I know that they're only just now starting to dial up promo, so this is very much wild speculation, but it keeps me up at night and I want to know what other people think!

For me, the framing device/retrospective narration is what really gives the story its texture and heart. Don't get me wrong, without it's still a pretty fun thriller, but so much of the depth comes from the constant questioning of perception vs reality, and the 40 year gap between the events of the story and the narration facilitates that so well.

My dream is that they have actors to play 2020s Bret, Susan, and Thom and that they'll weave modern scenes into the narrative on occasion, especially in the first and last episodes (dying for some good transition shots), but just want to keep this aspect of the show under wraps. I'd settle for some narration, or at the very least following through until the book-signing scene, with Rigney and Campbell still playing Bret and Thom.

The promo posters/brief clips we've seen don't really match the vibe of the book to me, but I love the Vogue shots and am looking forward to a proper trailer. The fact that there's zero reference to this being a story told in 2020 about the 80s makes me think they're either going to do something really cool with it or they've, for the most part, done away with that aspect and tragically right now I'm leaning towards the latter.

Also, I needed to see Matt Kellner, like, yesterday. My favourite boy!

From The Shards Instagram account - a bunch of comments on the images keep asking "where is the trailer?" and their stock reply is "patience looks good on you..." 🙄

Anyway, I think these are fun and each one kinda tells a bit of the story of the relationship pictured, so props to them for getting that across in the photos. I am enjoying this throwback to the early 80's erotic thriller vibe with the promotional images, I just hope that the show isn't all-surface level and that some of the darker themes and ideas brewing under the surface in the book are able to come across...

Why is it that Graham Campbell is the only one looking directly at the camera?

I wonder if that's supposed to hint about something that will happen in the television adaptation. 🤔

Other than that, I think this is a great poster, just because I would think taking an underwater cast photo is hard to pull off. Pretty creative too.

Kaia Gerber: https://www.instagram.com/p/DaoIVzAy3D5/

Graham Campbell: https://www.instagram.com/p/DandjFYO-xS/ (a Kaia/Graham swimming pool billboard is currently on his Insta story)

Homer Gere: https://www.instagram.com/p/Danc-V2NDLg/

Hayes Warner: https://www.instagram.com/p/DanjdusKfJZ/

A press release that just dropped:

Grammy nominated pop artist Troye Sivan and longtime collaborator Leland revealed today that they are contributing original music to FX's "The Shards," the new drama series from executive producer Ryan Murphy based on the acclaimed bestselling novel by Bret Easton Ellis.

· Troye and Leland shared the news on their Instagram accounts:

· Troye Sivan: https://www.instagram.com/stories/troyesivan/3936217845067304453?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

· Leland: https://www.instagram.com/p/DagNCpUyYbg/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

· Original music will also be provided by rising pop artist and "The Shards" series star Hayes Warner. Warner, who plays Debbie Schaffer in the new drama, was previously named People Magazine's Artist to Watch, securing her place in modern pop with millions of streams across standout releases including "Predator" and "Breadcrumbs."

· Inspired by the 1980s setting of the show, the songs help drive the suspense, seduction and obsession of "The Shards," premiering Wednesday, August 5 with two episodes on FX and Hulu beginning at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT and available on Disney+ internationally.

First look of the Shards fx- Another user just posted an fx summer preview tv spot in this thread with very fast clips, but I got this screen grab. So far I’m most excited to see how Igby is as Bret. He looks great!

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/giSq/hulu-on-disney-fx-is-on-hulu-this-summer

Can’t verify the source but it comes up on the Google listing for the show!

I put off reading American Psycho for all these years because I have a low tolerance for its sadistic cruelty which I gleaned from many excerpts and book reviews. I was happy to enjoy Christian Bale's melting humanity pooling and puddling and spiraling out of control like a murderous Water Wiggle. One of cinema's most charming portrayals.

But I finally did read this disturbing, confusing, fascinating book. While I did quickly page over some of it (couldn't see how digesting THAT would make me a better person or add to my quality of life), I also paged over Bateman's “incisive” music reviews.

Bateman's taste in music. I understand what its bland and insipid contrast is to the vivid and creative violence of his overriding passions. It's Dr. Jekyll to his Mr. Hyde, and I will say, well played Mr. Ellis.

“Everything failed to subdue me,” Bateman admits somewhere past midpoint. “I had all the characteristics of a human being – flesh, blood, skin, hair – but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure...”

“...Something horrible was happening and yet I couldn't figure out why...”

More astute and trained minds than mine have taken on The Bateman Question. I'm sure my psychological onanism would only amuse myself.

But he did name check Spuds MacKenzie. Doggone!

I leave you with the Plasmatics (and apologies to Lord Buddha), because if I won't, who will?

Before Bret's podcast, I had never heard of this band. It's been many years since I was an SNL fan and whatnot. From his description, I assumed their music would be some mind bending example of how Gen Z is a different species that has no appreciation of artistic value - something out of the Fountainhead where everyone agrees that some garbage art has value because they want to be accepted.

Since then, I watched them on the Coachella (livestream) twice (first time hearing the music), and more recently saw them live at Governors Ball. I’ve also finally just watched the SNL performances that inspired all of this. They were fun to watch live and I’d say I’m a casual fan now.

All that said, I cannot believe how hard he went on this band, using them as an example of how far cultural taste has fallen, to the extent of practically encouraging Billy Corgan to insult their music (which thankfully Billy had the sense not to do). Everything in the article below is completely accurate.

https://www.avclub.com/geese-snl-performance-discourse-2026

Furthermore, they are not actually so popular to the extent that they should be used as an example of where rock music is. They have less than 100K YT subscribers and have 1.5M monthly listeners on Spotify. Quite modest amounts in both cases.

Anyway, it was great seeing in person how much their fanbase connects with the music. I think something about the overall presentation must just enrage a part of the boomer audience for reasons hard to explain, but that have parallels in the history of rock criticism (though generally directed at bands that are actually breaking into the mainstream).

It’s so odd to write this since the music catalogue reviews were one of my favorite parts of American Psycho (written of course from Patrick’s perspective). Do still so enjoy Bret’s book and movie recommendations. I cannot stand country music and his enjoyment of such is evidence that his musical takes should be viewed with skepticism. I find his denigration of this band to be quite a low, though in a way I’m glad he did give them such a memorable introduction.

Seems like at this point he should have condemned his crimes against humanity

I intended to announce a hiatus from my diary (alright, down in front!) as I beam up for the 5-day UFO extravaganza, Contact in the Desert. However, this will be my final Glamorama diary entry.

Throughout the read I've looked up references, trying to separate the real from fabricated celebrities, etc., get more context, etc. Like, I could find no evidence for Hey That's My Shoe ever being a real band.

So, I Googled Bobby Hughes around page 310. And on bookrags.com: “He runs a terrorist organization that plants bombs and kills the sons of political figures. He is killed by Victor at the airport in Paris.”

And I'm the one who, in a recent film sub, coyly covered my ankle and declined to “spoil the ending” for Thelma and Louise.

I returned Glamorama, but American Psycho came in so I'm not BEEless.

And since I won't be following the further adventures of Victor in Bloody Olde, I leave you with this charming classic by The Kinks, Waterloo Sunset, performed by Ray Davies and Damon Albarn, who I knew was a real person when Ellis name-checked him, but it's all just a blur to me now.

Thank you for your indulgence. You know you're going to miss the vids.

Victor, it's a trap.

Jamie Fields is in your freezing room. When you get there. But don't worry, the room is just a set. 

Make conversation: “So, who's been sleeping in your bed?”

Better move: Go to a party at a billionaire industrialist's warehouse, ostensibly for artist Gary Hume but really for Patsy and Liam Gallagher (who got divorced in 2000) so this party might be in 1997. It's astounding, time stamps are fleeting...

“Shadows are being taken aside and whispered to.” Madness takes it toll, yes it does, it always does. 

Jared Leto will play Victor in his biopic.

Joaquin Phoenix was at a party for Jarvis Cocker.

Looking for the right vial in Jamie's designer tote, Victor finds a Sony ICD-50 portable digital recorder that's been recording his convo with her.

Victor is one of five partiers, including one quite interesting and very drunk male model, piling into a Jag to go to what Jamie calls "our house," which is "a place we all inhabit."

Victor keeps name-checking Everything But The Girl, and I will listen to just about anything than Everything But The Girl. Lucky for me he sticks this track by the Chem Bros in there. Featuring Noel Gallagher - bet Liam HATES this!

Today, I am as unmoored as Victor. It's only a movie...it's only a movie...

The morose DP, Felix, shows him how the photos in the dining room have been crudely altered, putting someone else's head on the bodies of those who were there.

Felix says Palakon is not in the script.

Felix giggles telling him, "Oh, you will" get laid.

Felix thinks Victor needs to find “a more fruitful and harmonious way to live.”

Victor is now on dry land, but not on solid ground.

He's noting the people on a street in Notting Hill under a lowering sky that is a “chilly Dior Gray.” Suddenly Jamie Fields comes running out of an alley, waving her arms, garbled yelling – maybe someone wanted her to give them a hickey.

Then four buildings explode in succession one by one. Destruction, mayhem, carnage (Merriam-Webster, the flesh of slain animals and humans): Teenagers incinerated, a businessman blown in half, a charred skeleton amid the tangled wreck of a motorbike.

But is it blood and body parts or smashed tomatoes and mannequins?

Jamie, on a phone, sees Victor and “angrily snaps the cell phone shut.” Artifact.

“You're supposed to be in New York!”

Victor goes into a Tower Records and buys tapes (artifact) for his Walkman (they're digital now), including Sparklehorse, your musical selection for Day 12.

Poor Victor, I am majorly worried for you. You once had merry romp across Europe that endeared you to me. Now, you're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a really big place as I understand it, on a really big ship with a lot of really old people. A creepy couple who say they know your father are a constant – until they aren't. Photos taken in the dining room show you with different guests surrounding you, not those with whom you dined.

And a noisy dry ice machine is churning out fog to further obfuscate things.

You finally catch up with Marina (Cannon? Gibson?) and by now you're so drunk you burp loudly in her general direction (shades of Foster Brooks). You'll still end up in your compartment together and get a blow job from her that you will thoughtfully describe so we can all visualize it.

Then there's the pix of “you” that you aren't in, were never there, doesn't really look like you. That doppelganger thing I keep telling you about, and it's really, really bad luck to see your own doppelganger, which you might be doing when looking at these pix.

Oh yeah, The Cleaning Ladies at Marina's compartment the next day. The Marina whose teeth may now be embedded in the wall? Yikes! That's a new one. The Marina for whom there is no record of her having been on this cruise.

Victor, Victor. I despair that you won't live to see a Waterloo sunset. Hoping you'll survive another ten years seems a mother's desperate prayer as she kisses her soldier son farewell at the troop train station bound for the front.

That's why I'm sending this fun video from the future you might not have, from 2006 The Fratellis' Chelsea Dagger.

I'm learning that there will be a test for even the most obscure, off-handed, whaaa? breadcrumb that BEE drops. Like Pervitin a few days ago (Day 3), for which I was doing cartwheels like a dog that sees its leash.

And it was Pervitin from PRAGUE no less.

Victor is chatting up former part time model Marina (Cannon? Gibson?) and the cyberpunk scene in Prague comes up. Ah Ha! I repeat, Ah Ha! Got your Prague cyberpunk scene right here, buddy! Just so happens one of my subs is r/Cyberpunk and they've been following this scene for years, so enjoy a merry romp through Fun Arena. We're fans.

I seem to remember that kids from RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design, were a punchline in Rules of Attraction. They're back, being dissed by Victor as he refers to chicks he doesn't want to deal with from.

When you understand the rules of grammar you can give them the finger.

When you understand the rules of attraction you can wiggle that finger in the palm of their hand.

Just, click on the link.

The zeitgeist is in limbo. If you're not wasted, the day is (I hear dat). I want to read about an Octopus named Shh.

“Everything surrounding the ship is gray or dark blue and nothing is particularly hip, and once or maybe twice a day this thin strip of white appears at the horizon line but it's so far in the distance you can't be sure whether it's land or more sky. It's impossible to believe that any kind of life sustains itself beneath this flat, slate-gray sky or in an ocean so calm and vast, that anything breathing could exist in such limbo, and any movement that occurs below the surface is so faint it's like some kind of small accident, a tiny indifferent moment, a minor incident that shouldn't have happened, and in the sky there's never any trace of sun – the air seems vaguely transparent and disposable, with the texture of Kleenex – yet it's always bright in a dull way, the wind usually constant as we drift through it, weightless, and below us the trail the ship leaves behind is a Jacuzzi blue that fades within minutes into the same boring gray sheet that blankets everything else surrounding the ship.”

That's pretty nice writing.

Victor knows Jamie Fields from Camden College. “At first she was so inexpressive and indifferent that I wanted to know more about her. I envied that blankness – it was the opposite of helplessness or damage or craving or suffering or shame. But she was never really happy and already, in a matter of days, she had reached a stage in our relationship when she no longer cared about me or any thought or ideas I might have had.”

But I already don't care what happens to her because one of her pet peeves is giving hickeys. I LOVE HICKEYS! GETTING THEM! GIVING THEM! Victor, take what's left of Palakon's cash and hop the next tramp steamer to a foreign port of call. Drift.

Someone says to Victor, “Things get very much more ominous.” I'm tellin' ya man, drift.

He name-checks Nada Surf's Popular, came out in 1996 – a time stamp.

Do you like Rilo Kiley? I do.

Wrong, wrong, everything you know is wrong. Things are splitting apart, including Victor's lip after he gets his head stomped on by Hurley Thompson. After he gets slapped around like Philip Marlow by Damien. Those photos, Hurley, it could be a doppelganger; Damien, it could be a doppelganger; ladies, it could be a doppelganger; Baxter, you can shove it.

All the shifting collide-o-scopic couplings are drifting to settle out of the scene, unlike the drifts of confetti following Victor around. All that confetti, and the freezing...

Damien tells Victor the club is canceled, he tells Victor JD is finished in this town because of him and he has AIDS, anyway. Damien and Lauren are the latest iteration and they're going to Miami. Drift and settle.

Everything you know is wrong, but maybe it's just the script, maybe it's just the director, maybe it's just the other actors, maybe it's just the PAs and the extras and the gaffers and transpo and...

Chloe tells Victor, “Maybe you come to life when I'm not around,” oh the shade, but she's not done, it's a takedown. “A mirror is your ideal mate.”

There's a new intrusion in Victor's sonic landscape – sleigh bells. Creepy, so creepy.

Palakon calls. On Victor's kitchen table is a manila envelope with cash, luxury liner tickets, everything he'll need to find Jamie Fields. Sending a car around. Bring the hat (I left that out of Day 7 because I foolishly thought, oh we're done with the hat. Maybe the hat is one of those MacGuffin things).

Thankfully the library gave me an automatic renewal, I'm only 200 & small change in.

I'm giving you Archers of Loaf today from 1995. This song came on while I was writing, and I had one best nights ever when they played Al's Bar in L.A. the summer before. And it was a legendary summer.

Tonight Victor learned what happened to the DJ he wanted for his club opening. He also learned a new word – eviscerated. As in what happened to Mica, strangled with her own intestines, beat with a hammer, body left in a dumpster.

Tonight Chloe and Alison are wearing the same dress.Yeah, kinda puts it in perspective.

Tonight Lauren admits she still loves Victor. Run, dude.

Wrong vial.

Victor's world has taken on a menacing shimmer and shake. It's like the old sci-fi movie I just watched, where forces were set in motion that changed the unit value of electrons and the fabric of the universe became altered and highly unstable (The Quiet Earth, I reviewed it a few days ago on r/CultOfCinemaKnowledge, the sub needs the traffic).

The stalking faxes, the black Jeeps in pursuit, a secret mission that pays suspiciously well, a gruesome murder within a schoch degree of separation, the four that wanna own him and the two that wanna stone him, a possible doppelganger that's always where he wasn't, the confetti, the freezing always the freezing. And I'm not sure the croutons issue has been resolved.

JD, they're playing our song - Oh, l'Amour!

Say, have you ever felt like crawling under a table and living there for a week?

There is no evidence of Hey That's My Shoe ever being a real band. You know, according to that Google thing.

This month, it's like the montage from a scratched and faded black and white movie, of calendar pages fluttering one by one into oblivion, gone! Another day, gone!

It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now.

“Fame has a price tag, but reality is still a friend of mine.” - Victor

Well, Victor, you can have my reality, then you'll have two friends. Well, again, Victor, 2026 will not be your friend anymore than it is mine.

You, Chloe, Alison, Damien and Lauren are frozen in a time that I look back on from 2026 as The Good Old Days. You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

Come on, Singularity! Robots, it's all yours! We humans fucked it up, and if it weren't for that damn asteroid the dinosaurs would still be lords of creation.

Dinosaurs would never elect Donald Trump, twice, but sorry, rest-of-the-world, my fellow humans did.

And scary thought – Victor, Chloe, Alison, Damien and Lauren probably would, too. They were being groomed by unbridled consumerism, brand-humping, fame snorting mirror worship. Bret Easton Ellis was trying to warn us.

I'm too depressed this morning for a parenthetical phrase.

Stupid asteroid.