Thursday Goodies!

Well we are almost there! and we are almost to the weekend! actually not to rub it in but mine started today! I am off for the next 3 days! and I am in much need of it! So hope everyone has a great weekend!

 

Brunei law on gays, women sparks Beverly Hills Hotel boycott

The tiny, oil-rich country of Brunei has been a quiet steward of the Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air, undertaking multimillion-dollar renovations of the landmarks.
But in recent days both hotels have come under siege from Hollywood feminists and gay rights advocates because of new laws in the Southeast Asian sultanate.
Brunei last week imposed new criminal codes, based on Islamic law, with harsh penalties for homosexuality and adultery, including death by stoning.
Organizers have abruptly canceled several events planned for the Beverly Hills Hotel, and big names such as Ellen DeGeneres, Richard Branson and Sharon Osbourne have taken to social media to promote boycotts.

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On Monday, Jay Leno joined the chorus of condemnation at a demonstration along Sunset Boulevard across from the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“This is 2014, not 1814,” Leno, the former “Tonight Show” host, told dozens of protesters.
The protests have put Beverly Hills civic and business leaders in a delicate position, trying to balance opposition to the laws with support for a local cultural monument and economic engine.
On Tuesday, the Beverly Hills City Council is slated to consider a resolution condemning the Brunei laws.
The resolution “is not in any way a statement against the Beverly Hills Hotel … which is a pillar of our community,” said Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse. “It’s about the ownership and its lack of concern for justice and human rights.”
Christopher Cowdray, the hotel group’s chief executive, said in an interview that the boycotts and protests were misguided and potentially harmful to the city of Beverly Hills.
“They won’t stop the implementation of the new laws,” he said, but rather would “only hurt the [hotel’s] employees.” He added there were no plans to sell the hotels.
The Beverly Hills Hotel employs about 600 people and the Hotel Bel-Air roughly 400. Cowdray added that the Beverly Hills Hotel pays about $7 million in bed taxes and $4 million in city taxes annually.
Hotel representatives on Monday greeted the dozens of protesters cordially and offered them cookies and water bottles.

• Again, we have those who want to squash debate...free speech is about EVERYONE expressing an opinion without fear, yet, here on these boards...that's not the case. I had written that I wondered what half the American women in BV were going to do, since they married extremist Muslim's and have...
  Madmen
  at 10:14 AM May 06, 2014

Leno said Angelenos had lately been absorbed in the local controversy over Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, who was banned for life by the NBA after his racist remarks came to light.
Brunei’s adherence to sharia, or Islamic, law, he said, is far more serious. “I mean, we get so upset when a team owner says something inappropriate,” he said. “Here are people being killed, stoned to death. ... It's just a matter of priorities, that's what it is.”

Fleetwood Mac Revives Chemistry In Studio: 'We Get Chills,' Says Christine McVie It appears that Christine McVie will be returning to Fleetwood Mac to do more than play some old songs in concert. The group -- sans Stevie Nicks, who was busy with "some other commitments," according to Lindsey Buckingham -- has just finished a nearly two-month run in Studio D at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles, where Fleetwood Mac made 1979's "Tusk" album, working on a batch of new songs by McVie and Buckingham.

"This has kind of been a project in slow motion, that's the only way I can put it," Buckingham tells Billboard. "We got in the studio not knowing what to expect, and the chemistry was just unbelievable... We got eight tracks very far along, like, 75 percent done. It just played out really organically in a way that seemed appropriate." Buckingham says the new songs came from ideas McVie brought into the band, and coupled with material he worked on previously with Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, the group has "about 14 or 15 things, and some other things we want to get to down the line" even before Nicks begins making contributions. 

"We're all very excited about it. Knowing me, I'm going to be pushing for a double album," Buckingham says with a laugh.

Describing the new songs -- which include "Carnival Begin," "Red Sun" and "Too Far Gone" -- McVie says, "There's a wide variety, starting from sort of blues-based songs to very commercial songs. It's very, very exciting. We get chills when we hear them. They sound really fresh. There's an element, I guess, that hasn't really existed so much in the past although it has been there in the fact Lindsey and I have been collaborating more. We've been working very closely together, so there is a freshness and obviously there are parts for Stevie to sing on all of these songs, which she will do eventually."

When the rest of the world hears them remains up in the air, however. Fleetwood Mac released a four-song digital EP in April of 2013, and Buckingham and McVie say they don't expect to have a new album ready before the group's upcoming tour starts September 30 in Minneapolis.

"We haven't finished what we've done here," McVie explains. "these are just tracks with some overdubs, and they're certainly not finished. I go back to England now until the beginning of rehearsals, which is the end of July, and then we're rehearsing and then we're touring, so we won't really have time to (finish the songs). There's some talk about some time next year. Fleetwood Mac always take a long time to make a record -- you know what."

Buckingham concurs, though he acknowledges that there may be a bit of clamor for the new music once word of the sessions leaks out, which may effect the timetable for the material's release. "We want to plant some seeds of awareness about what we're doing," he says. "We won't want to pretend it doesn't exist. We're very proud of it, and we do want to get the word out. But we'll have to see how much clamor there is by the time we get into rehearsal and we have some time to let these seeds grow and see what kind of interest there is. That may inform our decisions one way or the other."

Buckingham, meanwhile, says he's particularly stoked that making new music is part of McVie's return after a 16-year absence. "It just took on a life of its own for sure," he says. "For years I was telling everybody, 'Y'know, she'll never be in the band again. She's gone.' I really believed that. But right now the whole thing has really got such a circular feel to it. And if you're talking about one more act for this play or whatever you want to call it, I can't think of a better way to do it." 

Fleetwood Mac formally announced McVie's return in January after she joined the group on stage in London last September. McVie -- who released one solo album, 2004's "In the Meantime," during the interim but mostly spent her time as "a retired lady of leisure with the Range Rover and the Dogs" in rural England -- has gone through therapy to overcome a fear of flying that was one of the reasons he left the group. And she promises that she's back in Fleetwood Mac "for perpetuity, yeah. For as long as I'm around. I'm here. I'm committed." And she adds that returning to the studio with the group was like getting back on the proverbial bike.  

"I thought I was going to get nervous coming in the studio, but it's felt very easy and natural," she says. "Before I got to L.A. Lindsey and I had been ping-ponging ideas on computers and that; I'd send him my very, very rough, funky demos and he made some kind of sense out of them and sent them back to me with him playing guitar and they started to turn into really lovely ideas. I really missed playing with them and the chemistry of it all and started to really, really desire to start doing something again, and the only people I could think of that I would have any desire to do anything with would be them, Fleetwood Mac."

Zach Phelps-Roper Leaves Westboro Baptist Church: Fred Phelps' Grandson Joins Three Ex-WBC Siblings

Another Westboro Baptist Church member has left the hate church -- Zach Phelps-Roper, age 23. The grandson of Fred Phelps is the fourth Phelps-Roper sibling to reject WBC's tactics of hate preaching and picketing, according to an interview he gave to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
"I believe that empathy and unconditional love are what is absolutely necessary for us to free ourselves and each other from mind traps and from the many problems that are plaguing our society," he said.
The WBC is well known for its virulently anti-gay stance and characteristic "God Hates Fags" signs. Phelps-Roper no longer holds these views, and said that he's received love and support from the gay community since he left the church on on February 20, 2014. He told the Capital-Journal that gay people have offered to buy him meals and drinks and empathized with his struggles.
Phelps-Roper joins at least twenty ex-WBC family members whom he was previously banned from speaking with, including his brother Josh and his sisters Megan and Grace.
Nonetheless, he doesn't blame WBC members for their hateful activities, because he thinks that they are stuck in the powerful "mind trap" of believing that the Bible is absolutely infallible, and fearing the eternal wrath of a judgmental God. In a comment he posted for clarification on the Capital-Journal's story, he wrote, "They are very afraid of that, so they cannot think clearly about the impact that they are having on others, and therefore, they seem to lack empathy."
"I would like to show them a different way of approaching people: indefinitely plenteous and unconditional empathy," he added.
Phelps-Roper's defection occurred a month before his grandfather, WBC founder Fred Phelps, passed away at the age of 84. Phelps-Roper said that other church members convinced him that Phelps had become "manipulative and abusive," and stopped him from visiting Phelps on his deathbed, a decision he regrets.
Siblings Megan and Grace have previously echoed these sentiments, reconciling their decision to step away from a hate church with the pain of being shunned by their family members. Their mother, Shirley Phelps-Roper, used to be the church's primary spokeswoman and remains very active in the WBC.
Zach Phelps-Roper told the Capital-Journal that the had tried to leave WBC five times previously, but had been convinced by family members to stay each time.
His decision to leave the church has been affirmed by the positive changes in his life. “If I have greater peace now than in the church, how can I be a wicked person?” he said, referencing the Bible verse "There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked" (Isaiah 48:22).
He's been helped by fellow ex-member Lauren Drain's fund for WBC escapees, which provides financial support for ex-members to start a new life.
Zach Phelps-Roper told the Capital-Journal that when he first left the church, he accepted that his decision meant that he would eventually die and go to hell. Almost three months, later, he's content and filled with gratitude, posting on Facebook, "The days are too good to me. I am happier today than I ever was before. I can giggle at myself in the mirror, having let go of so much emotional pain that burdened me before."

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