Banana Duct-Taped To Wall Sells For $6.2M [Weird News & Oddities] – Patch

November 27, 2024 ndowd

A story that unfolded earlier this month at the tony Sotheby’s auction house in New York City may inspire creatives dreaming of a seven-figure sale to grab a roll of duct tape and a piece of fruit. Bananas are now famously taken after one affixed to the wall with the silvery gray do-it-all tape sold for $6.2 million, but a binful of produce awaits their genius spark.

For the $6.2 million he spent to acquire this single banana, Justin Sun, founder of cryptocurrency platform TRON, could have bought about 31 million of them. Sun’s purchase includes more than a single, perishable banana. Along with it, he purchased a certificate of authority to duct tape a banana to the wall anytime he wants and call it “Comedian.”
To understand the a-peel, slip back in time to five years ago. Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian” was a baffling phenomenon when it debuted in 2019 at Art Basel Miami Beach. Was it a joke? Or a cheeky commentary on art collectors who will buy anything if it has an artist’s name behind it, even a piece that will attract hordes of tiny fruit flies the longer it hangs on the wall? Another artist ate it before that could happen.
Subsequent editions of the conceptual art have sold for between $120,000 and $150,000, according to gallery owners.
Sun said the piece “represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community.” He said he planned to eat it “as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture,” Sun said.
Remember that classic scene from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” when the squirrel attacked Clark Griswold and his family after he heard a squeaking sound in the Christmas tree?
That kind of stuff can happen in real life.
Police in Hinsdale, Illinois, got a call recently from a man who said his wife was “home alone and a squirrel got into the house and is in the Christmas tree.”
One officer wanted in on it.
“Can you put me on the squirrel call? I’ve got to see this,” he said, according to a police scanner recording posted on Facebook.
The officer later reported the squirrel was out of the house. “All good,” he said. But how? Was a yuppie neighbor named Margo at the door ready to receive the squirrel? No word on that.
The so-called “doomsday” fish, regarded in Japanese legend as a harbinger of earthquakes and other natural disasters, washed ashore in SoCal for the third time this year earlier this month.

The sight of this long, flat, tapering fish, whose scale-less body is covered with reflective silver, beached on the rocky shore was not pretty. But for PhD candidate Alison Laferriere, who discovered the creature, and other Scripps Oceanography scientists who discovered the creature, it provides a rare opportunity to dive deeper into what’s behind the series of wash-ups. The latest fish marks only the 22nd-recorded oarfish to have washed up in California since 1901.
“It may have to do with changes in ocean conditions and increased numbers of oarfish off our coast. Many researchers have suggested this as to why deep-water fish strand on beaches,” said Ben Frable, who manages the Scripps Oceanography Marine Vertebrate Collection. “Sometimes it may be linked to broader shifts such as the El Niño and La Niña cycle, but this is not always the case. There was a weak El Niño earlier this year. This wash-up coincided with the recent red tide and Santa Ana winds last week, but many variables could lead to these strandings.”
A South Jersey delivery driver recently sent an effort to sneak a bag of weed into a food order up in smoke.
The pungent odor was a dead giveaway that the burrito meal contained more than rice, beans and meat wrapped in a tortilla. The driver alerted police, who found about an ounce of pot wrapped in a burrito shape. The order also included a box of soup and a bottle of water.
Police are looking into the circumstances of the delivery and how the pot came to be in the food bag. People over 21 can legally purchase recreational cannabis at dispensaries in New Jersey.
Rest easy, each of the more than two dozen snakes that slithered to freedom after a rear-end collision on a North Carolina highway has been rounded up.
In addition to 28 snakes, including a venomous viper, two tortoises, five bearded dragons, two dogs and one cat were in the camper hit from behind by a box truck on a North Carolina highway. The camper was en route to a reptile show in Pennsylvania when the trash occurred just before midnight Tuesday.
Authorities believe the driver of the box truck, who was taken to a Raleigh, North Carolina, hospital for treatment of serious injuries, fell asleep while driving.
A woman in Inland Empire, California, recently spent the night and part of the next day trapped about 20 feet below ground after falling into a manhole at an abandoned mall. A passerby reported hearing her screams for help and called 911.
It took 20 firefighters about two hours to coordinate the technical “high angle” rescue and lift the woman from the precarious spot.
She was hospitalized after suffering numerous broken bones from the experience, but was “awake and talking with rescuers,” according to the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
Macy’s delayed its third-quarter earnings report after an independent investigation and forensics analysis discovered a single employee intentionally hid up to $154 million of expenses over several years
The employee, who no longer has a job with Macy’s, was responsible for small package delivery expense accounting. During the same time — from the fourth quarter of 2021 through the fiscal quarter ended Nov. 2 — Macy’s recognized about $4.36 billion of delivery expenses.
A rafter of nearly five dozen turkeys rescued from squatters at an abandoned building in Riverside County, California, won’t be on anyone’s Thanksgiving table, even though they’ve fattened up considerably in the last few months.
Most of the turkeys were molting and rail-thin in August when Howie Berkowitz took them under his wing at The Duck Sanctuary, a nonprofit in Anza. The turkeys have the freedom to roam the fenced sanctuary grounds and have a warm coop for the day.
They get plenty of food, and respond when they’re called, according to Berkowitz, who is known locally as the “duck whisperer.”