Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro plunges us into a double play on words, plus a visual parody — offered on a platter — as well:
(#1) To understand the cartoon, you need to know about kosher delis (deli, short for delicatessen), and pastrami as a prominent offering in them; and about Salvador Dalí and his surrealist painting The Persistence of Memory (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
The egregious pun kosher deli > kosher Dalí in combination with a play on the title of a Dalí painting Persistence of Memory > Persistence of Pastrami (with a visual parody on the painting itself, offered on a platter by the waiter; hence, Wayno’s title, “Culinary Surrealism”).
Dalí’s name is most commonly Englished as /ˈdali/, like Dolly, and that makes the deli > Dalí pun particularly close ( /ɛ/ > /a/, otherwise perfect), but sometimes maintains the Spanish / Catalan iambic accentuation as /daˈli/, in which case the imperfect pun is more distant.
On the artist, from Wikipedia:
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí was a Spanish [Catalonian] surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
Not to mention his personal flamboyance and showmanship.
The artist in a photograph that probably served as the model for the Dalí character in the cartoon:
(#2) Dali’s Mustache (photo by Philippe Halsman)
The painting:
(#3) Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory (1931)
The painting has been much parodied. As in #1 above and in my 9/26/22 posting “The news for wieners”:
(#4) From cartoonist Gary Larson’s 1990 book Wiener Dog Art: the drawing The Persistence of Wiener Dogs, a parody of / burlesque of / riff on / homage to the Dalí
January 30, 2023 at 9:33 am |
Customers should see pastrami, coming through the rye.
The Allan Sherman original, in full:
January 30, 2023 at 10:49 am |
Rod Williams on Facebook today, reporting that he and Ted Bush:
— had lunch last week in B44, a Catalan restaurant on Belden Alley in San Francisco. On a wall alongside, they’ve painted this mural: