Do you like fermented brains? I don’t, personally, but I obviously have plenty to go around. Right about now, I’m sure the contents of my cranium rather resemble the insides of a scraped out pumpkin¾ orange and slightly gushy from sitting on the front porch too long.

I’m telling you, Hanson droughts, no matter which way you slice ‘em, are just no stinking fun.

No television appearances to be alternately thrilled and mortified by. No interviews to make fun of. No Taylor wardrobe miracles/disasters to ponder endlessly while sitting on the couch with the remote control in your hands, just rewinding and rewinding. Searching for… what? Brown belts with black pants. (He likes that one. Proof that he’s heterosexual, I say!) Misplaced sparkles. Unsightly bulges. Fabrics that I wouldn’t put on my worst enemy’s couch.

So you know what we all do when this happens, right? We, like so many shell-shocked victims of war, keep marching out on the battlefield. We come armed and ready. We raise the flag. We play Taps every morning. We occasionally shoot at a squirrel or two when they scurry across the horizon.

But damn. The war is like, so completely over. The enemy has packed up and gone to France. But try telling that to the average Hanson devotee. We keep going through the motions, keep analyzing when there’s nothing to analyze, keep interpreting the pauses as much as words themselves.

Suddenly, every fragment of information that seeps its way out of the Hanson camp becomes ridiculously important. Need I bring up the Haircut Incident from the last drought? Information becomes a slightly warped version of the truth, becomes a rather pretty tall tale, becomes fanfiction in the time it takes to transfer 10kb from my server to yours.

You’d think I’d be cool in all this, right? Laura who prides herself on being all objective and analytical and who wants a medal almost as badly as she wants a chest to pin one on.

Whatever. Let me give you a whirlwind tour of The Fermented Cranium, that hollowed out pumpkin, scraped with something rather sharp and created specifically for that purpose¾ The Martha Stewart Pumpkin Scoop maybe.

The State of the Hanson: by Laura

It starts out well. No really, it does. Because frankly, these things always start out well. Remember Rick?

I’m seeing this image, maybe like Miss Cleo would see it, rather shrouded in a weavery Dream Sequence haze. (Pot smoke, probably.) It’s of Ben Folds sitting at a piano in an unidentified Tulsa basement wearing a dorky plaid shirt and Chucks. There are Hansons scattered about him; I think Taylor is sitting on the floor in something threadbare, ill-fitting and dirty, in which he looks alternately anorexic and angelically beautiful. Maybe he’s holding a guitar, even though it’s still entirely questionable whether he can play it or not. And everyone’s talking and saying things to each other, little clips of phrases that start with, "Yeah, man…" Music just falls out, just happens in their mouths, on the keys in front of them, maybe even on the guitar. Things we’ve never heard before. Things Hanson didn’t even know they were capable of. (I’m smiling at this point in the dream.) All appears well, happy and in order.

Then… change of scene. Taylor pees off one little roof at one little party and things start to go a little SNAFU. But we learn almost immediately that all is well and normal in Hansonland, because in typical form, they don’t quite get the joke: Pst. Hey, Isaac. Cool people, like, actual honest-to-goodness cool people, regardless of their age, don’t have to sneak into hip industry parties. They can just go in if they want to. Oh… right… Taylor did…

But that was a mere blip. Nothing to get excited about. Even if we were listening to these stories salivating at our computers, mouths parched, the gray (orange) matter turning to slush behind our eyes, thinking evil things like, "You goober. Stop being a rebellious little boy and get into the studio and make me an album. Like right now."

Then they wrote with Matthew Sweet. (Cheers and general symbols of approval.) Then they wrote with Guster Boy. (Golf claps.) Then they wrote with The Allmighty Buckethat, that kid from The New Radicals whose name you’re not going to e-mail me. (Mixed reaction. Some clapping. Some murmurs of discontent.) Then they wrote with Steven Jenkins. (Wait. Hold up a second. Boos. A tomato or two is chucked.)

I mean, really now. Who’s next? We’ve already heard further mentions of Carol King, Fastball and Steven Tyler. Why not throw in John Popper, Jonny Lang, Madonna, Art Garfunkel, Karen Caprenter, Bacharach, KC and JoJo, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rose Stone, the whole damn choir and the London Symphony too. Anything to make us sound like diluted Hanson with some other fishy clump-like things floating around on the bottom.

Then it looked like the album was pretty much done.

Then they were in France. Writing more songs.

Huh?

The Hanson Version goes: Look at us! We’re in France writing songs with lots of famous people! We’re making sure we’re giving you the best album possible! The album release will be delayed because we want it to be really good for all of you! Yay!

The Laura Version goes: France, eh? So who’s paying for the rendezvous, boys? Must be Island, that record company that loves and cares for you and your vie for legitimacy so dearly. Have fun with Carol King. You’ll pay for every cent of it when this is all over.

You know Island hates the album. You know it. Even if you don’t know it, you know it. You know they hate it because it’s good.

You can see it as well as I can see it, in that Dream Sequence fog: Taylor standing in Jeff Fenster’s office with a hand on one perfectly angled hip wearing a scarf (Next thing you know, he’ll start listening to Rent.) holding a cigarillo in one hand going, "This is the kind of music we want to make. This is the album. It’s done. We’re not changing it."

And Fenster looks him in the eye and goes, "You will release this album over my dead, mutilated, bloated, corporate body. Get out of here and don’t talk to me until you give me an album that will sell more than four copies, Trevor."

Then Taylor sulks away and cries, maybe even on Isaac's shoulder, if we're going for dream instead of nightmare, tears glittering on his cheeks and sticking in his eyelashes. Because you know he looks so pretty and tragic that way.

"Enough! Enough!" you start screaming and thrashing in the sheets. "Please let the nightmare end!" Right. Don't look now, but Dream just showed up in the dream. And the boys threw at least one of them in both the cake and the pool. Note to Hanson: My thoughts exactly.

There's more, of course. European tabloids. Isaac and Marit. Taylor and the pot leaf. The castle in France. Jamming with Semisonic. Zac in a Tractors video. The closing of hansonstore.com. The final issues of MOE. The seemingly pointless video release of At the Fillmore. A Randy Quaid movie? (Bright side: How can it possibly be worse than Jack Frost? OK. Never mind.) Don't look now, but the mole hills of Hanson have turned into Everest, and the air is thin near the top and we're all getting a little dizzy. Imagine how we'll be when he have something as substantial as a tour to deal with.

So just let it end already. Pinch yourself. Roll off the bed and hit your head on something hard, just to finish the job. Wake up. Breathe. Let the cranium ferment at its will. And when people ask you why you have that goofy grin on your face, you will blink, eyes glazed over, bottom lip quivering, and utter the only word you seem to remember from that scary Before time, back when you had a brain that worked: Hanson.