Mr. Jackpots
Clutch.
Revered and reviled on this forum in equal measure. Alternately despicable and delightful from post to post. Deceptive and brutally honest depending on who's asking and what it is they're asking for.
Of course it's the legendary !Viva Hate!.
In her incredible decade and a half as a poster here she has seen busloads of mods and fellow members both reign and fall by the wayside. Arguably (is it arguable?) the flagship member of Morrissey-solo, it's always a far more desolate place when she is banned or takes a break.
I have known Viva on and off these boards for about 13 years now and it's always been a delight to converse with her, even when we haven't seen eye to eye. I recently asked her for an interview and to my surprise she consented. We discuss the state of Morrissey-solo in 2020 and that of the alternative pop icon it is devoted to. We delve into Viva's decision to transition and how, if at all, it has changed her life. We find out where she stands on President Trump and where she falls as a conservative-leaning trans woman in the midst of the ever-escalating social justice wars.
Without further adieu, I present my interview with the one and only !Viva Hate!.
Enjoy.
_
Is that a Fangoria shirt you've got on in your avatar?
Yes it is. I grew up reading Fangoria and Starlog and Famous Monsters of Filmland. I’d read current issues and also I would go to a shop called Merlin Books and go through all the old back issues and buy them. I haven’t read it in awhile. My understanding is that they just recently came back after being out of print for many years. But horror movies aren’t what they used to be so I don’t think I’ll be reading anytime soon. I don’t know if you were aware or not but horror movies are pretty much my favorite thing in the world. My greatest obsession. Horror, Batman, Twin Peaks, WWF. In that order.
You have mentioned innumerable times your love of cinema. What was the last great modern film you saw?
I like a lot of stuff. Love a lot of stuff even...but I’m not going to pretend that a lot of what I love can truly be looked at as “great”. The last “great” film I saw was in 2014 - Whiplash. That movie almost feels like it was about my childhood. J.K. Simmons is amazing in it. I’m sure you’ve seen it. If not, you should watch it.
Tell me how you got into Morrissey's music. How old were you and how did you find him?
I may be a year or two off but I believe I was four at the time. My father used to work out a lot in the garage. He tried to instill in me a passion for fitness (that never quite caught on as much as he hoped) so I was there, essentially against my will, lifting weights. He always played records and one that stood out was ‘Meat Is Murder’. It was more the music than the vocals or lyrics that reeled me in. I was too young to really comprehend the lyrics but my initial reaction to The Smiths is one I generally still have with a Morrissey album; I’m initially turned off by his voice or what he has to say but I can’t stop listening to it until eventually I find worth.
What do you think is Morrissey's peak period artistically and what post-peak songs do you feel indicate he is still able to tap into that level of magic?
I think there are different peaks for Morrissey. Overall, peak Morrissey is the Meat Is Murder Morrissey for me. Vocally, lyrically...it’s the best of him. Peak solo Morrissey is Viva Hate and the singles and b-sides from that period. Vocally, he’s been declining since Ringleader and lyrically he’s been declining since Maladjusted. I’ve always said and still believe that the last time you heard the same Morrissey that was in The Smiths was on Maladjusted. In my mind I have to separate him as two different people because I can’t reconcile his post 1997 output with what came before. I don’t think there is anything that really stands up to his peak. Not full songs at least. Certain bits and pieces maybe. The most recently he sounded like the old Morrissey was on “Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets” and the outro of “I Bury The Living”...there’s almost a playfulness to those that he lost somewhere along the way. He’s too old and bitter to ever truly be great again and that bothers me a lot because I so desperately want him to be great again...but few artists ever really put out amazing work this late in their career. The list is incredibly short.
What musicians do you invest the same degree of time and analysis to as you do with Morrissey?
Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Weezer, Elton John and Roxy Music.
You consider Meat Is Murder to be the greatest Smiths album and you consider The Queen Is Dead overrated. Can you elucidate a little more regarding those opinions?
To me The Queen Is Dead is more like a comedy album. And I’m not a terribly big fan of Morrissey being comedic. I don’t generally find him funny. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ and ‘Vicar in a Tutu’ are some of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. He single-handedly ruins ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ which is baffling considering how amazing the music is and how great his vocals and his melody are on it. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ is just boring and shitty. I don’t even terribly like the title track. In fact, thinking about it now the only song that I truly like on the album is ‘I Know It’s Over’. Everything else is either overrated or trash. I don’t think any other album fully encompasses what the Smiths were and all of their strengths as a band better than Meat Is Murder. Morrissey treats this album with a bit more seriousness. I don’t find any of the lyrics to be ridiculous vaudeville humor nonsense. And it is some Marr’s best compositions and playing. There isn’t one bad song on there in my opinion. Nothing feels like filler. I know some people have a problem with the title track but I’ve always loved it. And arguably their best song is on there - ‘Well I Wonder’. Also, my personal favorite of their songs is on there - ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’. It’s probably my favorite album of all time. It’s perfect...and there are very few albums I think are perfect back to front.
Do you feel that the current anti-Morrissey SJW zeitgeist is merited?
No. I think people need to get a life and quit worrying about politics so much. The mob mentality is very embarrassing. I often get the impression that many of the people who are very rah-rah about social issues online are just wanting to fit in and be seen and validated. Honestly, I really don’t see much difference between them and Bigfoot hoaxers. The best ones though are the people with questionable pasts now wanting to be on record as being “on the right side of history”. It’s like look at the whole #metoo thing. Why are some people using that hashtag who willingly had sex to further their career being called brave and mentioned in the same breath as people who were unwillingly assaulted? If you agreed to do something you didn’t really want to do and did it for personal gain, that doesn’t make you a victim...it makes you a prostitute.
When did you start posting on Morrissey-solo? What can you tell me about the site as it was in those days?
I started posting on May 15th, 2006. It really wasn’t much different than it is now...just larger numbers of the same type of people. The overly nice, the overly sensitive, the overbearing, the narcissists, the superfans, the haters, the elitists, the collectors, the spinsters, the crazies, the trolls, the assholes. Same shit. It was easier to enjoy the forum back then when it wasn’t just the same three people posting anonymously.
Talk to me about the inception of the Solo Wiki (a Morrissey-solo-centric database offering detailed, impartial info on Morrissey's legacy including tours, albums, band members, bootlegs, etc). You were heavily involved in that, right?
I was in the beginning. I was also heavily involved in general on the Wikipedia articles on The Smiths and Morrissey for a very long time. Ok, the genesis of that and I’m going to be blunt is that I’ve always had a great dislike of Stephane and PJLM. I’ve always viewed them essentially as a Solo content Hoover. Just sucking up other people’s work and words and reappropriating it as their own. There’s very little on that site that wasn’t lifted in some way or another from Solo and it’s members...and Stephane was always very pompous and critical of this place all the while stealing from it. So, after noticing that Stephane had used my words and experiences from concerts I attended and reposted them without any credit on their site as if they had experienced the same event as me, I got pissed and I threw the idea out there to David, who was from my understanding also looking into the viability of a Wiki. Why wait for someone to lift our member’s info when you can make an in house Wiki that serves 80% of the function that PJLM did? Unfortunately, by the time all this occurred most of the userbase was gone and no one wanted to populate future articles. They would just complain on the forum about something not being there or needing to be changed instead of doing it themselves. I can’t stand helplessness and it really turned me off of populating the articles with the content they would have been.
You still post here after 13 years of membership despite being banned (and unbanned) multiple times, despite recidivism, and despite being reviled by as many fellow members as adore you. How do you account for the love/hate relationship that the forum here holds for you?
I think some people have a sense of humor slightly in tune with my own and can understand when I’m serious and when I’m not...others, it’s not so easy. I don’t really devote much thought to it. I’m not now nor have I ever been terribly concerned with what people think of me here. One thing I do find amusing though is a lot of people who were very nasty to me publicly are super nice and flirtatious with me now in private. Which really makes you wonder what some of the true motivations are of people who start gunning for you.
Are there any formerly regular posters that you miss hearing from, and why?
A lot of them. Here is a list of the ones I liked because they were fun and funny and just great easy going people to talk to: Nugz, virtually dead, Cassius, Iona mink, the more you explore me, bogdana, troubleluvsme, buzzetta, dann coulter, cornelius blaze, slum mum 1974 to name a few.
But you know, as do most people, that Kuiper was the boardie for me. I was legitimately in love with him. I can’t even convey how happy I would be if he came back into my life. Most of the reason I’m even still on this site is because I hope someday he’ll decide to take a walk down memory lane and view the forum again and see that I’m here and reach out to me.
If you could change this forum, how would you do it? What do you think would make this website a better place in 2020?
Nothing is going to fix the damage that Morrissey has done or undo the period of time Kewpie banned/drove 70% of the active members away. The first thing I’d do is get rid of anonymous posting. The second is buy a new theme and redesign the layout of this site. New color scheme, new banner, redo the emojis and ratings system, increase the file size limit on images, maybe allow animated gifs as avatars. Some of these features could be hidden behind the subscriber paywall and at the very least David wouldn’t be paying completely out of pocket for everything. I don’t know how well it would go over with this crowd but maybe create a site Discord server. It would essentially bring chat back which was kinda popular at one time. I’m not sure if I’d upgrade to Xenforo 2 or 2.1 or not. There isn’t nearly enough support or add-ons to warrant it. Also, I’d be more picky about what gets promoted to the main page as “news”. Like, a blogger making Top 10 lists and a Satanist baker or whatever mentioning Morrissey isn’t really front page news in my opinion. David has done a great job but he needs to trust some more control to members of his staff. He can’t and shouldn’t be in this alone. Make this a team effort.
You've cultivated a personality, in your tens of thousands of posts here over the years, of someone who is very brazen and unapologetic. Have you ever regretted a negative exchange with a poster here? Have you ever rethought or wanted to redact a post?
I can’t recall anything off the top of my head that I’ve ever really regretted saying here. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. There was some drama with Kuiper that I started after I had been banned that I think really turned him against me. Turned a lot of people against me, actually. I was behaving very unhinged. I was very angry at a perceived betrayal and was scared of being abandoned and I reacted in a way that ensured I fulfilled my own prophecy. And there’s also all the shit that I went through with you that I regret. But that’s water under the bridge. No reason to bring up the Viva Hate cockblock ever again.
Of course it's the legendary !Viva Hate!.
In her incredible decade and a half as a poster here she has seen busloads of mods and fellow members both reign and fall by the wayside. Arguably (is it arguable?) the flagship member of Morrissey-solo, it's always a far more desolate place when she is banned or takes a break.
I have known Viva on and off these boards for about 13 years now and it's always been a delight to converse with her, even when we haven't seen eye to eye. I recently asked her for an interview and to my surprise she consented. We discuss the state of Morrissey-solo in 2020 and that of the alternative pop icon it is devoted to. We delve into Viva's decision to transition and how, if at all, it has changed her life. We find out where she stands on President Trump and where she falls as a conservative-leaning trans woman in the midst of the ever-escalating social justice wars.
Without further adieu, I present my interview with the one and only !Viva Hate!.
Enjoy.
_
Is that a Fangoria shirt you've got on in your avatar?
Yes it is. I grew up reading Fangoria and Starlog and Famous Monsters of Filmland. I’d read current issues and also I would go to a shop called Merlin Books and go through all the old back issues and buy them. I haven’t read it in awhile. My understanding is that they just recently came back after being out of print for many years. But horror movies aren’t what they used to be so I don’t think I’ll be reading anytime soon. I don’t know if you were aware or not but horror movies are pretty much my favorite thing in the world. My greatest obsession. Horror, Batman, Twin Peaks, WWF. In that order.
You have mentioned innumerable times your love of cinema. What was the last great modern film you saw?
I like a lot of stuff. Love a lot of stuff even...but I’m not going to pretend that a lot of what I love can truly be looked at as “great”. The last “great” film I saw was in 2014 - Whiplash. That movie almost feels like it was about my childhood. J.K. Simmons is amazing in it. I’m sure you’ve seen it. If not, you should watch it.
Tell me how you got into Morrissey's music. How old were you and how did you find him?
I may be a year or two off but I believe I was four at the time. My father used to work out a lot in the garage. He tried to instill in me a passion for fitness (that never quite caught on as much as he hoped) so I was there, essentially against my will, lifting weights. He always played records and one that stood out was ‘Meat Is Murder’. It was more the music than the vocals or lyrics that reeled me in. I was too young to really comprehend the lyrics but my initial reaction to The Smiths is one I generally still have with a Morrissey album; I’m initially turned off by his voice or what he has to say but I can’t stop listening to it until eventually I find worth.
What do you think is Morrissey's peak period artistically and what post-peak songs do you feel indicate he is still able to tap into that level of magic?
I think there are different peaks for Morrissey. Overall, peak Morrissey is the Meat Is Murder Morrissey for me. Vocally, lyrically...it’s the best of him. Peak solo Morrissey is Viva Hate and the singles and b-sides from that period. Vocally, he’s been declining since Ringleader and lyrically he’s been declining since Maladjusted. I’ve always said and still believe that the last time you heard the same Morrissey that was in The Smiths was on Maladjusted. In my mind I have to separate him as two different people because I can’t reconcile his post 1997 output with what came before. I don’t think there is anything that really stands up to his peak. Not full songs at least. Certain bits and pieces maybe. The most recently he sounded like the old Morrissey was on “Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets” and the outro of “I Bury The Living”...there’s almost a playfulness to those that he lost somewhere along the way. He’s too old and bitter to ever truly be great again and that bothers me a lot because I so desperately want him to be great again...but few artists ever really put out amazing work this late in their career. The list is incredibly short.
What musicians do you invest the same degree of time and analysis to as you do with Morrissey?
Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Weezer, Elton John and Roxy Music.
You consider Meat Is Murder to be the greatest Smiths album and you consider The Queen Is Dead overrated. Can you elucidate a little more regarding those opinions?
To me The Queen Is Dead is more like a comedy album. And I’m not a terribly big fan of Morrissey being comedic. I don’t generally find him funny. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ and ‘Vicar in a Tutu’ are some of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. He single-handedly ruins ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ which is baffling considering how amazing the music is and how great his vocals and his melody are on it. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ is just boring and shitty. I don’t even terribly like the title track. In fact, thinking about it now the only song that I truly like on the album is ‘I Know It’s Over’. Everything else is either overrated or trash. I don’t think any other album fully encompasses what the Smiths were and all of their strengths as a band better than Meat Is Murder. Morrissey treats this album with a bit more seriousness. I don’t find any of the lyrics to be ridiculous vaudeville humor nonsense. And it is some Marr’s best compositions and playing. There isn’t one bad song on there in my opinion. Nothing feels like filler. I know some people have a problem with the title track but I’ve always loved it. And arguably their best song is on there - ‘Well I Wonder’. Also, my personal favorite of their songs is on there - ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’. It’s probably my favorite album of all time. It’s perfect...and there are very few albums I think are perfect back to front.
Do you feel that the current anti-Morrissey SJW zeitgeist is merited?
No. I think people need to get a life and quit worrying about politics so much. The mob mentality is very embarrassing. I often get the impression that many of the people who are very rah-rah about social issues online are just wanting to fit in and be seen and validated. Honestly, I really don’t see much difference between them and Bigfoot hoaxers. The best ones though are the people with questionable pasts now wanting to be on record as being “on the right side of history”. It’s like look at the whole #metoo thing. Why are some people using that hashtag who willingly had sex to further their career being called brave and mentioned in the same breath as people who were unwillingly assaulted? If you agreed to do something you didn’t really want to do and did it for personal gain, that doesn’t make you a victim...it makes you a prostitute.
When did you start posting on Morrissey-solo? What can you tell me about the site as it was in those days?
I started posting on May 15th, 2006. It really wasn’t much different than it is now...just larger numbers of the same type of people. The overly nice, the overly sensitive, the overbearing, the narcissists, the superfans, the haters, the elitists, the collectors, the spinsters, the crazies, the trolls, the assholes. Same shit. It was easier to enjoy the forum back then when it wasn’t just the same three people posting anonymously.
Talk to me about the inception of the Solo Wiki (a Morrissey-solo-centric database offering detailed, impartial info on Morrissey's legacy including tours, albums, band members, bootlegs, etc). You were heavily involved in that, right?
I was in the beginning. I was also heavily involved in general on the Wikipedia articles on The Smiths and Morrissey for a very long time. Ok, the genesis of that and I’m going to be blunt is that I’ve always had a great dislike of Stephane and PJLM. I’ve always viewed them essentially as a Solo content Hoover. Just sucking up other people’s work and words and reappropriating it as their own. There’s very little on that site that wasn’t lifted in some way or another from Solo and it’s members...and Stephane was always very pompous and critical of this place all the while stealing from it. So, after noticing that Stephane had used my words and experiences from concerts I attended and reposted them without any credit on their site as if they had experienced the same event as me, I got pissed and I threw the idea out there to David, who was from my understanding also looking into the viability of a Wiki. Why wait for someone to lift our member’s info when you can make an in house Wiki that serves 80% of the function that PJLM did? Unfortunately, by the time all this occurred most of the userbase was gone and no one wanted to populate future articles. They would just complain on the forum about something not being there or needing to be changed instead of doing it themselves. I can’t stand helplessness and it really turned me off of populating the articles with the content they would have been.
You still post here after 13 years of membership despite being banned (and unbanned) multiple times, despite recidivism, and despite being reviled by as many fellow members as adore you. How do you account for the love/hate relationship that the forum here holds for you?
I think some people have a sense of humor slightly in tune with my own and can understand when I’m serious and when I’m not...others, it’s not so easy. I don’t really devote much thought to it. I’m not now nor have I ever been terribly concerned with what people think of me here. One thing I do find amusing though is a lot of people who were very nasty to me publicly are super nice and flirtatious with me now in private. Which really makes you wonder what some of the true motivations are of people who start gunning for you.
Are there any formerly regular posters that you miss hearing from, and why?
A lot of them. Here is a list of the ones I liked because they were fun and funny and just great easy going people to talk to: Nugz, virtually dead, Cassius, Iona mink, the more you explore me, bogdana, troubleluvsme, buzzetta, dann coulter, cornelius blaze, slum mum 1974 to name a few.
But you know, as do most people, that Kuiper was the boardie for me. I was legitimately in love with him. I can’t even convey how happy I would be if he came back into my life. Most of the reason I’m even still on this site is because I hope someday he’ll decide to take a walk down memory lane and view the forum again and see that I’m here and reach out to me.
If you could change this forum, how would you do it? What do you think would make this website a better place in 2020?
Nothing is going to fix the damage that Morrissey has done or undo the period of time Kewpie banned/drove 70% of the active members away. The first thing I’d do is get rid of anonymous posting. The second is buy a new theme and redesign the layout of this site. New color scheme, new banner, redo the emojis and ratings system, increase the file size limit on images, maybe allow animated gifs as avatars. Some of these features could be hidden behind the subscriber paywall and at the very least David wouldn’t be paying completely out of pocket for everything. I don’t know how well it would go over with this crowd but maybe create a site Discord server. It would essentially bring chat back which was kinda popular at one time. I’m not sure if I’d upgrade to Xenforo 2 or 2.1 or not. There isn’t nearly enough support or add-ons to warrant it. Also, I’d be more picky about what gets promoted to the main page as “news”. Like, a blogger making Top 10 lists and a Satanist baker or whatever mentioning Morrissey isn’t really front page news in my opinion. David has done a great job but he needs to trust some more control to members of his staff. He can’t and shouldn’t be in this alone. Make this a team effort.
You've cultivated a personality, in your tens of thousands of posts here over the years, of someone who is very brazen and unapologetic. Have you ever regretted a negative exchange with a poster here? Have you ever rethought or wanted to redact a post?
I can’t recall anything off the top of my head that I’ve ever really regretted saying here. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. There was some drama with Kuiper that I started after I had been banned that I think really turned him against me. Turned a lot of people against me, actually. I was behaving very unhinged. I was very angry at a perceived betrayal and was scared of being abandoned and I reacted in a way that ensured I fulfilled my own prophecy. And there’s also all the shit that I went through with you that I regret. But that’s water under the bridge. No reason to bring up the Viva Hate cockblock ever again.
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