Tag Archives: patrick bateman

Patrick Bateman needs 100-grand in the next two weeks–or he’ll stab you to death and play around with your blood!

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What could be better than American Psycho, one of the greatest films ever made about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends?  Well, how about an American Psycho musical?  That’s right, writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, director Rupert Goold and composer Duncan Sheik have conspired to bring the Bret Easton Ellis classic to the stage–complete with song-and-dance numbers!  I don’t suppose they can afford the rights to “Hip to be Square,” “The Greatest Love of All” or “Sussudio,” but in any case, this is sure to be the greatest musical since Evil Dead.

Even if they aren’t dishing out the big bucks on licensing fees, the creators of this great, great show are seeking some financial aid.  Because they don’t actually work on Wall Street, for Pierce and Pierce.  In fact, the play is premiering in London, not NYC.  Then again, London actually has a restaurant named Dorsia, so I suppose that makes sense…

Through a Kickstarter campaign, Goold, Sheik, Easton Ellis and company are looking to raise 150-grand towards funding this endeavour.  As of right now, they’re about 97K short with an evil 666 backers.  I’ll leave it to you to click the link to see all the awesome prizes, but let’s just say they’ll actually send you Patrick Bateman’s business card (which is also a USB key) if you pledge at least 25 bucks.  It even has a watermark!

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There’s a reason why Patrick Bateman always had a driver…

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The National Post is reporting that “A survey of 3,000 male motorists conducted by British insurance company MORE TH>N reveals that in excess of 11% have made car insurance claims following a crash that occurred while they were admiring their reflections in the rearview mirror and/or using a grooming product.”  Pretty sure that’s known in the insurance business as an “at-fault accident.”  On the other hand, an additional 3 per cent were fortunate enough not to cause an insured loss despite admitting “they check out their appearance between five and 10 times during a typical 30-minute drive.”  But that number’s probably a lot higher if you’re a yuppie serial killer who works at Pierce & Pierce. ;)

Interestingly enough, 21 per cent of these so-called “Motorsexual Men”—which sorta sounds like a euphemism for premature ejaculators, doesn’t it?—drive a Ford; either a Focus or a Fiesta, to be precise.  The rest, I presume, own a Chevy Corvette.  As they say in Quebec, “Grosse Corvette, petite quéquette.”  (It loses something in translation…)

Maaan, I would KILL for this Phil Collins t-shirt!

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Don’t get me wrong, all of the above t-shirts are pretty awesome, but by far the greatest is the one at top left.  Great, great shirt.  Personal favourite.  I’m almost certain Patrick Bateman would even wear it under his Armani suit–if it was made from Egyptian silk and Himalayan cashmere, that is.

This just in: Mayor Bloomberg likes big butts!

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The front-page story of the latest issue of New York magazine has caused a bit of a stir, not so much for its profile on mayoral candidate Christine Quinn, but for its portrayal of current mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Alas, it would appear that the man who banned large sodas from the Big Apple is nevertheless a fan of one of the Big Gulp’s known side effects—it produces big booties.

As the New York Daily News recounts, “My friend and I followed the host over, shook Bloomberg’s hand, and my friend thanked him for his position on gun control,” the author writes. “Without even acknowledging the comment, Bloomberg gestured toward a woman in a very tight floor-length gown standing nearby and said, ‘Look at the ass on her.’”  Now that’s how you start a conversation!

Furthermore, the New York profile suggests that Bloomberg treated Quinn, currently the Speaker of the City Council, the way that Patrick Bateman treats his secretary in American Psycho.  “The mayor has no use for flat shoes,” Quinn told her profiler. “I was at a parade with him once and he said, ‘What are those?’ and I said, ‘They’re comfortable,’ and he said, ‘I never want to hear those words out of your mouth again,’” she recalled. “He likes me in high heels.”

Whoa.  Next thing you know, it will be revealed that Bloomberg worked for Pierce & Pierce in the mid-to-late 80’s…

“Oh my god! It even has a watermark!”

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John Baird, the Man with the Golden Card, has taken his Patrick-Bateman-eque obsession to a national scale, adding a watermark to all new Canadian passports.  “The 16 distinct images include sports scenes — obligatory illustrations of the Grey Cup and Stanley Cup — and Canadian landmarks such as old Quebec City, the Prairies and Parliament’s iconic Centre Block,” The Canadian Press reports.  No word as to whether the watermarks can be chosen by the passport holder, or if the images will be randomly assigned, but I’d hate to be the angry Albertan who’s stuck with Quebec City on his international identification for a decade…

One thing we do know is that these new passports will be much more expensive.  A five-year passport renewal, which previously cost $87, will see an increase up to $120, with a 10-year renewal now available for the price of $160.  Hey, that’s still cheaper than dinner for two at Dorsia—at least after the currency conversion. (Good luck getting a reservation, though!)

OLYMPIC BABES: Nadja Drygalla (Germany, rowing)

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Nadja Drygalla

This 23-year-old rower is Germany’s answer to Voula Papachristou–or is she?  Drygalla, who competed in the women’s eights, agreed to leave the Olympic Village last week because her boyfriend is a Nazi.  Well, a Neo-Nazi.  Or at least he used to be–until very recently.  Her man, Michael Fischer, ran for the far-right National Democratic Party in a regional election last year, and is also a member of the Rostock National Socialists.  Dating this dickweed actually cost Drygalla her job as a policewoman, and yet she still stands by her man, who says he’s reformed–even though he reportedly made a Facebook post about Pakis on the subway while in London for the Games.  Nadja, I think Patrick Bateman has some advice for you…

GUILTY PLEASURES: American Greed

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Patrick Bateman once said that he had not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust.  Well, this CNBC program, which airs nightly at 10 pm, would certainly speak to the first emotion–if not both of them.  With the Daily Show on a two-week hiatus, American Greed quickly became my new late-nite TV fix as I stumbled upon it while working my way up the dial one evening.

Narrated by Stacy Keach, the series depicts the rise and fall of a variety of ripoff artists, from “Mini Madoff” Nicholas Cosmo of Agape World to Milwaukee drug dealer and mortgage fraudster Michael Lock to a lucrative Philadelphia insurance fraud ring.  Compiling interviews with detectives, prosecutors, reporters, victims, and in some cases, even the criminals themselves, American Greed takes a closer look at the kind of people who bend the rules to get rich–and ultimately get caught.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from seeing several episodes of this show, it’s that if a money-making scheme sounds too good to be true, well, it probably is.  And that’s where the disgust comes in.  Not so much at the fraudsters living it large (cuz you know they’ll get it in the end), but at the blind sheep who throw their entire life savings into some Ponzi scheme, enticed by the thrill of high returns–that often turn out to be completely bogus.  When the scheme collapses, they go bankrupt, lose their homes, postpone retirement and sometimes are even forced out of retirement and back to work when their nest egg disappears.  I guess that’s what you get for putting all your eggs in one basket–have these people never heard of a diversified portfolio!?

In any case, the show offers a fascinating insight into the dark side of the so-called American Dream.  Let’s just say I’m proud to be Canadian…

Hmm, was Camille Cleroux arrested while returning videotapes?

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This just in: Patrick Bateman is alive and well, and living the nation’s capital.  No, not Washington—I’m talking about Ottawa.  A Postmedia News headline today states “Ottawa man killed neighbour for her apartment with ‘a better view’; bludgeoned ex-wives with rocks.”  Rumour has it said neighbour’s apartment was overlooking the park, and was clearly more expensive than Bateman’s.

Except that the culprit in this case looks less like Marcus Halberstram and more like a tattooed Santa Claus, judging by this court drawing.  Camille Cleroux, 58, “admitted to killing ex-wives Lise Roy and Jean Rock and neighbour Paula Leclair, 64, over a two decade period beginning in 1990.”  Which means he would have been 33 in 1987, making him too old to get a table at Dorsia.

In any case, this Cleroux seems like a pretty sick guy.  He allegedly killed his first wife in 1990 and buried her in his backyard, leaving their two young kids without a mother and with Patrick Bateman for a dad.  In 2003, he allegedly buried his second wife in a wooded area, but twice dug up her remains, before he finally “put the bones in a mesh onion bag and pushed them in a shopping cart from the spot they were buried to the Bronson bridge over the Rideau Canal,” then “weighed the bones down with rocks and dropped them into the water.”

As for the neighbour, the Postmedia story says that “Cleroux invited her for a walk on May 20, 2010, killed her in ‘cold blood’ and buried her in a shallow grave he had dug ahead of time.”  He then told her son that she had taken a trip—to London, no doubt.

Kinda scary when life imitates horror movies, eh?

Luka Rocco Magnotta: The gay Patrick Bateman?

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In the “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick” video by alleged Montreal dismemberer Luka Rocco Magnotta, our gay gorefiend abducts and beheads an Asian man before doing unspeakable things to his corpse.  You might not wanna click that link before going to an amusement park, if you know what I mean.  The soundtrack to this sordid scene is New Order’s 1987 hit “True Faith,” the same song that’s playing in the background when Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) tells a bartender “I wanna stab you to death, then play around with your blood” in the 2000 Lions Gate film American Psycho.  I take it our wanted man has never read the book by Bret Easton Ellis, in which all the hottest clubs are blasting “New Sensation” by INXS and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth.”  I don’t recall New Order being in the book, although I might be mistaken…

In any case, the synthpop song has led La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé to not only compare Magnotta to Bateman, but to go one step further when he states “Magnotta, c’est Bateman.”  Lagacé points out that the two share a disregard for both human and animal suffering (Magnotta allegedly has a thing for cats, Bateman tortures pets in the book, but more famously holds a gun to a cat’s head in the film), along with a taste for the macabre.  They’re both obsessed with their appearance (I’ll take his word for it on the former) and they’ve both filmed their exploits.  He also points out that Bateman tried to reenact porn scenes with a pair of prostitutes, while Magnotta apparently did gay porn somewhere.  For the record, he’s not listed on IMDB…

OK, fair enough, but there’s one big difference.  Patrick Bateman’s not gay.  There may be some people who think he was gay, or at least in the closet, but they also believe he didn’t kill anybody.  I can’t say I subscribe to either of those theories.  Bateman may have killed Paul Owen/Allen with an axe to the face, but he did not proceed to sodomize his headless corpse with a wine bottle like the star of “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick” did.  I’d also say that Bateman’s image obsession wasn’t a gay thing, but rather a product of yuppie culture; he wanted to fit in with all the other guys in the office, wear the same suits, use the same brand of lotion, etc.  From what photos I’ve seen of Magnotta, he definitely seems more effeminate.  Let’s just say I can’t picture him in a Giorgio Armani suit with Oliver Peoples glasses.

Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t inspired by the movie, mind you.  I’m reminded of one of the deleted scenes, in which Donald Kimball (portrayed expertly by Willem Dafoe, despite the fact that he’s supposed to be Bateman’s age in the book) runs into Bateman in a club–New Order isn’t playing in this one–and blurts out “They wanna confess…  I mean, they wanna get caught!”  Although slightly out of context in relation to the scene (which was about formal questioning versus informal conversations), it’s clear that by putting the video online and sending severed limbs to political parties, Magnotta wanted to be, if not caught, then at least recognized for what he allegedly did.

I do wonder, however, whether he follows Canadian politics all that closely.  I mean, why send a hand to the Liberals, who are now the third party in the House of Commons?  Wouldn’t that message be better directed to the Official Opposition?  Unless there’s already a package headed their way, that is.  The SPVM hasn’t stated that they’re aware of the whereabouts of the dead man’s penis…

Meanwhile, it’s assumed that the culprit is on a Glamorama-like whirlwind tour of Europe, possibly under a false identity.  It won’t be long before the authorities seek out Easton Ellis for an informal conversation, methinks.

Hannibal Lecter lives! (Well, not anymore…)

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Although there hasn’t been a new Hannibal Lecter movie since 2007’s Hannibal Rising, it seems the good doctor never stopped doing his thing.  The AP is reporting that “a naked man chewing on the face of another naked man on a downtown highway ramp kept eating and growled at a police officer who tried to make him stop” in Miami, Florida.  The suspect was not identified, but clearly this could only mean one of two things.  Either

A)      Patrick Bateman has finally come out of the closet

B)      Lecter took a wrong turn on the way to South Beach

That said, chances of another Lecter film being made anytime soon are highly unlikely.  The AP article states, “As the attack continued, Vega said the officer shot the attacker, who continued chewing the victim’s face. The officer fired again, killing the attacker.”  I suppose his death wouldn’t prevent another prequel, mind you…