#hashtag

Twitter is the home of pointless shite, but not all shite is created equally pointless. Take, for instance, this evening's hashtag du jour, #firstdraftporn, kicked off by US comic @pattonoswalt (best known in certain circles for his self-sacrificing review of KFC's Famous Bowl - or as he described it in preceding media commitments 'a failure pile in a sadness bowl'). Some of the gold brought forth by #firstdraftporn this eve includes:

• Well, now that you mention it, I do know how you can bring your grades up. You could study. #firstdraftporn
• INT: HOSPICE CARE CENTER. EARLY MORNING. #firstdraftporn
• I like my women like I like my coffee: manhandled by a Colombian and his donkey then shipped internationally in a burlap bag #firstdraftporn

Gold. And how much would you expect to pay for such comedic wonder? Well, don't ask. Because a day or so ago we enjoyed the company of #changelovetoknobsongs and that was just as amusementastic, if incredibly puerile. The pretence, incredibly complex as it appears: change songs with 'love' in them to 'knob'. As in, 'Knob Me Tender', 'You've Lost That Knobbing Feeling' and 'Can You Feel The Knob Tonight'. All smeared with copious amounts of win. To say nothing of 'Bizarre Knob Triangle'. However, one must admit a certain admiration for the directness of Transvision Vamp's late-80s pop-punk classic, 'I Want Your Knob'. Mainly because Wendy James did. Or gave a very accurate impression thereof, at the very least.

Wendy James couldn't sing, but somehow that didn't really matter. She brought the hotness and that, in alliance with the Vamp's fuzzy guitars and poppy hooks, was enough for 1989's hormonal teens and prototypes thereof. Be assured, I would have. I'm not sure I'd have had the remotest fucking clue how to, but I'd have been willing to learn. Yet Ms James' Page 3 fame lasted not much longer than the Vamp's chart career; they were gone by the '90s, jumping before the grunge-laden tide pushed them. Ironically, the Vamp's bassplayer ended up joining post-grungists Bush and sold many millions, indicating how comfortable he was with playing alongside girly vocalists.

Of course, the Vamp's work looks ridiculous today - as does much of the '80s, particularly to anyone who lived through them and watched music get turned upside down and shaken hard by Cobain, Vedder et al circa 1991 and thereafter. For anyone who lived through it, or anyone who was paying attention at the time, it seems like overnight, some huge switch was thrown - or even a massive fuck-off lever from an old-school railway signal-box. Overnight, the poodle metallists - or the 'Sunset Strip hair farmers' as ol' Headless Kurt liked to call them - were goneski. Where had swaggered Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Poison and the Gunners now sulked Nirvana, Pearl Jam, the Offspring and Green Day. It's kinda bizarre, astonishing and yet amusing to watch vids of the former - like this bit of Van Halen from '91 - just before the balloon went up and the dinosaurs became extinct. Like the dinosaurs, the amazing thing isn't that they died out, more that they ever existed in the first place.

Viva la evolución.

The Doctor is OUT.