poolboy: don’t pick up
From MoHA Wiki
Concept Animals
Review • March 28, 2024
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| Link | poolboy: don’t pick up |
| Description | You know that feeling of sweet ecstacy when you discover an addicting reality show that already has three seasons under its belt? It’s a pool of open water to dive into; ripe for the binge. poolboy was in its fourth season in 2022 when I happened upon its zaniness. poolboy00 (Sam Mayer) and his best friend momgrab (Julia Mounsey) responded to prompts from an audience at Co-Lab Projects’ Glissman Culvert as I waded in a nearby collapsible pool. Maybe it was the cool water against my skin on a sweltering Texas night, or the sweaty dancing at Cheer-up Charlies afterward, but poolboy: I WANT TO LISTEN struck a chord with me that night. |
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The audience was quiet for the first time all evening. Perhaps they were paying their respects for the sacredness of human emotion or perhaps they were trying to detect what was scripted versus non-scripted, or real emotion versus acting–differentiations that continue to be important to the human intellect in a digital age. It was at that moment that it occurred to me that it was quite probable that the entirety of what felt like a freefrom experience was actually manufactured: momgrab’s confession; more than a few of the notecards; momgrab’s phone call. There was an invisible author hiding in plain sight the entire time, or at least in a white tent reminiscent of the curtain that hid the actual Wizard of Oz.
