Archive for September, 2008

Schoolkids Jailed for Dressing as Banana and Monkey

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How absolutely messed up is this? The principal of this school is an ignorant jackass. So is anybody else who signed on to this. Local police? Do you have fun jailing kids in costumes? Halloween’s going to be a blast!

Here’s what happened.

One kid put on a banana suit. The other kid put on a gorilla suit.

They ran across a football field during their school’s homecoming game.

School officials had them arrested for TRESPASSING.

The kids the night in jail.

They have now been suspended for two weeks.

For my overseas readers, suspension from high school can be a serious issue – it can keep you from getting into a good college, no matter what the cause. That’s because some college administrators apply rules as draconian as some high school administrators.

This happened at Flower Mound High School, near Fort Worth, Texas.

Proving that you don’t mess with Texas, that football is more important than fun or creativity AND especially more than reasonable, rational thought.

Or justice.

Here’s a story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Here’s a Facebook support group for the kids, who are named Curtis Patton (age 17) and Sean Kight (18).

By the way, this isn’t the first time in a year when students got punished for wearing silly costumes.

About the Book and the Blog

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"Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World" explores the 7,000 year history of the world's most popular fruit. Here in the U.S., we eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. Around the world, millions of people rely on the fruit as their primary source of nutrition. The banana we eat, called the Cavendish, is threatened by an advancing, incurable disease. My book explains why the banana, ubiquitous as it is, is such a fragile fruit – and how science is struggling to save it. The biggest surprise of all is that the banana we enjoy today is not the one your grandparents grew up on. That banana was also wiped out by disease. "BANANA" explains why history may be repeating itself – and what needs to be done to prevent that.

On this blog, you'll find an eclectic mix of banana news, banana ideas, banana silliness, banana recipes, and almost every other kind of banana information. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it will make you interested enough that you'll want to Amazon” target=”_blank”>check out my book. Thanks for visiting.

- Dan Koeppel

Superstar Librarian's Custom "Read" Poster

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From Steve Campion’s flickr photostream, here.

I met Steve Campion at the American Library Association’s annual convention in Anaheim, California last spring. He made (and is the true star of) this awesome poster, which is a variant on the “Read” campaign that’s been encouraging kids to improve their literacy. Steve also reviewed Banana on his MostlyNF blog, which is a great resource for finding other interesting non-fiction books (Steve averages nearly 100 a year!)

First Harvest of New Banana Toys (?) for the Holidays

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I have no idea, and if I did, I wouldn’t share it.

There’s a world of bizarre banana toys out there, but these are especially strange, and with the holidays approaching – OK, not really; but here in the U.S., the shopping frenzy has begun to begin, because that’s just how we roll – these are both super-weird and, in some cases, even unfathomable. I’ll post just two samples, both from Jill Harness at the Inventorspot.com blog. Above, whatever. Below: inflatable key rings, which are actually kind of functional. Canoe, picnic, capsize, lose the camera but salvage the drive home – happens all the time.

All this stuff is from Japan, of course. There’s more in Jill’s original entry. Links to purchase, too.

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Blow-up key chains with suffocating bananas trapped inside. Generally, controlled atmospheres are used for ripening the fruit. Not sure if this was the intention here.

UN Program Claims Success in Battle Against Deadliest Disease

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Ugandan Banana with wilting disease (courtesy UN FAO)

BXW (banana xanthomonas wilt) is probably the worst disease facing the worldwide banana crop today. Fast-moving and incurable, it threatens Africa’s vital subsistence bananas, and has been spreading rapidly through the regions where people rely on the fruit for as much as eighty percent of their daily nutrition.

A report issued this week by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that a pilot education program in Africa that trained farmers in clean production techniques – quarantine measures designed to isolate farms from each other to stop the spread of the disease – effectively reduced transmission to zero percent.

“Today you do not find banana wilt disease in any of the districts where the field schools have been established, which were at one time the front line hot spots in this effort,” an FAO official was quoted as saying.

This is a major development. Quarantine and farmer education programs can be successful, but they’re often tough to implement. Stopping BXW in Uganda (the term FAO uses is BBW, for “Banana Bacterial Wilt”) will go a long way toward ensuring security in a region that desperately needs a reliable food supply.

There’s a detailed article and more pictures here.

Here’s an earlier posting on BXW.

The Banana Splits: A Freaktastic Television Show Returns

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Photo: PR Newswire

Readers from other countries, you’ll just have to take my word for it: “The Banana Splits” was one of the strangest things ever presented to children as entertainment. It was an NBC show with costumes created by Sid and Marty Kroft, who might best be described as Walt Disney, split into two by genetic mutation, dropped into a vat of ergot, and unleashed onto the world with at least temporary carte blanche to produce television for adolescents and potheads. Since I was the former, and the grownups in my house were the latter, I have warm memories of Saturday morning gatherings to watch this program.

Four costumed creatures made up “The Banana Splits” (the name came from the rock band they formed; their jingle – also known as the ‘Tra La La’ song – was so genuinely catchy that it was appropriated as the hook for Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldiers.”) The quartet are Fleegle the Dog, Drooper the Lion, Bingo the Gorilla, and Snorky the Elephant. They live in a Banana Pad and drive in their Banana Buggy, which is more than most people in the banana world can say.

In a press release, Warner Bros. executive Jordan Sollitto, promised that the new version of the program would stay true to the original: “Everything that made The Banana Splits hugely popular in the ’60s is back,” he said. I believe this, especially since medical marijuana can be purchased by just about anybody who’s willing to say they have a hangnail in California, where the show is produced. Definitely replenish your stash prior to visiting the show’s website, whose accompanying soundtrack and multimedia you will find either completely hypnotic or very, very upsetting – just as the original show was.

Also, you can join a club and get an awesome membership card:

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Read the hilariously titled press release: “Warner Bros. Serves Up Four Scoops of Hilarity With Relaunch.”

UPDATE: The BBC sort of debunks the Bob Marley/Banana Splits song similarity. Audio from both is included, so listen for yourself and decide.

Routes, walks, bananas, more!

Using the blog…

THE BANANA BLOG is about the world's most endangered - and dangerous - fruit. THE BIG PARADE is about stairways, route and transit geekery, and pedestrian pursuits in Los Angeles. You can also read all the topics at once, which might also include productivity, geekery, DIY whatever, mountain biking, stuff that I think is funny that nobody else likely will, and other boring, useless crap.

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