The Jell-O Test
Drew, the store manager of the Broadway supermarket, was exceptionally helpful when I asked him for 160 boxes of lime jello. We discussed case discounts and lead times for the ordering. It would take two days and cost $222, which was far over budget.
Outside in the rain, I called the photographer, Shawn, and asked for advice. “Try Grocery Outlet. If they don’t have it there we’ll go to Costco.”
“Why don’t we just go to Costco first? They’re more likely to have the quantity we need. I’ll pick you up.”
“Sounds good.”
We had to park the Mini as far away from everyone as possible in the lot to avoid door dings. I am fanatical about some things, and my car is one of them. In a place like Costco this usually means a forty minute walk carrying a GPS receiver to be able to find the car again. Shawn loaded his camera out, because anything worth doing is worth having on film.
I hate Costco. It is a nightmare. Twelve acre parking lots, ugly architecture, and a traffic disaster. Worst of all, there is no customer service. I have only been in Costco three times in my life because trekking around a cold warehouse with hard concrete floors looking for something in row after row of unmarked aisles avoiding construction machinery without a single person to ask for help is not my idea of a good time.
Expectedly, we could not find what we were looking for and there was no one to ask. I lost Shawn somewhere in the land of shiny bleeping things and became exceptionally mall-panicked. My phone rang and I practically leapt through my pockets, desperate for some one to talk me down, talk me away from this 13th century Mohammedan bazaar. However, instead of a stop on the Silk Road this was a stop on the Container Road; instead of miles of textiles being unloaded by mile-long camel trains there were millions of standardized shipping boxes disgorging millions of tons of commodity-grade plastic.
I answered the phone: “Get me out of here.”
“Oh, honey, where are you?” Corrine.
“I’m in the middle of what looks to be the beginning of a race war.” Indeed, saris and turbans struggled with stadium jackets and baseball hats over the free tuna fish salad samples, carelessly spooned onto saltines by a dying Midwestern grandmother wielding a white plastic spoon.
“Where are you?”
“Costco.”
“Oh, Jesus. What the hell are you doing there?”
I outlined the plan and the economic necessity of this excursion. “Dial information and have them connect you to Cash and Carry, tell them what you want. Call Shawn and meet him at the exit.” This is what I needed. An outside voice away from the sodium-lit shiny things.
Forty gallons of jello can be made from sixty pounds of dry mix, which I finally had in my possession in the trunk of the Cooper, with enough left over to experiment and play. Four cases containing twelve 24-ounce bags each; 72 pounds of sticky, gelatinous goodness. I felt like stopping and doing thigh-sized lines off the dashboard in a Tony Montana-esque frenzy of glucose, sucrose, and power. All for a hundred dollar bill. “Okay, ese, let’s get some ice.”
I stopped by the restaurant to raid the freezer, loaded out twenty gallons of ice in clean, white, five-gallon buckets. “What are you doing?” I heard no less than ten times.
“I’m making jello,” I replied.
“How much?!”
“I’m filling a bathtub with it.”
“Oh my God, that’s so cool. I’ve always wanted to dive into a bathtub filled with jello! Can I come?”
“No. This is a photo shoot, not a rave.”
“What?”
I refused to explain. It just doesn’t work with some people. They see a bit of flesh or meat and want to consume it in a masturbatory frenzy of self-gratification that lasts for only thirty seconds. They feed the beast, but not the person.
I’m certainly guilty of that.
That’s why God invented wine, nu?
Oh, science! Shawn and I are both engineering technicians; that is to say engineers make things up and we actually make things. The question before us now was what the final temperature of the water would be if we started with four gallons at 35 degrees and added one gallon at 210 degrees.
“Dv over dx?”
“No, sine of something.”
“Look it up online.”
“What the hell does this mean?!”
“Go to a different site.”
“Screw it. Boil the water, throw it in, and we’ll see how hot it is.”
“Do you have a thermometer?”
“Naw. Just stick your hand in it.”
We began boiling the water and taking test photos, checking light and shadow, throwing ice around, drinking beer. Corrine showed up and things began to take on a much less serious tone. It was quickly discovered that the pretty girl looked much better on film than my honky self, so we used her extensively.
“Roll the bag so the logo doesn’t show.”
“Look over here. No, there. No, you were better before.”
“Move this way. No, back. No, you were better before.”
“Okay, pour. Slower. Wait. No, go again. Stop. Wait.”
“Wait, don’t look at the camera, look at me. No, look at the camera. No, wait, look at me. No, you were better before.”
Luckily, Corinne had a sense of humor about the whole thing. I personally would have punched myself.
The jello began to kick the moment we started to stir in the ice, reaching its final hardness in just under an hour. Not nearly as firm as anticipated, but still retaining form when glopped on to the bottom of the bathtub, still sticky enough to cling to arms after testing the depth.
We celebrated with another round, toasted our good fortune, planned the final shoot and further crimes. Sometimes the business of art is fun and those moments really need to be realized, because most of the time it’s driving over the entire rainy city looking for the one thing I can’t find but must have to make it all happen as planned. That part is a frustrating compulsion, a feeling that the world will never be right unless I have this one little thing that never existed. It’s always like having stitches removed; it hurts, but in a good way.
Photo Shoot: Jell-O
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