Matthew Broderick On TCM

   There is nothing quite so strange as the apparition of Matthew Broderick on Friday evenings when he presents movies on TCM. He seems barely able to stand upright. He bends and curves in ways that  defy analysis. His speech is the speech of a person plugged into a machine. He drones and murmurs through the words as though each syllable is contracting his testicles into painful reshapings that he is fighting to not let his face reveal. There is no inflection discernible in the constant ramble of words and he appears as one desperate to be sitting down. But stand he must. His suit never seems to fit properly. It always seems to be one designed to be worn by Primo Canera, not by a tiny little Jew. At some point in each presentation he will attempt to put his hands into his trouser pockets. He fails at this as often as he succeds. But when he does fail he does not try again; he leaves one or both hands where he thinks his pockets should have been and he continues on in his anguished monologue apparently trusting that no one will notice. But you do notice and for the next ten or fifteen sentences all you can do is fixate on "what must be the matter with him?" Chewy on the Chelsea Handler show could perform a much better presentation even with a salad bowl filled with fruit on his head.

   Seeing one of these performances you would think that the next day's headlines would be about him. It's that unsettling. It's almost like a global catastrophe. He should be knocking Obama and the Philippine typhoon off Page One and onto page 23. But there is never a word about it the next day. Conspiracy theorists, were they to watch one of these presentations, would stop thinking about the Masons forever and refocus their attention on Matthew Broderick and come up with notions of what might really be going on with him rather than with the Nephilim.