Banana Jacket
A Banana Jacket is a piece of clothing that is made and manufactured by lunatics, for the consumption of crazy people, known for causing its wearer to behave absurdly, erratically, and eventually to go completely bonkers. It is generally sold to and purchased by the same sort of person who would take a pet monkey with them on a leash at all times, or who perhaps might drink ocean water out of a coffee mug with a bendy straw. Eccentric millionaires have also been known to take special interest in obtaining and wearing the now rare and collectible banana jacket.
Originally constructed during the silent movie era, it is unknown whether its time of origin has any effect on the actual jacket itself, as fabrics may come and go through the ages, and their quality is based on a number of different factors, but a jacket made out of banana peels is and will always be a jacket made out of banana peels.
Construction
The creator of the Banana Jacket is quite possibly the only sane person ever to be associated with it. Tom Wilson, an audio intern at Metro Pictures Corporation studios, had quite a lot of time on his hands when he was on the clock. This was almost entirely due to the fact that, audio being his profession, working at a silent film studio gave him little chance to do much of anything. He was aptly paid absolutely nothing, as most interns are, save for a Metro Pictures tradition of giving every employee of the studio an entire bunch of bananas every single week in addition to their regular paycheck. Tom would eagerly go to get his paycheck every week (in the form of an 8'x11'' sheet of blank white paper), in anticipation of the delicious bunch of bananas he was to receive. Life was good for Tom Wilson, for although he made no money, he never actually had to work, though he could tell people that he did, and he had a fresh bunch of bananas to indulge in during his hours of worklessness every week at the studio.
While mixing live silence for a comedy film entitled Pies, Pies, Pies, and More Pies...And A Banana Peel or Two As Well, Tom noticed that the performers looked remarkably drab, and un-banana-like in their appearance, despite the fact that they were engaging in something as ridiculous as throwing pies and tripping on banana peels. Tom thought to himself, "Hmmm. Well, I do save every single banana peel from every banana I've ever eaten, just in case I may need to design a jacket with them one of these days. I think I'll put that to use." After taking a bath in his banana peel swimming pool, Tom did in fact design a jacket that would kill two metaphorical birds with one slightly more metaphorical stone. The Banana Jacket allowed performers to liven up their appearance, while also serving as a healthy supply of banana peels that they'd always have on hand for their comedic scenes.
While the Banana Jacket has been an overall unsuccessful article of clothing as far as raking profits in, the design has much more to say for its ergonomics than the similarly conceived Pie Jacket, a jacket made of pies. One cause for the Pie Jacket's low sale rate is that the pies on the jacket are already torn apart as a part of the design, making for little splat factor on impact with a fellow comedian.
Insanity
While Tom Wilson was, as stated earlier, a sane person before the invention of the Banana Jacket (save for his odd fixation with collecting the skins of fruit), its conception and his subsequent attempts to market it by wearing it to the studio every day are thought to be linked to his increasingly spaced-out behavior over the next few months of his life. Before long, the clean-cut, casual-dressing Tom would be sporting an unkempt beard, messy pony-tail, tie-dye t-shirts, and ripped jeans. He also inexplicably grew about seven inches taller, and lost about 25 pounds. While the increase in height is absolutely unexplainable, the loss of weight seems to have actually resulted from a heroin addiction Tom developed as a way to offset his frequent outbursts of extremely erratic and wacky behavior.
Tom Wilson fucking died. The jacket is not believed to have been directly responsible for his violent murder in a dark back alley at Metro Pictures studios. It is however believed to have caused the heroin addiction that most likely explains his having been present at said alley at said time. Despite having been brutally murdered by a crazed drug dealer with a hatchet, Tom's head was found entirely in tact at the scene, sporting a goofy clown smile, and crudely built space helmet, suggesting that he had made plans to attend the following day's Grand Butter Churn Festival that was being held within close proximity to the murder scene.
Effects Of The Banana Jacket On The Human Psyche
Anyone who has ever been known to wear the Banana Jacket has almost immediately succumbed to complete and utter insanity, characterized by lavish spending of money that the wearer does not possess, a propensity for crashing Senate hearings, and, amongst other things, walking on their hands for entire days at a time. While this insanity does not typically last longer than a few days, those who persistently wear the jacket, whether purposely or not, become absolutely and irreversibly insane. Tom's prototype design made him insane like a PCP addict. Later designs have merely made people more insane like Dr. Seuss. Experts agree that a PCP addict, while being a much more violent person, would be a much more normal and pleasant individual to be around, unless of course you happen to take lots of drugs. Most friends of Banana Jacket-wearers probably do. Most Banana Jacket-wearers themselves have absolutely no need or desire to.
A 1971 study at Johns Hopkins University hypothesized that researchers could disprove the Banana Jacket's dubious claims, by conducting a double blind study in which the experimental group wore the jacket for an entire week. The control group was given a sugar pill for every day of the same study. This experiment failed, however, as every member of both the experimental and control groups, as well as the researchers themselves, went insane overnight, returning to the laboratory the following day and attempting to use its wide array of test tubes and solvents to contact life on Venus, all the while performing a curiously well-organized traditional Bavarian folk dance.
The Banana Jacket In Popular Culture
During the drug-addled 1960's, the Banana Jacket was seen as a symbol of the counter-counter-sub-culture. The group of individuals declaring the Beatles to be little more than a group of government-controlled puppets, who also didn't quite care for the Mothers of Invention, typically resided within the bounds of this distinction. Being a form of legal hallucinogen, the jacket was also very useful for these misguided youth in their quest to attain higher planes of consciousness through drug usage, without the need to break the law. Unfortunately, wearing the then-significantly more potent jacket, most of these members of the outer fringes of society were known to unintentionally break several laws within the ebb of their own insanity. Many a blind pedestrian can still recall being stripped and bathed with rubber chickens and strawberry jam in the middle of a crowded intersection, as a result of this deadly combination of rebellion and total mental ecstasy.
As this group of users aged, so did the artistic ramifications of the Banana Jacket, and soon, psychedelic rock was born. While the story has repeatedly been denied by members of the band, the majority of the early music of Pink Floyd is believed to have been created while Syd Barrett was wearing the jacket, which he had found discarded in a public dumpster outside of the band's rehearsal area. Despite the persistent urgings of the rest of the group, Barrett refused to discontinue wearing the jacket. Tensions between the rest of the band and Barrett came to a peak when at a rehearsal in 1968, he presented the group with a demo tape of songs that he intended to have recorded as Floyd's second album. The tape, entitled Um...Om...Mm...Oh..., consisted of 72 identical tracks of 30 seconds in length, in which Barrett repeatedly strummed an out of tune Am chord, and an entirely A Capella version of the jazz standard In The Mood. Following a brief smoke-session, Barrett was immediately kicked out of the band, sparking his successful solo career making Gregorian Chant music.
World-renowned author Lionel Potter, while well-known for having written his only publication, One Hundred and Seventy Three Haikus About Stuff; Mostly Office Supplies, under the influence of copious amounts of the drug LSD, is also known to have owned a Banana Jacket during his formative years, which his father purchased for him at a yard sale while on a business trip to Japan. Once Lionel was introduced to LSD, he loaned his no-longer needed jacket to a friend, whom immediately proceeded to light himself on fire and jump out of an airplane, leaving a crater in the earth underneath him that is now better known as Disneyland. This is thought to be the Banana Jacket's greatest influence on society.
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