Appetite for Destruction

And when he picks up a gun and points it at some Tupperware filled with raspberry-flavored Jell-O, should you run?

The original idea was to test, on Maclanahan's land in Kansas City, Kansas, whether Tupperware is bulletproof. But you can't shoot guns within city limits. Well, people can and do, but it's illegal.

So Ryan Gale offered his family's farm in Lathrop, Missouri — not far from the Jesse James Museum.

Gale is an artist, too. As an 18-year-old, he considered applying to the Kansas City Art Institute but was scared off by the financial demands of attending the school. So he did some vocational art — advertising, sign making and display work — before turning his dream of being a sculptor into a reality that's not so different from sculpting. Gale is a self-employed construction contractor who has teamed up with some of the city's most innovative architectural firms to work on buildings in the Crossroads District.

"I'm fortunate enough that I can work with exceptional architects on fun projects with design-build elements," Gale says. "These aren't cookie-cutter ranch houses. We're going into old buildings and trying to find new approaches to old things. There's a lot of hands-on. And at the end of the day, you've built something."

On the day of the Tupperware shoot, Maclanahan and Gale brought their own guns.

But most of the weaponry — the XKS sniper rifle for example — was on loan from the painter Phil Corbett. He's a carpenter by trade and the former manager of A Streetcar Named Desire (the Crown Center hamburger joint housed inside a train car). He's also a Vietnam War veteran. Local artists know they when they need a gun to shoot their art, Corbett's the man to see.

When sculptor Jesse Small was making military-themed art, he used Corbett's arsenal to put holes in his work. One day, Small brought a piece to Corbett's place, and Corbett told Small that he shouldn't shoot it, that he would ruin it. Small didn't listen. He shot the art anyway. As soon as Small did it, according to Corbett, Small knew it was a mistake. That's the last time Small went over to shoot art. "He quit doing it, I ate his ass out so bad," Corbett reports.

For the Tupperware test, Gale's wife, Leah, hauled to the farm some serious WMDs from Corbett's collection. The XKS was a big device with wood siding and a tripod to hold it steady. The rare XC-220 came disassembled, its metal pieces contained in a camouflaged, Army-issue case. The riot gun was intended for crowd control; hope ran high that it was up to the job of Tupperware control.

At the farm already were Gale, Maclanahan and a handful of others, including Burak Düvenci and David Moré — installation artists who wanted to capture the sound of the gunfire for future shows. They had been getting the official tour, seeing the cows and the chickens, observing the dead geese that had been hunted on the property that morning (only two per hunter, as the law clearly states) and setting up a stand to hold the Tupperware, using the tools in Grandpa Gale's tinkering shed. Meanwhile, everyone but the vegetarian in the group ate homemade, freshly harvested deer jerky, which had a disturbing rubbery texture but tasted pretty good.

The largest Tupperware bin held apples. (This was a nod to the Williams — Tell, who shot an apple on his son's head, and Burroughs, who shot his wife trying to re-enact Tell's scene.) The other four containers were full of red Jell-O. The shallow box had three compartments — one with red gelatin, one with green, and one mixed — to simulate a color wheel.

Tupperware piece No. 1: Rock 'N Serve Large Deep Contents: five apples (four Golden Delicious, one Gala) Distance: 68 yards Weapon: hunting rifle

After a while spent trying to adjust Corbett's guns and shooting the Tupperware from 100 yards away, the artists closed in on the target, shooting instead from 68 yards with the farm rifle used by the Gale family for hunting. The group passed around a pair of binoculars, trying to see where the bullets were going, to no avail. Maclanahan grew frustrated and actually ran up on the Tupperware, diving onto his stomach in the tall prairie grass and firing without mercy. (The Pitch reporter, fearing the Tupperware might repel bullets and send them ricocheting back, as in an old Western, tried to get everyone to hide behind a pickup truck, but her recommendation fell on deaf ears.) For a long time, nobody thought the Tupperware had been hit. Then, through the binoculars, someone noticed a tiny speck on the Tupperware. It had, at some point, been struck. Apple guts had splattered about inside the container, and the plastic bin had been punctured three times. There also was one dent on the bin, implying that a bullet at some point had bounced off. The evidence of this phenomenon boosted morale considerably.

Tupperware piece No. 2: Rock 'N Serve Medium Deep Contents: raspberry Jell-O Distance: 68 feet Weapon: various, numerous

This time, the Tupperware — fired upon with the Corbett arsenal from 68 feet — appeared to be smashing to smithereens, based on the fact that the lid flew off and Jell-O was splattering everywhere. It was easier to see because a piece of cardboard had been placed behind the Tupperware so that gunmen and observers could see where bullets and/or Jell-O globules were going. But when someone went to look at the Tupperware, it turned out to have cracked without revealing a clean hole from a bullet passing straight through. That's when the group started firing from about 30 feet, everyone going nuts over the fact that the bullets hadn't actually passed through the container's sides. Exactly when the Tupperware was officially blown to pieces is hard to say because it was damned near impossible to get the determined band of artists to stop shooting it.