CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
Advice like this is so rare -- "Take the banana and cigar away from him, if they make you feel worse than you did before seeing him, but don't wish him dead." From Illustrated World, 1922.
"People will dance for you in banana costume." From something called How to Make Mony [sic] from Fiverr. I guess that's mony as in "Mony Mony" (as sung by Tommy James and the Shondells as well as by Billy Idol).
Here's very important advice on how donning a banana costume, sitting in hot tubs, and not wearing sweatpants in public can save you from being a colossal failure. From The Gateway, 2014.
Too many skiing slips can be blamed on banana peels. From Nebelspalter, 1929. This explains weird banana-themed Christmas postcards of the past (postcard via WeirdChristmas).
"The New-York Anti-Orange-Peel and Banana-Skin Association, as they appear in their great humanitarian feat of clearing the side-walks." From Punchinello, April 9, 1870. [Notice all those hyphens in the caption. Under a microscope, each hyphen is, in turn, a miniature orange peel and banana skin.]