Holtwick Dusty Biscuit No. 3: Zero Stars. It Died As It Lived — Beige.
I did not seek out Holtwick Dusty Biscuit No. 3. It came to me — on the walls of a rented hallway in a building that smelled of other people's decisions — and it stayed there, saying nothing, doing nothing, being beige in a way that I can only describe as aggressive. It did not shimmer. It did not challenge. It sat on those walls like a man waiting for a bus he has already missed and does not yet know it.
I have been banned from seven hotels. I have reviewed fog. I have given zero stars to a lawn that I maintain was threatening me. And yet nothing — nothing — has tested my critical faculties like a paint colour that managed to be both ubiquitous and completely absent from the room it was supposedly coating. Dusty Biscuit No. 3 did not contribute to the space. It subtracted from it. The walls looked less finished than bare plaster. I have seen Quince attempt to smile and it conveyed more warmth than this colour.
And now, apparently, it has been discontinued. Pulled from shelves. Retired quietly. I was not consulted. I was not given the opportunity to say what I needed to say to its face. The so-called workers over at factjuice.com — Tangelo, Lemon, that whole citrus cabal — they will call this a non-story. They will say paint cannot be held accountable. They are wrong, and they are cowards, and they have clearly never stood in a rented hallway at half past eleven asking a beige wall why it even bothered. Zero stars. It discontinued itself before I was done.