Pitchfork

"'...So I kinda mope around all day, dropping hints, thinking everybody forgot my birthday, then just when I get home to tell everyone to go fuck themselves-- "Surprise!" And wouldn't you know, my mom has gone and arranged a surprise party. It's as lame as it's ever been on any other sitcom, but at least there's cake. Mom hands me a plate and says, 'Dig in, tubby.' So I get a piece of cake, take a bite, and all I can taste is the white-hot sting of metal piercing the roof of my mouth, and the metallic (like pennies, actually) taste of my own blood. I start screaming, spitting blood everywhere in giant, viscous globs, shouting, 'Why the hell are there razor blades in my birthday cake?' which pretty much sounds like 'blurbblurbblurbcake!' And my mom just says, 'Now you've gotten blood all over your birthday cake,' takes off her mask, and it's Dean and Gene Ween. I feel like I'm on Candid Camera; boy, am I ever embarrassed.' That's what I have so far."

"Are you actually going to open a review like that? That's revolting! And boring! It doesn't even make any sense."

"Neither does Ween. It's about Ween; besides, quebec is a boring album-- 'Guess what! It's Ween! We're insane for the entire first half! Surprised? No?' The biggest surprise is that halfway through, they turn into a poor man's Floyd. Whee. Plus, they once said that one of their fantasies as a band was to spray their audience down with diarrhea while playing 'Poop Ship Destroyer.' That's just as revolting."

"Whatever, you're alienating your audience. No one wants to read about you gushing blood, or any of this nonsense. They want to read about Ween's new album."

"C'mon, half the people who really like Ween live in psycho wards; I just gave them all a helpful suggestion."

"You need to smoke this right now."

* * *

[Excerpted from "quebec: Journey to the center of Ween"]

Methcathinone ("Speed" derivative, in common parlance): Total inability to relax or concentrate for any length of time. "It's Gonna Be a Long Night" takes on elevated significance; listened compulsively on repeat for fifty-one hours (1,080 repetitions). Throbbing rockabilly-by-way-of-cheese-metal riffs carried over from Moistboyz side project opened the album almost as well as the fondly remembered "You Fucked Up" opened GodWeenSatan. Made me want to set my room on fire; instead I repainted it twice, both times blue, as Gene sang directly to me, "Don't call your mother/ Don't call a priest/ Don't call the doctor/ Call the police/ You bring the razor blade/ I'll bring the speed/ It's gonna be a long night." Other songs not listened to.

Oxycontin (Painkiller): "Zoloft" is nice. Sat motionless three inches above the couch, vaguely nauseated, while "Zoloft"'s loopy, wavy percussion, harp-like flutterings, and lounge keyboards kept me floating sedately. Almost laughed when Dean sang about sucking down Zoloft, but then didn't feel like it. Almost thought it sounded forced, like a gratuitous inclusion for people who expected another quirky track like "The HIV Song", but then didn't feel like it. Total tropical hammock-style, piña colada relaxation. The weird pixie voices in the background almost scared me, but then I didn't feel like it.

Nitrous Oxide (N2O): Mixed effect. The total randomness of the album's first half-- from metal-blade racket, to classic rock nostalgia, to full-on whacked-out Ween-ness-- is all hilariously near-perfect Ween. Even the name makes me giggle. Ween. Heh. The Vaudevillian theatrics of "Hey There Fancypants" made me wet myself with laughter, but it stopped there. Even on nitrous, the tired, prog-influenced back end of quebec isn't very funny.

Cannibis (Marijuana): I totally get it. It all makes sense now, man... On "Captain", they're not just, like, ripping off Floyd's massive orchestral swells and psychedelic haze; they're channeling it, you know? Ween, like, goofs on that wacky shit like the creepy vibes of "Happy Colored Marbles", but they left their hearts back in the 60s; the overblown classic rock sweep is the true Ween. The apocalyptic build of "If You Could Save Yourself (You'd Save Us All)" is vintage, Ziggy-caliber Bowie, "The Argus", and it's still, like... but the most boring track of all, "Alcan Road", in which there's nothing but hollowed-out, windy drone for, like, ever is cool, on pot. Even the indecipherable, thrashing noise at the tempestuous center of "So Many People in My Neighborhood" is brilliant as a break from the way serious psychedelic guitar washes, sitars, and underwater vocals of tracks like the aptly named "Tried and True". It's a total bummer, too, 'cause when I'm sober I like "crazy Ween" a whole lot more than "sincere-ish Ween," and there's a whole lot more of the latter on this album. I'm gonna need more pot.

Diacetylmorphine (Heroin): No effect. Passed out; threw up in my own mouth.

* * *

[Excerpted from my soon-to-be-published biography, Nancy Reagan: Wolf in a Sheep's Hairdo]

And lo! she approached the podium, and thus spake to the doe-eyed graduating class of Winnemack University, 1982:

"Graduating class of 1982, hear me! Just say 'No' to drugs! I never took drugs, and I'm First Lady of the most powerful nation in the world! I had sex with the President! The hippies lost! No one listens to that freaky, burnout "progressive rock" anymore! Really, no one even cares about Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull!"

She didn't talk about the graduation, or the future, or anything; most heard her message, but some did not. Were Gene and Dean Ween in the audience that day? Did they even go to college? I don't know, but I do know this: By the time they finally burned through whatever stash they had and got around to making quebec, they learned a few lessons, and did some growing up along the way. They can still sell crazy with the best of 'em, and they do, for a while; when they calm down a little, though, suddenly lines like, "I'm makin' time/ Breakin' ground/ Greyhound Bus to chocolate town," are still good for a chuckle, but there's a disturbingly genuine honesty underlying it all, and the beautiful echoes of the cascading solo to conclude "I Don't Want It" will kill any hint of cynicism in even the blackest heart. But back to Nancy...

* * *

[Excerpted from the review most people probably wished I had written]

I don't think anyone who already has some notion of wanting quebec could possibly be disappointed-- it's the genre-defying psych of The Mollusk and the incongruous irreverence of 12 Golden Country Greats, and some of the madness that is GodWeenSatan, and it's a lot better than the go-nowhere White Pepper, but nothing I say makes any difference. It's Ween. Their fans adore them, and the rest of you don't care.