Asphalt is a dystopian novel of speculative fiction by American writer Carl Hancock Rux and published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in 2004. The novel was completed while Rux was briefly in residence at the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York City. [1]
Asphalt is a dystopian novel of speculative fiction by American writer Carl Hancock Rux and published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in 2004. The novel was completed while Rux was briefly in residence at the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York City. [1]
Racine, an expatriate DJ, returns from an ill-fated stay in Paris to a war-torn New York City and finds himself lodged in a deteriorating civil war era brownstone mansion in a Brooklyn neighborhood devastated by poverty and despair. [2] Here he meets Manny, a crossdressing free spirit with a penchant for women and architectural history; Mawepi the stout bouncer and translator for the clairvoyant yet reclusive Holy Mother Lucinda; and Couchette, an emotionally scarred erotic dancer mired in denial regarding her famous jazz musician father's suicide. Immediately Racine finds himself creating the sonic backdrop for intense parties, orgies, and conversations while Manny and the other residents chase their dreams in a transitional New York. Couchette is the troubled spirit with whom Racine shares physically intimate and emotionally frustrating moments. The story weaves depictions of Racine's childhood, including his mother's death by fire when he was an infant; his experiences living with his brother, Frederick, in the custody of an uncle who is a disturbed religious zealot; Frederick's mysterious accidental death; Racine's eventual abandonment and years in foster care under the guardianship of a caring alcoholic; and the truth of his recent trip to France to visit a former schoolmate, Benoit, and his girlfriend. Rux infuses his tale with Greek mythology, mirroring Racine's tragic life experiences with that of Euripides' Hippolytus who is physically dismembered by a monstrous force on his journey to redemption. The characters in Asphalt all employ different strategies for abandoning experiences that have consumed and distorted their views of reality and their conflict with memory and poses a rhetorical embedded question in abandoned buildings and the psychological aftereffects of war-torn cities as to how cultures and individuals handle suffering, loss, and unresolved tragedy.
Round Midnight is a 1986 musical drama film directed by Bertrand Tavernier and written by Tavernier and David Rayfiel. It stars Dexter Gordon, François Cluzet and Herbie Hancock, the latter of whom also composed the film's soundtrack. Martin Scorsese, Philippe Noiret and Wayne Shorter appear in cameos.
Graham Bruce Hancock is a British writer who promotes pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilizations and lost lands. Hancock speculates that an advanced ice age civilization was destroyed in a cataclysm, but that its survivors passed on their knowledge to hunter-gatherers, giving rise to the earliest known civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica.
Antonio Montana is a fictional character and the protagonist of the 1983 film Scarface. This character is portrayed by Al Pacino in the film and is voiced by André Sogliuzzo in the 2006 video game Scarface: The World Is Yours. Embodying the rise from the bottom to the top, Tony Montana has become a cultural icon and is one of the most well-known movie characters of all time.
Peter Llewelyn Davies MC was the middle of five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, one of the Llewelyn Davies boys befriended and later informally adopted by J. M. Barrie. Barrie publicly identified him as the source of the name for the title character in his 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. This public identification as "the original Peter Pan" plagued Davies throughout his life, which ended in suicide.
Jason's Lyric is a 1994 American erotic romantic psychological drama film, written by Bobby Smith Jr., directed by Doug McHenry, who co-produced the film with George Jackson and Marilla Lane Ross, and starring Allen Payne, Jada Pinkett, Bokeem Woodbine, Treach, Eddie Griffin, Lahmard Tate, Lisa Nicole Carson, and Forest Whitaker. Set in Third Ward, Houston, Texas, the story is about two mentally scarred brothers who choose different paths in dealing with their tragic childhood. When the older brother found love, he starts facing tough choices: continue to feel family responsibility for his younger brother, or follow his heart to be with his girlfriend.
Carl Hancock Rux is an American poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, recording artist, journalist, curator and conceptual installation artist working in text, dance, ritualized performance, audio, video, and photography. Described in the NY Times as "a breathlessly inventive multimedia artist" focused on "art, race, memory and power",[1] Rux is the author of several books including the Village Voice Literary Prize-winning collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta, the novel, Asphalt, and the OBIE Award-winning play,Talk and five albums. He appears as a frequent collaborating artist, most notably on Gerald Clayton's album Life Forum[2] and as co-author of the staged incarnation of Steel Hammer by Julia Wolfe, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-nominated work, created with Anne Bogart.[4] Rux is the author/performer of the Lincoln Center commissioned experimental short poetic film The Baptism, a tribute to civil rights activists John Lewis and C. T. Vivian, directed by Carrie Mae Weems.
André Téchiné is a French screenwriter and film director. He has a long and distinguished career that places him among the most accomplished post-New Wave French film directors.
Koko is a horror-mystery novel by American writer Peter Straub, first published in the United States in 1988 by EP Dutton, and in Great Britain by Viking. It was the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1989.
Brown Girl, Brownstones is the debut novel by the internationally recognized writer Paule Marshall, first published in 1959, and dramatized by CBS Television Workshop in 1960. The story is about Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. The book gained further recognition after it was reprinted in 1981 by the Feminist Press.
The Abbé Pierre François Guyot-Desfontaines was a French journalist, translator and popular historian.
Pagan Operetta (1998) is a collection of poetry and experimental prose by Carl Hancock Rux, his first poetry collection. It won the 1999 Village Voice Literary Prize. Rux subsequently adapted one section for stage performance, initially also under the title Pagan Operetta, later as The No Black Male Show.
The Hancock Manor was a house located at 30 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. It stood near the southwest corner of what are today the grounds of the Massachusetts State House.
Possessing the Secret of Joy is a 1992 novel by Alice Walker.
John D. Hancock is an American stage and film director, producer and writer. He is perhaps best known for his work on Bang the Drum Slowly. Hancock's theatrical work includes direction of both classic and contemporary plays, from Shakespeare to Saul Bellow.
The Messenger is a 2009 war drama film starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Steve Buscemi, and Jena Malone. It is the directorial debut of Oren Moverman, who also wrote the screenplay with Alessandro Camon.
Angelo My Love is a 1983 American drama film directed by Robert Duvall and starring Angelo Evans. The screenplay is about New York City Romani people. It was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.
A Cruel God Reigns is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Moto Hagio. It was originally serialized in the manga magazine Petit Flower from 1992 to 2001, and published as seventeen tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan. The series follows Jeremy Butler, a teenage boy who murders his physically and sexually abusive stepfather. In 1997, A Cruel God Reigns was recognized with the inaugural Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Award for Excellence.
Talk is an Obie Award-winning play written by Carl Hancock Rux, commissioned and premiered by The Foundry Theatre at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival in 2002. The play was directed by Marion McClinton; set by James Noone; costumes by Toni-Leslie James; lighting by James L. Vermeulen; video, Marilys Ernst; sound by Tim Schellenbaum; dramaturgy and music supervisor, Jocelyn Clarke; production stage manager, Scott Pegg; production manager, Jody Kuh; assistant stage manager, Neelam Vaswani.
"Crying Out Loud" is the twenty-third episode of the sixth season of the American sitcom Modern Family, and the series' 143rd episode overall. It originally aired on May 13, 2015. The episode was written by Megan Ganz, Stephen Lloyd & Chuck Tathum, and directed by Ryan Case.
Oscar De La Hoya vs. Javier Castillejo, billed as The Quest, was a super welterweight professional boxing match that took place on June 23, 2001 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Paradise, Nevada. After 12 rounds, De La Hoya defeated Castillejo to take the WBC super welterweight title. With his win, De La Hoya then tied with Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns as a five-division world champion.