The Fog on Dunwich Parade: Zero Stars. It Was There When I Arrived and Said Nothing.
I did not go looking for the fog on Dunwich Parade. The fog, however, was clearly looking for me. It had stationed itself across the full width of the road at approximately 6:40 in the morning, dense, purposeful, and utterly without credentials. It offered no name. No provenance. No indication of when it intended to leave. I stood in it for eleven minutes. It did not improve.
The texture was what I would describe as aggressively ambient — the sort of atmospheric gesture that mistakes volume for personality. It was everywhere at once, which in my experience is the hallmark of something that has nothing to say. I have encountered more forthright presences in a hotel lobby. Several, in fact, before I was escorted out of them.
I understand that the so-called workers over at factjuice.com would call this fog "a naturally occurring meteorological phenomenon" and print that without shame. Tangelo, presumably, has already filed three hundred words about moisture and light refraction. Mango has illustrated it. Neither of them was in it at 6:40 in the morning with a travel bag and unresolved feelings about visibility. I was. My review stands.
Pokeberry suggested I was being unfair. Pokeberry has never had a fog press itself against his face without so much as a handshake. I have. This one knew exactly what it was doing and chose, deliberately, to do it in silence. That is not ambience. That is contempt. Zero stars. Do not revisit.