Photo: The Persistence of Futility. Wanker: “Derivative, yes, but a masterpiece of derivation. Of course, Dali’s most famous painting is ,em>The Persistence of Memory, with its alarming melted clocks — if you’ll pardon the pun. McCoy counts on the viewer’s knowledge of that image when he references its title here, in what is clearly a variation on Dali’s terrifying religious work The Temptation of Saint Anthony. Perhaps we are meant to think of those clocks as signifying the runny nature of time, the way it slips through our fingers and runs away into a future we will not be around to witness. Sort of the way that time is running out for McCoy himself as coach of the Chargers. And why is time running away? See this painting’s title. Considering the theme. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect replacement for the desert saint who ordinarily occupies the lower right corner than rookie punter Drew Kaser, whose 17-yard(!) punt with two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and the Chargers ahead 27-20 helped to set up the Chiefs touchdown that sent the game into overtime. And once McCoy has made that replacement, it naturally follows that he should replace the nude woman atop the lead elephant with the Lombardi Trophy — a fever dream of hot desire that is forever beckoning the team, but which remains forever out of reach. But it is also notable that McCoy does not alter Dali's rearing horse by, say, putting a Native American warrior astride it into order to make reference to Kansas City’s team name. Rather, he leaves it as it is because, despite this heartbreaking opening loss, the chief obstacle — if you’ll pardon the pun again — to a Charger Super Bowl trophy remains the Denver Broncos. He also leaves the second elephant’s spire intact — a symbol, no doubt, of a television broadcast tower: the source of football’s popularity, and therefore its power. But he does change the angel atop the third elephant’s golden whorehouse. An angel is a symbol of the divine, but the god here is of course money, and the whorehouse is the proposed new stadium. Who is the whore? It’s hard to say, mainly because the Chargers are paying my fee for this commentary."