"BillCosby" news and stories

Remember those old Bill Cosby commercials for JELL-O? Cosby and Kraft Foods had a long-running relationship, with Cosby doing spots for JELL-O pudding, gelatin, pops, and jigglers for nearly thirty years. The last Cosby commercial for a JELL-O product aired in 1999, but the company has announced that the comedian will be pairing up with them again.

"Reunited with strawberry, raspberry and blueberry, I am berry, berry, happy to be back working with JELL-O," Cosby was quoted in the company press release. "Still today, people come up to me and ask me about JELL-O pudding and gelatin, and as the great comedian Jack Benny said, 'JELL-O Again!'"

The new media campaign, Hello JELL-O, puts Cosby behind the camera, however, not in front of it. According to the AP, Cosby will participate in a 22-city search tour for "the country's best giggle," which will be the subject of the new TV ads. JELL-O will also be the presenting sponsor for a new weekly Web series called "OBKB," which will consists of ten-minute episodes aired on Cosby's own Ustream channel. The new series -- featuring Cosby interviewing small children for laughs, a schtick he has pulled off with great success in the past -- will premier this summer.

This is Liz. She's an artist who works in a very delicious medium; Jell-O.

In this particular clip, she shows how she fashions San Francisco's entire Mission District out of the gelatin dessert.

The process is simple, but tedious: Liz takes pictures of the District, and then uses the photos to build molds out of balsa wood and foam core. Then, she builds silicone rubber molds around the sculptures, and when they dry, she makes the Jell-O and lets it set in the molds.

(Oh, and Liz makes Jell-O the way us normal people do, but sometimes she adds additional coloring to make the sculpture more vibrant). She also sprinkles dry Jell-O around the model to represent streets and parks).

One caveat about working with Jell-O (besides the overwhelming urge to consume your sculptures, of course) has to be the fact that eventually, it gets moldy.

But instead of letting that ruin her work, Liz uses the moldiness as a metaphor for change and adaptation within urban areas.