Right, there's no hydrogen, helium, beryllium, etc., in a banana as far as I know. I think your banana star would start to collapse right away and about the time it was the size of the Earth, you'd see Carbon, first, then Nitrogen and Oxygen start to fuse.
As far as the light speed thing, c only represents the speed of light in a vacuum, not in other materials. So there's no contradiction if you push some mass past 38mph, the speed of light in whatever material we're talking about. Is that what you were asking?
As ctdonath2 pointed out (I hope I'm paraphrasing correctly) nothing is really faster than the speed of light if you measure it against anything else in the same medium. It's only when you manipulate the medium of one test subject, in this case the light, that you can achieve this phenomenon. Now if I recall my lectures from nuclear power school correctly there is a theory about anti matter particles that travel faster than the speed of light, and therefore backwards in time. Of course you also have to ask questions like what particles have actual mass and which ones don't? Einstein theorized that an objects mass approaches the infinite as its speed approaches light speed (The "C" speed, not the retarded one).Then again, Einstein fought against quantum mechanics until his dying day. He was wrong about that one. He could be wrong about the mass / speed relationship at ludicrous speed.
Okay. That's enough, I'm going to have to go find a Mehgan McCain thread to lurk on now.