Taking Names

Smokey’s soul

Motown legend Smokey Robinson’s recently released album of inspirational gospel songs, “Food for the Spirit,” was in the works for years.

“I kept stockpiling them, and the Lord impressed upon me just to sing them myself and let it be known,” he told Reuters News Agency.

“Had I not come out with an inspirational CD, you perhaps would have never known that I feel like I feel, that all songs, all the music I’ve ever done, is a gift from God.”

One of the tunes, “Jesus Told Me to Love You,” is about loving one’s enemy, a charge Mr. Robinson takes seriously.

“I love the guys in the Ku Klux Klan as one of my human brothers,” he said. “If one of them was in a burning lake, or something like that, and I was there and I had the chance to save them, I would.”

Texas hospitality

John Travolta says the best experience he has ever had on a film was with the 1980 honky-tonk movie “Urban Cowboy.”

He remembers a particular fondness for being in Texas.

“The feeling in the air was of realness, down-to-earthness — there was a real warmth,” said Mr. Travolta, who spoke in Dallas as part of the Brinker International Lecture Series, AP reports. The movie was filmed in Pasadena, a Houston suburb.

Mr. Travolta, 50, flew in on his private jet for Monday’s lecture, part of a fund-raiser for the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.

He said he passed up a chance to star in “American Gigolo,” one of four movies he turned down to play in “Urban Cowboy.”

Mr. Travolta also said he “learned the real term of ’party’” while shooting the movie.

“I was out with a bunch of urban and real cowboys, and there’s a photo of me holding a rooster in one hand and a glass of Jack Daniels in the other — I’m having the time of my life.”

Spacey explained

Kevin Spacey’s older brother, Randy Fowler, gave a shocking interview to Sharon Churcher of the British newspaper the Mail this week, detailing a horrific childhood at the hands of their father, the late Thomas Fowler.

Mr. Fowler said he was raped routinely by his father. Mr. Spacey, though physically spared, was emotionally scarred, he said.

He also revealed that his father was a member of the American Nazi Party and a Holocaust denier who collected Nazi memorabilia and spouted anti-Semitism at the dinner table. Mr. Fowler was forced to quit the Cub Scouts, he said, because his troop leader was Jewish.

Mr. Fowler, who lives in Boise, Idaho, and works as a Rod Stewart impersonator, is writing a book about the experience.

Chess for Che

Former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov plans to take part in a Cuban attempt to break the Guinness world record for most people playing chess simultaneously.

Organizers expect about 13,000 people to show up in the inland city of Santa Clara in central Cuba today to play chess in homage to revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, AP reports.

The current Guinness record also was set by Cubans, when 11,320 people — including dictator Fidel Castro — played 5,660 simultaneous games at Jose Marti Revolution Square in Havana Dec. 7, 2002.

’Idol’ prejudice

Elton John thinks there’s something “incredibly racist” about viewer voting on Fox’s “American Idol.”

Mr. John, who recently rehearsed with the show’s aspiring pop stars, said three performers who really impressed him “happened to be black, young female singers, and they all seemed to be landing in the bottom three.”

“These three girls would have the talent to be members of the Royal Academy or Juilliard,” Mr. John said, according to the Associated Press.

“They have great voices. The fact that they are constantly in the bottom three — and I don’t want to set myself up here — I find it incredibly racist.”

Compiled by Scott Galupo from Web and wire reports.