us with at least rudimentary competence.” There are always a few spots on any ballot you just couldn’t get to in your research. That’s when you need to know Herminghausen got the paper’s endorsement.

Or, as Alec Baldwin’s character said of marriage in “The Departed:” Marriage is an important part of getting ahead: lets people know you’re not a homo; married guy seems more stable; people see the ring, they think at least somebody can stand the son of a bitch; ladies see the ring, they know immediately you must have some cash or your cock must work.

Well, he delivers it better. But you get the idea.

The Detroit News’ editorial page leans right. Now, if they endorse Obama, that’ll be news. We’ll see.

“The Cemetery Precincts” wrapped shooting last night. That means all we have to do now is the editing, the sound, the scoring, the this and the that. Then we have to fight about it, and change it all around, and do it all again. Listen to me: “We.” Most of this stuff will be done by others, but when a production is this small, it’s everybody’s baby, and you sweat every step of the process. I volunteered to put on zombie makeup and be a back-rank zombie, but somehow I got recruited to be the lead in the big gross-out scene, which is so unbelievably gross I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it. The prep:

(I suspect there was a lot of K-Y in that mix.) Thanks to our genius gross-out guy, Dan Phillips, who crafted the effect and signs his e-mails, “Stay scary, Dan.” I’ll say.

Not much bloggage today, but this: One of the things I like about Jon Stewart is his willingness to talk back to one of the nastiest myths of red-state America (at the moment, anyway), that people who live in cities aren’t the real America, or pro-America, or whatever. And he does it so well.

The rest I leave up to those of you who paid more attention to the news this weekend. I’m off to study Russian.

I have an early interview today, followed by a date with some dust bunnies, so I may have to make this a bye day. (Although never underestimate my powers of procrastination, which truly are superhuman.) I realize I could write this paragraph from here to November and it wouldn’t make a difference, as the engine of this blog these days is in the comments, but I feel I have to make an appearance from time to time — open the front door, turn on the “open” sign, refill the bowls of nuts and pretzels.

I’ve taken on a few new obligations this fall, in an effort to inject a little oxygen in my sad little life, and they will take some time. One is reapplying my nose to the grindstone of learning Russian. Another is joining a great-books discussion group (like my hero, Tim Goeglein), which meets monthly but requires a bit more than my customary light reading of mysteries and the Wall Street Journal. This week we’re covering Tolstoy’s second epilogue to “War and Peace,” and I need to plow through the last 15 pages today.

Geez, I sound like a whiny sophomore, I realize. So let’s lighten the tone a bit with one of Anthony Lane’s great, meaty pans, a twin takedown of “Filth and Wisdom” and “RockandRolla,” the autumnal output of Mr. and Mrs. Guy Ritchie. I watched a trailer for the former online the other day, and thought, “That narrator sounds just like Borat.” I think my instincts are sound here.

Back later, maybe. Any thoughts on Tolstoy?

Sooner or later, the earth reclaims everything.

The z-movie is more than half-shot, but next week will be the Pyrenees stage — the bloodiest blood gags, the grossest gross-outs. It’ll be latexapalooza fer shure. Depending on our extra needs, I may even take my 90-minute turn in the chair and become a bloodthirsty walking corpse, although I suppose we could just skip the makeup and shoot early in the morning before the coffee, since there’s not much difference in how I look and one of our ghouls, masterfully rendered by our evil genius, Dan Phillips:

We did a blood-gush effect yesterday, which was totally creepy and made a huge mess. We were prepared for it — plastic drop cloths all around, splashguards deployed, a small mountain of paper towels — and immediately afterward wrapped everything up into a bloody ball and carried it directly to the dumpster. I wonder what the garbage collectors will think.

And now it’s time for paying work, and folks, I’m so tired they need a new word for it. So on to the bloggage:

Salon, in a story headlined, Blood in the water in North Carolina, asks, “Republican Sen. Liddy Dole may be a goner, and John McCain is in trouble in a state the GOP hasn’t lost since 1976. What happened?” Coozledad happened, bitches!!!!!11!!

The NYT investigates the source of the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim rumors. Among the findings:

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

…and…

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

…and yet…

(An) appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

Oh, well.

Actually, at this point I would happily give up three weeks of my life if we could reset the calendar to November 5, 2008, and have all this shit done with, but I know I’m in the minority. So carry on, y’all, and I’ll be in and out here throughout the day.

But what’s my motivation?

A zombie consults with his director, October 2008.

Open thread to remember Paul Newman, who died yesterday.

Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand:

That’s “the end of the world as we know it,” for you non-REM fans. Wouldn’t fit on one line.

I don’t know about you, but when a day opens with an account of the Treasury Secretary on bended knee before the Speaker of the House, continues with clips of the Republican vice-presidential candidate sounding like Miss Teen South Carolina, lurches on to another bank failure and it’s not even 9 a.m. yet, well…that’s not a good day. One should consider going back to bed. I did. Decided, instead, to read a movie review. Hey, it’s Friday. Is Spike Lee still the most overrated director since Steven Spielberg? Check:

The role that black troops actually played is an important story, and might have been a powerful one in Spike Lee’s hands. Indeed, a sense of that power can still be gleaned from the DVD version of Rachid Bouchareb’s “Days of Glory,” a magnificent French-language film that played here two years ago, and told essentially the same story with different skin shades — four Algerian soldiers in the French army fighting bravely against the Nazis for the nation they love while their fellow French soldiers treat them like scum, and their casually despicable racist officers use them as cannon fodder.

But the Bouchareb film allowed the awful ironies of the situation to speak for themselves, while Spike Lee keeps hammering them home with agitprop fervor and clumsy actors playing racist officers as crude cartoons.

Yep. Is Roger Ebert still his No. 1 fan and water-carrier? Hmm, three stars, but I know it’s in here somewhere…oh, OK. Here it is:

In a sense, the scenes I complain about are evidence of Lee’s stature as an artist. In a time of studios and many filmmakers who play it safe and right down the middle, Lee has a vision and sticks to it.

You might have gathered I’m not a fan. Fortunately, Spike Lee’s movies are easy to avoid and, in the grand scheme of things, not much of an irritant. However, one of the great periods of Hollywood flowering came during the Depression, when our parents, or our grandparents, escaped from their dreary lives an hour or two at a time at their local movie house. Now that it looks like we’re in for a sequel to the Depression, it might be nice to have a few decent movies in town, too.

(Well, there’s always “Nights in Rodanthe,” in which, I read, “an elusive band of wild horses shows up for a symbolic gallop on a beach” [WSJ]. Can’t! Wait!)

I’m invited to a small debate gathering tonight at JohnC’s house, but given that we don’t know if the debate is actually happening, maybe not. Hey, John — maybe you should make it a Depression-themed gathering. Have everyone bring a donation to a soup kitchen, or a cake made without flour or eggs. I hear things are tough all over. Mrs. Fuld (nee: Mrs. Lehman Bros.) is even selling her art. I hope Uncle Sam has the guts to seize the checks.

If you guys are looking for something to discuss in the comments, maybe everyone could take a stab at describing an economy in which the credit lines are frozen. Hardly anyone has done so publicly, or if so, they say, “You wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage or car loan.” Since most people are, at any given moment, not shopping for either one, it makes it easy to turn the page and say, “not my problem.” I don’t think most people know how credit works, how lines of credit and short-term borrowing affects, literally, every segment of the economy, how business relies on short-term credit to stock their shelves and longer-term instruments to install new equipment, etc. So Econ 101 for any dummies who might stumble through here and need the education. I figure it can’t be any less useful than more ranting and gloating.

So, bloggage?

“It really is true what they say: Those who do not study the past get an exciting opportunity to repeat it.” — Jon Stewart, national treasure. It gets good at the one-minute mark:

Well, at least you’ll be able to get some decent pot around here without risking your neck.

Finally, when was the last time you heard someone say, “I thought I’d be wearing a jet pack by now. Where’s my jet pack?” Well, it’s here!

Have a good day and weekend. I’ll be casting zombies.

Here’s a line I’ve been waiting my whole life to use: Sorry I’m late today. I was polishing my screenplay.

Which is the truth. It appears “The Cemetery Precincts” is a go, and if we all lived in the same town, I’d invite you all to be zombie extras, but at the moment, finding locations is a more pressing concern. It’s true that everyone wants to be in showbiz, but with the real, paying showbiz all over Michigan at the moment, the no-budget hobbyist has to go to the end of the line. With the state currently offering filmmakers the highest rebate on money spent in production in the country, you can’t swing a cat without hitting Drew Barrymore smack in the face. Alan came across a sizable shoot on a bike ride the other day; they’d taken over a mansion on Windmill Point Drive down in the Park. I suspect this is “The Prince of Motor City,” a retelling of “Hamlet” set in the auto industry.

Anyway, they had streets blocked off. We’re just looking for a few places we can shoot guerrilla-style.

It was just as well that I was thinking of low-budget zombies and how to explain an uprising of the undead this weekend, because every time I thought of events in the real world, I felt like clawing someone’s throat out. At one point Saturday, as I waited at the gate for my flight home from St. Louis, watching CNN Headline News, we all watched a story about the federal bailout. A clip from our president featured him looking even more the dumb Irish setter than usual, and when he said, “It turns out the markets are interlocking,” lacing his fingers together for emphasis, I thought, How proud Harvard Business School must be of its most successful graduate. And I said, louder maybe than I’d intended to, “BullSHIT.” Up and down the row at the gate: Titters. Granted, maybe they were laughing at the crazy lady talking to the TV, but I like to think that if I’d risen from my seat, climbed up on it and said, “To the nearest federal building! Who’s with me?!” I’d have gotten a few followers. I don’t think Washington is quite aware of how incandescent the fury is out here in Deep Pockets-ville, and what will likely happen as a result, especially if stories like this…

The financial crisis that began in the United States spread to many corners of the globe. Now, the American bailout looks as if it is going global, too, a move that could raise its cost and intensify scrutiny by Congress and critics. Foreign banks, which were initially excluded from the plan, lobbied successfully over the weekend to be able to sell the toxic American mortgage debt owned by their American units to the Treasury, getting the same treatment as United States banks.

…and this…

Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it. Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

…become widely known and discussed. I’m also thinking that indemnify-the-CEOs stuff is a non-starter, too. But then, I’m an extremist; I advocate stripping them of their assets, and then their clothing, and sending them on a national tour of, say, Springsteen-size arenas, there to be chased through the rows and struck by audience members who will, further, jeer at their shriveled weenies. That sounds like justice to me. Or at least a good start.

You’ve probably seen this, which was going around this weekend, but if not, read and feed on the sweet, pure anger.

St. Louis was fine, if anyone wondered. After spending Friday night talking, I went over to my friends’ house to meet their new dog, who had moved in only hours before. She’s a skinny, undersized golden rescued from a puppy mill who nevertheless seems to be adjusting well. At eight months she’s unlikely to get too much bigger, but she’s got the blonde silky coat thing going on, and that’s all you can ask from a golden. Name’s Frankie. She came from an all-female litter, and they all were given men’s names. I called her Francesca, Francine, Francie, etc., which is what I do with my loved ones. My own pooch has more diminutives than a Russian novel, enough that it’s a wonder he answers to his own name at all. (Of course, he doesn’t anymore, but that’s because he’s deaf.) Saturday was spent touring the city — such a prosperous-looking place. I can’t figure if that’s because the local economy is strong or my eye’s been Detroit-ified; I suspect the latter. But the inner-ring neighborhoods are blossoming with money, and it was heartening to see. Not everyone wants to live in a subdivision. It’s nice to see a few reaching critical mass.

Not much bloggage today, but a question: Who let America’s aging sweetheart, a star beloved by all who know her, one possessed of the rare talent of sincerity and the ability to laugh at herself, wear this horrible dress to the Emmys? It doesn’t matter how skinny you are — past 70, a woman should wear a sleeve.

Happy Monday to all of you.

I talked to JohnC yesterday, who also lives in the Pointes, and he said he was about to send me an e-mail passing along the latest civic rumor: That soon-to-be-ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick had closed on a house in Grosse Pointe Shores, at a two-digit number — i.e., close to the lake — on Oxford Road. John’s a reporter too, and we batted around the possibility this was true before deciding it probably wasn’t. He doesn’t have that kind of money (the house is $1.5 million), no one would lend him that kind of money, leaving the city of Detroit would send the wrong message to the constituency he hopes to lead again one day and, finally, it just didn’t pass the smell test. It dovetails a little too neatly with some Pointers’ need to believe everyone wants to live in the 48236, and of course it rings the lizard-brain bell about the Threatening Negro come to disrupt the peace in Whiteville.

The Pointes haven’t been all-white for a couple of generations, but they’re pretty white. There are affluent African Americans here and there, but not in any kind of significant numbers. A black family of the Kilpatricks’ demographic and education wouldn’t raise eyebrows, but Kilpatrick himself would raise them, believe me. It’s hard to describe how spittle-flecked the loathing of him is in the suburbs, which always seemed a waste of energy to me. While it’s true his administration has been a disaster, a virtual carnival of pocket-lining and perjury, the specific objection to him suggests things would be different, and better, with a new mayor, and that I’m not sure of. What’s going on in Detroit, what was going on before Kilpatrick and will continue later, isn’t administration as much as it’s looting. It’s a brutal comparison, but to me you could change the name Kilpatrick to Duvalier, and get a pretty rough parallel.

Anyway, the media checked out the rumor and confirmed our suspicion: No sale.

Let’s deal further in ethnic stereotypes, shall we? I was struck by this photo from the New York Times today. This man is evacuating ahead of Hurricane Ike:

Story here. His name is Juan Rodriguez, which I assume in a Texas Gulf Coast resident suggests Mexican heritage, and he owns a chihuahua. Does your dog share your ethnic heritage? Do dogs share any part of their human equivalent’s ethnic stereotype? It’s hard not to see Deutschland’s personality in its German shepherds and Rottweilers, but what France has to do with French bulldogs remains a mystery to me — although, now that I think about it, a French bulldog is generally more fashionable than its English equivalent.

Ah, Friday. Time to clean the house. Any bloggage? Not much, but this:

Roger Ebert, my hero. Are all New York Post writers thugs? Or is this just indicative of the mood at overstuffed, overhyped film festivals?

Have a good weekend, all.

UPDATE: Speaking of chihuahuas, I need to add a link to this, one of my favorite commercials ever. (Embedding is disabled, alas.) It’s from the short-lived Viva Gorditas campaign, and I loved it because, in the late 1990s, it referenced a whole lot of things that were already far out of date and way over the heads of the target Taco Bell demographic, i.e., teenage boys. The classic banana-republic, ruler-who-speaks-from-a-balcony tropes — the red banners, the cheering crowds, the tinny speakers mounted on a pole, the old-fashioned microphone, Che’s beret — just cracked me up. I notice this version is 22 seconds, an odd length, and I recall one that ended with an image right out of a Soviet May Day poster, with the dog leading the cheering crowd down a dike or embankment, with farm fields spreading out to the side, while three jets pass in formation overhead. How on earth did they sell that one to corporate?

When we were in Argentina, and were taken through Evita’s Casa Roja, I longed to step out on the balcony, cup my hand in a wave, and call out, “Viva Gorditas.” Because that’s just the sort of ugly American I am.

Although it doesn’t quite rise to the level of this election year’s Pledge of Allegiance moment — did Barack Obama call Sarah Palin a lipsticked pig, or did he not — I’ve found the examination of this even more minor issue fascinating.

That is: Is the fact Palin got the first passport of her life only last year significant?

Roger Ebert says yes (original link dead; Free Republic copyright violation substitutes):

And how can you be her age and never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer’s $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.

You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin’s travel record is that of a hopeless provincial.

As you can imagine, this column has ignited the knuckle-draggers, including James Lileks, who does his best imitation of a minor character from Sinclair Lewis with this zinger:

We have cathedrals; they’re just younger.

I suspect I know why Palin never traveled: Children. She married young and every few years she’s had another kid coming along, and if there’s anything to make a woman say, “You know, maybe another year in Vegas isn’t the worst thing in the world,” it’s the idea of making a trans-Atlantic flight with a small child. Also, and this is harder to quantify, but my guess is, if you live in a place like Alaska, the priority for your time off is pretty simple — sunshine and warmth — and Arizona or Florida is where you go, maybe Hawaii. Or it’s entirely possible Ebert’s suspicion is correct, and she really has no curiosity about the rest of the world. In which case it’s not exactly a campaign issue, but it is interesting.

I remember hearing the same thing about George Bush, and reacting the same way. Bush, son of privilege, a man who had both the money and the time, reached his late 40s without having traveled more widely than North America. (Like all good Texans, he’d been to Mexico.) If this makes me an elitist, so be it, but if you’ve got the resources, you should travel, and travel outside the country. When the Powerball tops $150 million and people around me spin lottery dreams, I don’t even have to think about it. I’d take the money and hit the road, and I wouldn’t come home until I got tired of it. And then I’d hit the road again, and I’d do the sort of travel I’ve only fantasized about: A month in Shanghai, summer in St. Petersburg, beaches in Corsica. India. Japan. Brazil. The Galapagos. Australia. Africa from top to bottom. And that’s only the beginning.

Without making this a discussion of Palin’s provincialism or lack thereof, where have you traveled and where would you like to travel? What was the biggest surprise of the trip? And do we think the dollar will ever recover enough to make travel outside the U.S. possible for the middle class again? (If the answer is no, name a place where you can still get a lot for a little, because my feet are itchy to be on the road again. I thought I’d take Kate to Europe by now, but when the cost is X thousands of dollars, plus 40 percent currency-exchange adjustment, plus 26 percent VAT, the answer is, “Maybe next year.”) And finally, why is it important to leave your country once in a while (and how do you explain that to a pinhead who think it’s about touring museums and cathedrals)?

And if you’re not in the mood for that, here’s some bloggage, an amusing piece from Slate: Walter Sobchak, neocon. Yes, with clips from “The Big Lebowski.” What’s more delicious?

Me, I get to interview a Rockette today. Envy me, world.

The one-year promotion for Comcast’s digital phone service includes two premium cable channels thrown in, so we now get HBO, Showtime and Starz and you know what that means — we now get eleventy-jillion channels with nothing to watch, but with all their on-demand crap, there’s usually something worth spending 112 minutes with on a Saturday night when you’re already tired.

So it was that I found myself watching “Black Snake Moan” by myself. Alan didn’t even make it to the opening credits, which come at about the five-minute mark. At every five-minute point afterward I considered joining him, but there was something compelling about this Southern Gothic train wreck. Writer/director Craig Brewer is the luckiest man in Memphis. First “Hustle and Flow” and the Oscars, and now Samuel L. Jackson playing the lead in his tale of a broke-down southron bluesman who chains Christina Ricci to a radiator?

Why does he do this, you ask? Well, Christian Ricci has “the sickness,” which in medical terms is known as Dick Deprivation Syndrome. Not five minutes after French-kissing her soldier man goodbye as he heads off to Iraq, this after a full-tilt horizontal farewell worthy of such a transition, her eyes roll back in her head and she falls to the ground and runs her hands all over herself and the next shot is of her getting rogered from behind by a big black drug dealer. You find yourself thinking, why doesn’t someone give this girl a vibrator, which would save her a lot of trouble, but thinking is not what this movie encourages. It’s supposed to be a fable, but keeps popping into realism when it suits it, and about the only thing that keeps you watching is the fact Ricci plays two-thirds of the movie in a teensy T-shirt and a pair of white panties. (It was good to see white panties acknowledged as the true pinnacle of sexy underwear. Thongs and lace have nothing on tighty whities, IMO.)

Oh, and the chain, too, which is what Jackson wraps around her waist and secures with a padlock so he can cure her of her sickness, but not in the way you’d think, but with…something. There are some heart-to-heart talks and a lot of blues and a certain amount of Bible-reading, but mainly it’s the standard script about two wounded souls who cure one another by really listening, and also by dancing in a hot Saturday-night juke joint while Jackson plays the guitar.

The nymphomania device kept misleading me, as it seems to beset Ricci at random, like epilepsy. One minute she’s fine, and the next her eyes are fluttering and she’s grabbing 13-year-old boys and all you can think is, well, this is a guy who made a movie about a misunderstood pimp, after all, and maybe that’s the way women are in Tennessee. Who knows? I’ve known a few sluts in my life, and they all made a man buy them a drink or two first, but maybe things are different in the south. I would have liked it better if he’d had the courage to take it all the way, rather than throwing in an explanation for everyone’s affliction and a ridiculous redemption ending, but oh well.

Jackson runs a small vegetable farm, as does our NN.C community member Coozledad. I kept thinking what a better movie it would have been if he’d been the one who found a half-naked woman lying in the road, and the imaginative ways he might have tried to cure her of her sickness. If nothing else, the dialogue would have been better.

Quick bloggage today:

Laura Lippman’s serial started this week in the NYT magazine. It’s a Tess Monaghan story, and it’s off on the right foot. Chapter one, here.

Quick tech question for someone who knows: There was a guy at the Dirtbombs concert Friday night with something I’ve never seen before. It looked like a horizontal mount for seven count ’em seven identical digital cameras — Canon PowerShots, I b’lieve. He’d hold it up, they’d all twinkle their autofocus lights and fire as one. What the heck was it? And please don’t say “a horizontal mount for seven cameras.”

UPDATE: J.C. Burns and kind commenter DanG appear to have the answer: It’s how you get the ‘bullet-time’ effect…dollying dimensionally around a frozen or slo-mo image. The rig was similar to this, only wider and with an antenna-like thing above it that could have been a microphone. Think of an old-timey photographer’s flash bar; it was like that, only with cameras instead of flash powder. But I think they’re right — it’s for capturing that Matrix-y effect.

Off to bed, and I’m sleeping in tomorrow, so don’t call.