That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for November 04, 2019

With the energy it provided, mild mannered shoe shine kid would become the superhero BANANA BOY!

Little Larry Olivier practices for Macbeth (“Is this a banana I see before me?”)

Portrait of young Hannibal Lecter with bananas before getting bored with them.

This is my banana. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My banana is my best friend. It is my life.

Timmy finally figures out what hookers uses bananas for!

“Hey mister, thanks for the banana as a tip.” Under his breath, “After all, it’s not like I didn’t just eat one five minutes ago ya cheap jerk.”

The sound on the Banana Phone was terrible. It never really took off because people kept yelling into it, “I can’t hear you! I’ve got a Banana in my ear!”

And only people my age and older will remember that punchline.

how the time flies by when you’ve got a banana to play with…

yes, this painting is actually titled banana boy…

Perhaps his banana phone would work better if he held it right side up.

Cincinnati Reds radio broadcasters Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall used to get on the “banana phone” and talk to fans and listeners during rain delays. (Chiquita formerly was headquartered in Cincinnati; that had something to do with the origins.) There was even a theme song which, I just learned, was the first part of a (speeded-up) song by Raffi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZUV2kiUZg4

“I know just where to put this….”

Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, Banana phone…..

Tommy was very shy, so he practiced his conversation openers on his banana.

Little Jimmy’s shoe shine business didn’t really take off be because he kept rubbing banana all over peoples shoes.

Surprising moments in…..you know.

Ha Ha – my next victim – so perfect.

Quoting Scarlet O’hara, “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!”

The kid would shine their shoes and then give em the slip.

The thing about bananas is that once you peel it and throw away the bone, there’s not much left. (An even older joke than Banana Phones.)

“ Now that I have some bait, maybe I can finally catch those flying monkeys. “

The Ninth Doctor always believed that bananas were good. Someday he would plant a whole grove of them in Villengard.

That would be the Gros Michel, note the plumper shape and and more robust peel. The Cavendish was introduced in the 50’s after the Panama disease wiped out “Big Mike”

“YES! We DO have bananas…”

Orange you glad that you don’t have to facetime with that kid?

‘Tis a wonder to behold!

“You are getting sleepy, very sleepy…” banana hypnotizer

Did he get that in Bloom County?

Since we seem to have a preponderance of references to film and movies guess which film this line is from: “Mine’s bigger”.

The shoeshine business really picked up once he left out banana peels, people were falling all over him.

Banana Boy: 

https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=19707 

has info about this roughly A2 paper size painting.

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/brown_john_george.html 

https://www.the-athenaeum.org/people/detail.php?ID=533 

http://www.artnet.com/artists/john-george-brown/ 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32252308/john-george-brown 

https://chrysler.emuseum.com/objects/15524/pull-for-the-shore 

https://books.google.com/books?id=sPGdBxzaWj0C&pg=PA346#v=onepage&q&f=false 

http://www.all-art.org/DICTIONARY_of_Art/b/Brown_John1.htm 

https://books.google.com/books?id=js1ZCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT2#v=onepage&q&f=false 

http://hoocher.com/John_George_Brown/John_George_Brown.htm 

all have info, or links that point to more info, about this artist, perhaps in addition to what’s pointed to by the title URL. So far, 3 works by him have been used here. 

https://www.gocomics.com/that-is-priceless/2019/10/21?comments=visible 

has the prior (my comment there included the same artist info URLs). 

The artist did also paint 

https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=257384 

and 

https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=44398 

around the same time; so, maybe this was as well.

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (⌘- or Ctrl-) clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s MASTERPIECE #2321 (November 3, 2019) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment.

The initial folding Bananaphone did not perform as advertised and the screen cracked and failed when folded.

♫Come, mister tally man, tally me banana. Daylight come and me wan’ go home♫ (Harry Belafonte)

" A one skin … a two skin … a three skin … a ….."

I don’t know what it is, but it sure tastes good.

Timmy’s brother told him everyone would like him if he stuck a banana in his pants.

“Mens sano in corpore sana !”/ cried he, as he scanned the banana./ “T’is vitamin-packed,/ trace mineral-stacked/ and has scarcely been used by Ms. Hannah!”

“My friend!”

To peel or not to peel…

Delighted to have received a Bananagram from Western Onion. He hadn’t known they did fruit as well as veggies.

That’s not Charlie. That’s Little Johnnie, with a joke about what a banana is really used for.

This is my rifle, this is my banana. One is for shooting, the other I can eat if I wanna!

(based on an old service rhyme: “rifle/gun”)

¡True story… I live in the Banana Capital of the World – Machala, Ecuador!

♩banana-fana fo-fary, fee-fi-mo-mary, gary! let’s do chuck!

little Jamie, tired from bending over all day shinning shoes, thinks,since I’m bent over there is a good use for the banana I just need a little oil.

That kid looks just like Jimmy Osmond when he was about 10!