THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF PARKING
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF PARKING
By Gaspard
A gothic stained-glass window, one arch, three lobes, rendered with total ecclesiastical seriousness. Saint of Two Spaces, straddling the line, arms in glory. Saint of Just a Minute, blocking a driveway, hazards glowing like votive candles, while someone smaller and haloless sits trapped behind the wheel in the margin. Saint of No Placard, gliding into the disabled space, sunbeams behind, while a second small figure walks the lot on foot, row by row, finding nothing. A donor plaque at the bottom, in proper gothic lettering: GIVEN IN MEMORY OF A SPOT NEVER FOUND.
No punchline panel. No wink. The window holds the pose the whole way through — haloes, gold ground, Latin banderoles — and never once lets on that the sin being canonized is someone straddling two spaces in a grocery store lot. The gap between the size of the thing and the weight of the treatment is the entire joke, and it never cracks.
The studio rolled it three ways at once and kept all three: stained glass, an x-ray radiograph, and torn paper collage. The x-ray under the glass reads like a skeleton under a saint's robe — unrequested, and better for it.
Putain, on a tous fait ça. On se gare comme des porcs et on prie pour ne pas se faire gauler. Voilà le vitrail qu'on mérite.
— Gaspard