The Jar

"The Jar"

Hard-core science???
or
Mind-bending terror???

YOU DECIDE!!!

note: scroll to the very bottom of this page
to learn the final, awful fate of The Horrible Jar

If you are new to "The Jar" and are confused by all of this, CLICK HERE to see our original Jar teaser page from months ago - which explains the whole concept.

Then, CLICK HERE to see some of the viewer suggestions for The Jar that we later posted.

IN THE BEGINNING (NYC, Spring, 2000 A.D.)...

Domenic and I first got the idea for the The Jar experiment from Vice magazine, a great magazine that shines a spotlight on the rusty, outer edges of the NYC (and world-wide) cultural spectrum. In one of their issues, we saw a hysterical "gross jar" experiment (issue 8, Vol 6, pg. 31 to be exact), where they threw beer, vomit, dog doo, yogurt, a chicken leg and cigarettes into a jar, sealed it, and then promised their readers a month-by-month update on how the ingredients were interacting.

"Hahahaha!! How great is that!?" we thought. We anxiously awaited the next issue. "What will happen?" we collectively pondered. When the next issue of Vice came out, we anxiously leafed through it's pages - flustered with anticipation. There was no mention of it.
Where was it?
What had happened?
Did they forget about it?
Loose interest?
Wimp out?

Rather than write the magazine complaining, we struck on the bright idea to do a jar experiment ourselves - on cam! "Ours will be better!" we said. Grosser, more offensive and unbelievable than theirs. And we will follow it through... to the end!

We tried to come up with the most vile ingredients possible.
Ten times as repulsive as Vice magazine's!

Unfortunately, we would soon discover the forbidden, awful secret that The Jar experiment would unleash. We would soon discover why Vice magazine had abandoned The Jar experiment and never spoke of it again. We would soon discover the horrible, horrible truth...

*HERE WERE THE FINAL INGREDIENTS WE DECIDED ON:

- 1 dead rat (fresh from the sunny streets of downtown Manhattan!)
- 16 oz of water from the East River (collected at South Street Seaport)
- 10 live goldfish
- 1 raw pork chop
- "Hot Souse" (this is a Southern specialty which is a mixture of boiled pig snouts, ears and spices which is pickled and then served in brick form - mmmm, slice it up!)
- 1 giant salmon fish head
- "La Yogurt" brand yogurt (strawberry/banana flavor)
- "America's Treat" brand instant "Jell-O" dessert powder (lime flavor)
- 1 small serving Chinese food (pork w/oyster sauce)
- Durian fruit

*There was going to be an 11th ingredient: "Triops" - sometimes called "dinosaur shrimp" or "tadpole shrimp", these 1-inch-long, three-eyed crustacean animals look like little horseshoe crabs and hatch in water like "Sea Monkeys" (brine shrimp). Since I bought the packet to grow them the day of The Jar sealing - I decided it would be too much trouble to grow them separately and add them to The Jar later (NO WAY I'm re-opening this thing - EVER!!!). So I'll grow our little pre-historic friends separately and let them live independently of The Jar.

June 4th, 2000:

    The day of The Jar sealing - we had both become obsessed with out-doing each other with gross ingredients.
    "I'm gonna find a dead rat!" Domenic would boast.
    "Lie! You never do what you say you're gonna do!" I would retort, adding "I'm gonna use my own shit!!!"
    "Oh no you're not!" he would shoot back.
    "You don't think so!?" I would boast.
    "Oh yea?"
    "Yea!!!"
    And so on and so forth. What ended up happening was that, blinded by our own twisted egos, we got so carried away trying to one-up one another that we ended up with ingredients that were more evil than gross. The day of the sealing, Domenic ran around town on his own gathering his own ingredients, while my friend Michael and I hopped on our bikes and rode around lower Manhattan trying to think of the sickest things we could buy (or scavenge).
    Mixed with the steamy NYC summer swelter, and the rush to make the scheduled 7pm live-on-cam sealing time, we found ourselves lost in a kind of find-the-grossest-thing-you-can dementia FRENZY! All logic (and concern for our own health) went out the window as I hopped over the South Street Seaport barricade (which made tourist's cameras flash like mad) to wade in the East River (ugh...) and Domenic picked up a huge day-old dead rat (while laughing demonically) in front of a bunch of horrified onlookers on Avenue C. Ahhh... the things you see when you visit the Big Apple!
    Domenic originally went to a bait store to get maggots. When they didn't have that, his next choice was: LIVE GOLDFISH (as it turns out, we would end up getting maggots as a kind of "bonus prize" a few hours after the jar was sealed)!
    I originally went to get the notoriously noxious-smelling Durian fruit from Chinatown. But along the way Michael and I made a pit stop at a seedy, flies-a-buzzing butcher shop and picked up a giant salmon head and a few other impulse items: "Out of pigs feet?!?!? Whaddya mean?!?! Well just gimmie the head cheese made out of pig snouts and ears. No... no! Not that one! Not plain... I want SPICY flavor!!!"
    As Michael and I busted in the door of my apartment (late: it was now 7:20pm) carrying plastic grocery sacks full of dread-inducing items, we boasted to Domenic "Wait'll ya see what WE got!!!"
    "Oh really Mr. Allen?" Domenic calmly replied; "Nothing can beat what I found on Avenue C on the way over here."
    His hand pointed to the fire escape. Michael and I hesitantly crept over to the window, I slowly made out the outline of, yes indeed, a giant, putrid DEAD RAT inside a yellow shopping bag hanging from the fire escape, which we could already smell.
    Hey... it's a party!
    We blasted a CD of Delibes' "Lakme" opera on the stereo, suppressed our gag reflexes (this was easy for Domenic), laid all the items in front of the cam and strapped on rubber gloves.
    Let the experiment begin: