{"id":90867,"date":"2022-10-31T02:16:41","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T09:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=90867"},"modified":"2022-10-31T02:16:41","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T09:16:41","slug":"rest-in-peace-leslie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2022\/10\/31\/rest-in-peace-leslie\/","title":{"rendered":"Rest in Peace, Leslie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em>\u201cWell I am as hurt and shocked as if I have lost a family member.&nbsp;<br \/>\n<strong>Leslie <\/strong>and I had a special bond.&nbsp; I think the world felt they had a special<br \/>\nbond with him.&nbsp; I know people always say, \u2018Oh, they will be missed\u2019 but in this<br \/>\ncase that could not be more true.&nbsp; He will be missed by everyone who knew<br \/>\nhim personally and by everyone who was entertained by him.<\/em><em>\u201d <\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em><br \/>\n\u2013 <\/em><span style=\"font-family: Verdana;\"><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>Dolly Parton <\/strong>remembers the great <strong>Leslie Jordan<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I ended last week\u2019s column mocking a friend who terms 99% of the news as \u201cheartbreaking\u201d.&nbsp; A few hours later, I felt part of my heart actually break when I got a call that <strong>Leslie Jordan <\/strong>had died in a tragic car accident.&nbsp; I did what I always do \u2013 I tried to make sense of it.&nbsp; I looked for details, for answers.&nbsp; But there are no answers\u2026none that would change the outcome.&nbsp; I find it staggering that someone who had survived everything from homophobia, alcoholism, addiction, the AIDS epidemic and a pandemic would not survive a drive to work on a Monday morning.&nbsp; Although the cause of his single-car collision is still unclear (popular opinion assumes a medical issue led to his losing control of his vehicle), I feel we should celebrate all he accomplished.&nbsp; From his scene-stealing performances, cult status, <em>Emmy <\/em>win, social media following, and <em>FOX<\/em> sitcom, he was at the peak of his powers.&nbsp; While he would have enjoyed all the tributes from celebrity friends, Leslie would want to be remembered for two things \u2013 for providing love and light to so many people.&nbsp; My heart might be a bit broken, but the light will always remain.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9lFKRJnO5RU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>My friendship with Leslie made it difficult to do last week\u2019s <strong><em>Billy Masters LIVE<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; I had planned to chat with singer-songwriter <strong>Gabe Lopez <\/strong>(who was the opening act for <strong>Belinda Carlisle<\/strong>\u2019s mini US tour) and radio personality and voice-over legend <strong>Ben Patrick Johnson<\/strong>.&nbsp; But Leslie had died just a few hours earlier, so that had to be addressed.&nbsp; I reached out to many of our mutual friends, most of whom were too upset to appear.&nbsp; Special thanks to my twins, <strong>Gary <\/strong>and <strong>Larry Lane<\/strong>.&nbsp; We were all friends and they worked with Leslie many times.&nbsp; So I was grateful they stopped by to share their memories.&nbsp; I\u2019m not sure about the details of this week\u2019s show, so I\u2019d recommend you subscribe to our <em>YouTube <\/em>channel at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.YouTube.com\/BillyMastersTV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><u>YouTube.com\/BillyMastersTV<\/u><\/strong><\/a> or just check out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.BillyMasters.com\/TV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><u>BillyMasters.com\/TV<\/u><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWell I am as hurt and shocked as if I have lost a family member.&nbsp; Leslie and I had a special bond.&nbsp; I think the world felt they had a special bond with him.&nbsp; I know people always say, \u2018Oh, they will be missed\u2019 but in this case that could not be more true.&nbsp; He<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90876,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90867\/revisions\/90876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}