Today’s Zippy strip (here) is about a diner called the Self-Aware Diner:
(#1) This appears to be about the idea of a self-aware diner, rather than about any specific diner
We get, from the 50s: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, tailfins, the 50s slang daddio. Then, from a later era (but very much self-aware), Fonzie. From Wikipedia:
Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, better known as “Fonzie” or “The Fonz”, is a fictional character played by Henry Winkler in the American sitcom Happy Days (1974–1984).
Note dinerosity, a characteristic Zippy-ism. From my 11/10/09 Language Log posting Zippyosity:
Once again, Zippy plays with English morphology. This time it’s –ity day in Dingburg: … We get happyosity, based on happy, extended by the accented variant of unaccented –ous; and rapturosity, either similarly derived (from rapture) or based directly on rapturous
And a note on the slang daddio. From GDoS:
noun daddy-o (also daddio, dadio) (the jazz-based black use transferred, as did many such terms, to white beatniks in the 1950s … modern use is usu. ironic) [jazz use in c. 1935 Cab Calloway lyrics; then William Burroughs and West Side Story in the 1950s]
The notion of a self-aware diner is not a new one in Zippy’s world. Specifically, in this earlier strip set in a real diner:
(#2) A Zippy set in a diner (with Elvis, Marilyn, and James Dean in guest roles). But which diner?
In a comment, Larry Schourup noted that it seems to be the Village Diner of Millerton, NY.
[Addendum, from 12/10/20:
The posting in #2 above is my 5/29/14 posting “Self-awareness and a milestone”
Then in my 5/9/20 posting “The Book of Norman”, I note that
As it happens, these same characters have struck these same poses in this very diner before, but they had different things to say to one another.
This time it’s word play on the Book of Mormon, the name of the sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement — with artist Norman Rockwell and singer Ethel Merman woven into the joke.]