In this week’s podcast: • A Texas couple tragically dies within hours of each other due to COVID-19 • Idaho’s new anti-transgender laws are already being challenged in court • Actor Leslie Jordan has become an Instagram sensation surging from 80K to 3 million followers. Find him on Instagram here. • The new Netflix documentary Circus of Books chronicles the journey of a middle-class, straight Jewish couple from everyday entrepreneurs to accidental LGBTQ activists • A vintage photo of two men named ‘Tommy’ and ‘Buzz’ has captured the romantic imagination of gay internet • Huge stars will perform on the streaming event, Take Me To The World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration, on April 26 All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report
Joe Blizzard (via Instagram) Some news items you might have missed: • InstaHunks: Woofy Joe Blizzard (above) proclaims he’s in “dad bod mode.” I think someone needs to explain the term “dad bod” to Joe cause that ain’t no “dad bod.” Follow him on the Gram of Insta here. #grrrr • Pink News: Piers Morgan apologized to Lady Gaga after her One World: Together At Home concert raised more than $127 million for the World Health Organization’s coronavirus relief efforts. The Good Morning Britain host was among those who dismissed Gaga’s involvement with the World Health Organization (WHO) when it was first announced in early April. • NY Times: From surgeon-quality personal protection to the home-stitched square and the bandit’s bandanna, New Yorkers pulled on a newly essential accessory and ventured into a landscape that changed yet again on Friday as masks became mandatory beginning last Friday. • LiarLiarPantsOnFire: I can’t watch the White House press briefings on the pandemic live anymore because Donald Trump’s lying and self-aggrandizement are too much for me to stomach. But this moment today with PBS Newshour’s Yamiche Alcindor takes the cake.
TRUMP: I took coronavirus very seriously
ALCINDOR: You held rallies in February and March TRUMP: I haven’t left the White House in months ALCINDOR: You held a rally in March TRUMP: Did I hold a rally? I’m sorry pic.twitter.com/MPDK8lZAeD — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 20, 2020
• The Gaily Grind: Anti-LGBT televangelist and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson linked the deadly COVID-19 pandemic to same-sex marriage on Monday because, of course. • The Tennessean: Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that his stay-at-home order will not be extended past April 30, and that some businesses around the state will begin reopening next week. A governor-appointed, 30-member economic recovery group is working towards some businesses reopening as early as Monday, April 27. Lee said this office has not yet determined what types of businesses will be targeted to reopen first next week. • The Advocate: Actor Leslie Jordan (Will & Grace) has become an Instagram sensation since adjourning to an Airbnb not far from his mother and sisters in Tennessee last month. The actor catapulted from about 80K Instagram followers to 3 million in the span of a month thanks to his homespun videos in which he exercises with a back scratcher, then uses it as a baton, does yoga (as only he could), and engages in “pillow talk” dishing about Hollywood luminaries.
L-R Leslie Jordan and Megan Mullally (screen captures) As NBC’s hit sitcom Will & Grace begins its run down the final stretch of new episodes, the powers that be give us this supercut of hilarious moments between quintessential frenemies Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) and Beverley Leslie (Leslie Jordan) over the years. “Karen Walker – I thought I smelled gin…and regret.” “Shouldn’t you be in your tree making cookies?” “Well, well, well…”
Originally debuting in 1998, Will & Grace has been nominated for 91 Emmy Awards, winning 18 of them, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The series has also earned seven SAG Awards and the show is one of the few in TV history where each member of the cast has won an Emmy. Watch Will & Grace Thursdays 9/8c on NBC.
In a new interview with Attitude Magazine, Emmy Award winner Leslie Jordan says he’s enjoying playing it straight on his Sky TV/UK series, Living The Dream, because he’s been the ‘go-to gay guy’ for so long.
In Living The Dream, Jordan plays ‘Aiden,’ a resident of a caravan park in Florida. The character is straight, which Jordan finds refreshing.
“I like it because it’s different,” says the 63-year-old. “This season I have a flirtation with Paula Wilcox. Last season, I was desperately in love with Jen, played by Lesley.”
“I like that because I tell you, in the US I’m the go-to gay guy,” he adds. “The all-gay men, the all-gay queen. You need an old sissy called Leslie? I’m there.”
Jordan also likes that the casting director took him to lunch and pursued him (“That doesn’t happen a lot”).
With appearances on Will & Grace (“We’re doing more”), his new FOX TV series The Cool Kids, plus Living The Dream, Jordan candidly declares, “I got rich for the first time ever. I got money.”
Attitude follows up on that imagining the “rich” part would have come with Will & Grace?”
Nope.
Sean Hayes & Leslie Jordan on ‘Will & Grace’
“I was making $7,500 an episode which is starting salary,” says Jordan. “And they were making $750,000 – I made one per cent.”
Even though he won the Emmy (“I didn’t win the Emmy until the show was off the air”), he laments that he didn’t get to cash in on the big success of the show.
And Jordan had some big dreams.
“When I got to Hollywood, I wanted a big house up in the Hollywood Hills and I wanted to be the gay version of Hugh Hefner,” the actor told Attitude. “I wanted seven twinkly blond boys in their thongs all over me and I wanted everyone to come to my house on Sunday and have brunch. But my life is so not that!”
That’s ok, Leslie, I think you are “so that!”
Living The Dream returns to the air in UK January 8 on Sky TV, and The Cool Kids airs Thursdays on Fox at 8:30pm.
Here’s a life lesson for homophobes: do not head into the gayest coffee shop in the gayest neighborhood in the world and start trouble with an Emmy Award-winning queen in attendance.
She will cut a bitch.
Apparently, late Wednesday morning, three young men in their 20s walked into the Starbucks located on Santa Monica Blvd right in the heart of West Hollywood.
For some reason, the three started throwing out antigay slurs at customers who, by all accounts were deep in thought over their $5 lattes.
“You will die, fucking faggots!” one of the men allegedly announced to the entire store.
Joseph Daniels, who was waiting in line at the time, told WEHOville, “It was very scary and unexpected.” But he wasn’t going to let a group of d-bags get the best of him. He walked over to the men and told them their behavior was “rude.”
Then the manager came along and told them to get the hell out.
The thugs refused to leave and proceeded to call everyone in the store “faggots.” And that’s when things got really heated. Because unbeknownst to the homophobes, Leslie Jordan happened to be there.
Yes, the Leslie Jordan.
The 4’11 Southern gentleman approached the men, fuming, and told them to “Get out of my house!” before chasing them out the front doors.
Once outside, the men continued screaming antigay epithets. But Jordan wasn’t having any of it.
“The guy lunged at Leslie to hit him,” Daniels said of one of the men. “Then Leslie threw his drink at the guy. Then (another) guy threw his drink to hit me.”
Police were called. They advised Jordan and the other patrons not to file charges against the homophobes, saying that if they did the men could accuse them of assault for throwing coffee at them.
Daniels told WEHOville that the three men stormed away, but continued screaming “faggots” and making obscene gestures.
“He provoked it,” Daniels said of one of the three men. “He spewed hate crime words against everybody and threw a drink at Leslie. Why couldn’t he have been charged with disorderly conduct?”
Cult hit movie “Sordid Lives” will finally see a Blu-Ray release on September 30th.
Plus, on August 29th, the flick will be available on digital platforms like iTunes and WolfeOnDemand:
From WolfeOnDemand:
In this cult classic comedy from writer-director Del Shores, a gay West Hollywood actor returns home to his small Texas town for his grandmother’s funeral. As we meet the three generations of his dysfunctional family, the hilariously trashy truth of their “sordid lives” is revealed.
Sordid Lives features an all-star ensemble cast, including Olivia Newton-John (Grease), Delta Burke (TV’s “Designing Women”), Bonnie Bedelia (TV’s “Parenthood”), Beau Bridges (TV’s “Masters of Sex”) and Leslie Jordan (The Help) as the Tammy Wynette-obsessed institutionalized gay uncle, Brother Boy. The soundtrack features such country standards as “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Stand by Your Man,” and “Get off the Cross, We Need the Wood.”
Based on a long-running hit play by Del Shores, SORDID LIVES became a hit movie where it had a record-setting 96-week run at the Camelot Theater in Palm Springs.
The movie became a TV series for LOGO TV in 2008 which ran for one hysterical season. Lack of payments to the parties involved led to lawsuits ending in Shores and cast being owed lots of money.
In this week’s podcast: • A Texas couple tragically dies within hours of each other due to COVID-19 • Idaho’s new anti-transgender laws are already being challenged in court • Actor Leslie Jordan has become an Instagram sensation surging from 80K to 3 million followers. Find him on Instagram here. • The new Netflix documentary Circus of Books chronicles the journey of a middle-class, straight Jewish couple from everyday entrepreneurs to accidental LGBTQ activists • A vintage photo of two men named ‘Tommy’ and ‘Buzz’ has captured the romantic imagination of gay internet • Huge stars will perform on the streaming event, Take Me To The World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration, on April 26 All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report 
