His first new piece is a deceptively simple piece of faked-up ephemera that has one absolute killer idea at it’s core. It is called “The Museum Of July 22nd, 1987″, and exists here.

This seems like as good a time as any to take a look at some of my favourite moments of Mr Lester’s previous run at Elephant Words. His first post came on 29/07/08, but his first appearance came a week earlier:

Dan started strong, with a story about movie pitches, based on this image, posted by Andrew Cheverton:

Photo by Princess Bala Vera

Already I know what is coming. He’s going to tell me that the killer leaves poems on each of his victims’ fridges, each one containing a hidden clue to his motives, or to the identity of his next victim. I’ve heard this idea twice today. In one pitch it was elaborate paintings that the killer left behind, in the other it was crossword puzzles.

The Pitch by Dan Lester

It was a decent opener, but wasn’t the format-buster that I would later associate with the man. It’s worth noting at this point that none of the pieces Dan posted were bad, but this post is about the ones that stick in my memory.

The first image that Dan posted was this one:

Photo by Or Hiltch

His piece the following Saturday remains one of my favourite all-time Elephants, but I can’t show you it – I can only send you to it: When I Grow Up by Dan Lester

By the time Dan got round to 80s cartoon fetish double-takes, based on this image:

Photo by David Baillie

…one kind of knew what to expect, but the sentimentality in this piece was a pleasing shocker:

“Come on, Ray,” I sighed. “I had my fill of live sex shows when I moved out here. These days I’d be happier with a Val Kilmer movie.”

“No, no, it is nothing like that,” he said, smiling. “Just go along.”

I looked him in the eye suspiciously. “It’s not midgets again, is it?”

The smile disappeared and he shook his head vehemently. “I tell you it is nothing like that!”

“What, then? Amputees? Animals? Auto-fellatio?” I was mentally debating whether to try and come up with another perverse act starting with A, or move on to B, when Ray slammed his hand down on the counter.

Feel The Magic by Dan Lester

“Closest” is a beautiful, uncomfortable story – unfortunately the image it’s based on is no longer available, but the piece is here.

Photo by ME!

I don’t know if metaphysical office-worker horror is an actual genre, but in “Leaving The Office” Dan nailed it totally, and in a Monday post to boot:

Reynolds woke up at around 8:30. He could hear the sound of dayshift people coming into the office, and the night workers preparing to leave. He got up from the floor, pulled on his shirt and tie, and discreetly made his way out of the storage room.

When he stepped out into the office the bright lights hurt his eyes. He squinted and looked down at his scuffed leather shoes, and the ‘intelligent simulation’ carpet. That was something that had confused him when he started working there. Surely a real carpet would have been cheaper?

Leaving The Office by Dan Lester

Dan posted this image:

Photo by Sean Azzopardi

… solely so he could write something hilariously ridiculous like this:

Laurence ‘Larry’ Fogelbinder, a top hardman, and quick with it too, stepped off the bus and into the street. It was pissing down harder than a Mexican housewife, but Larry didn’t care about the wetness, all he wanted was a pint. He’d just done thirty years of hard time for snuffing a southend snitch with a sawed off shotgun and he was ready to get his fingers dirty again. He looked around and saw a pub across the street, The Foxy Owl. It was the kind of place where men were real men. Larry knew what kind of man he was, the kind that wanted a beer, and fast. He crossed the street after looking both ways and waiting for a few cars to pass. Then stepped into the pub.

Inside there was nobody about, apart from the bartender, a squeaky nonce with a penchant for fishcakes, who looked up at Larry, grunted “we’re closed”, and went back to the magazine that he had been formerly reading.

Once Upon A Time In The East End by Dan Lester

Dan has a way of manipulating his pieces so he can come out with lines like this:

“What you need to do,” I said thoughtfully, “is manipulate your penis into an erection and then insert it into a vagina.” Mark looked at me as if I had just suggested that he euthanise his mother without waiting for her to become ill. Which annoyed me, as I felt that it was perfectly good advice, however sarcastically it was delivered.

A Word Of Advice by Dan Lester

I think I personally struggled with this image:

Flying Through The Grass by Budgie

Not Mr Lester. He combines economy with dark magic realism, and comes out with:

In America they called it eating your gun, and it was the most popular method of suicide for those in the law enforcement sector. For this reason it was also referred to as cop’s disease.

Not that he had ever been a cop. nor did he feel any sense of ownership towards the gun. It was merely an object he had acquired, a tool to be used once. It was a small thing, a .22 calibre, or so he had been told. He placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

On The Possibility Of Things Being Not What They Appear (or A Different Kind Of Firework) by Dan Lester

One final favourite, though going through these I’ve realised that you really need to go through and read the whole damn lot, okay?

So, anyway, Matthew Hartwell posted this oddly cute image:

The King Of Wishful Thinking by Matthew Hartwell

And Dan, the freaking genius, posted this piece, which works fine first time, then swims in your vision with subsequent readings:

Even though it was the biggest turtle in the world, capable of stomping entire cities and leaving nothing but rubble in it’s wake, when it stood in the giant’s hand it felt as small as everyone else.

A Matter Of Perspective by Dan Lester

That’s the whole story, and the whole post. Go read Dan Lester’s stuffs, yo! He is the very bitter end.

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Peculiar noises abound in the house, that J. claims not to hear… most unusual. He has been listening more and more to that dreadful eighties revival house music, in an effort to distract from his current situation, but it is difficult to imagine that even that din might drown out the screams that persist in our walls.

Anya has found more pieces of the body, though now I begin to suspect that these seperate parts are from more than one corpse. I continue to place them in the shed – they are too far gone even for my own tastes, and you know, Dear Journal, how I like to know where my food has been.

The shed, incidentally, seems a little… odd. Time spent in there seems to take on peculiar qualities – I oftentimes was finding that I would step in there for but a moment in the noon sun, and it would be past midnight when I exited. And the walls seem to sweat, despite the dessicated nature of most of the body parts I am storing in there.

To be frank, I don’t like to spend any longer than absolutely necessary in there.

The best story about Anya today is that she somehow managed to find her way into my cupboard… goodness knows how she managed to lock herself in there… I was trying to call her in from the garden for over ten minutes before I realised she was crying from inside the house.

She left the cupboard in an awful state, with mud and bodily fluids not her own covering the floor. Though oddly, when I was looking for her, I hadn’t seen any trail through the house to the room. I must have tidied it away in a frenzy before realising she was missing, quite despite myself.

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I’m a little worried about J. He claims that the other night, he got a call from his ex-wife S. At least, the incoming number on his phone was his ex-wife’s but all he could hear on the line were garbled, guttural, glottal voices. He seems fairly certain that she almost never spoke like that.

What’s slightly odder is that he hasn’t been able to pay his bill for a couple of months, so his phone is actually cut off at the moment.

A quick phone call to Orange to check the line assured him that there had been no incoming calls to his phone from any of the afterlife territories, so at the very least, we can be certain that S. is still alive, or at least, that whoever was using her phone is.

Anya continues to find pieces of the dead. I continue to store them in the shed. J’s preoccupation seems complete, though… when I asked him if he’d noticed how strange the shed was getting, he asked me “what shed?” and then proceeded to tell me that we didn’t have a shed. I didn’t argue; it’s impossible to reason with someone who’s heart is causing them so much distraction.

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V. worried about J. now. He disappears for hours at a time after work. Sometimes he says that he’s been in his bedroom, thinking, but I know that’s not true because when I’ve looked in, he’s not there. Other times, he goes out into the rain with no coat on… he says he’s just going for a walk, but it always happens just after another of those damn phonecalls from his other-dimensional ex-wife.

On Sunday, I was sitting on my bed, reading a book, and had been for nearly two hours, when I got a little peckish for some of my special “dried meats”; you know the ones, dear Journal, the ones that I prepare myself and keep wrapped in wax paper in the driest nook of my walk-in cupboard. The ones that taste of lost loves.

I got up from the bed, scratched myself in the most anti-social of manners, and opened the door to said cupboard. Imagine my shock on finding J. in there, looking perplexed and a little sad.

I admit to losing my composure a little. I shouted:
“What the hell are you doing in there, J? I thought you were out? How long have you been in there?”

All he could say was “I thought I heard her” and “The rain washes all the trails away”, with that sad look on his face. It was a pretty long way to go for a prank; that’s my stance on it, Dear Journal. He must have stood there for hours, just to give me a fright. The least he could have done was look pleased with himself. I shushed him out of the wardrobe, I couldn’t have him dripping all over my clean clothes, and got him a towel… I don’t care if he does have a strange sense of humour, I still care about him catching a chill… and sent him on his way to his room.

Do you know, he’s so embarassed about that practical joke that he won’t even acknowledge it? He still claims, all these days later, that he had followed S’s trail to a door in a hidden wooded part of The Common, and the next thing he knew, I was ushering him out of my room. Pride, dear Journal, makes idiots of us all.

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It was my turn to post today, and I did, but only just, ten or so minutes ago.

My piece is called “The Imaginary”:

CAPTION:
THE FOLLOWING PREVIEW HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR
ALL AUDIENCES

[Music: "Hoppipolla" by Sigur Ros]

[Studio Titlecards]

[CUT TO: Tracking shot of leafy suburb, colour saturated to look like the 80s.]

[The same suburb - we're now closer in on one garden. Two young boys, around ten years old, are running around, chasing each other.]

NARRATOR (V.O.):
When Nathan Ray was a boy, he had the best friend in the world…

[Close on the boys. One is pale skinned, blond and scrawny, stripped to the waist, the other darker, with Oriental features - his outfit more traditional or rustic, a small knife attached by thong to his waist. One catches the other, and they wrestle.]

[Close up on the boys faces, as they laugh and jostle.]

[CUT TO: The boys, a couple years older, walking through the darkened woods, sunlight shafting through the trees.]

NATHAN (O.S.):
It isn’t fair. How come you don’t get to go to school? I’ll miss you.

PAZU (O.S.):
I’ll still be here.

[Long shot of the woods, the sky darkening.]

PAZU (V.O.):
I’ll always be here.

I should say now, on the record, that I think what I’ve achieved this time is a fine validation of the hard and excellent work that the decent movie or TV trailer makers do, because basically, I make it look as hard as anything.

There’s a thread of deliberate parody in the piece, along with what I think is a really nice story, but I think they may get overwhelmed with the clunkiness and uncertainty of my dabbling with the format, which I tend to believe never gets scripted out normally anyway – falling instead to the skills of really quite talented editors instead.

Douglas and Xander do this stuff much better than I do, is what I’m saying.

But all that aside, it may divert you for a few minutes! I’d like to know what you think. You can read the whole piece here: http://elephantwords.co.uk/2008/07/15/the-imaginary/

Please comment either here, there, or in the forum thread attached to the piece.

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09/06/08 – Meat-Free

03/06/08 – Rudy Of The Lost Heart

28/05/08 – The Other One

22/05/08 – WTF Mortality

16/05/08 – Heaven And Earth

10/05/08 – Gray’s Anatomy

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It’s inspired by this picture by Mr David Baillie:

… and Lego.

It’s called Meat-Free, and it goes a little something like this:

“… Sometimes all it takes is just being too – maybe dumb, maybe naive – to get something done. Because if it doesn’t occur to you that an idea is something that no-one has ever made happen before, you don’t really have the chance to consider failure…”

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It is based on this image by David Baillie:

And is a heartwarming piece of blank verse called “What We Found When We Cleared The House”

One bedside cabinet
On the unmoved side of the bed
Contains enough sex toys,
And in so many styles and fashions,
That it makes you weep openly.

It all sounds a little like that.

You should give it a go… you’ll like it, or your money back.

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Both Andy and Rol were founding contributors to Elephant Words, and it’s a big deal that one of them is leaving… and that one of them left before, but is back for more.

Andy’s Elephants can almost all be defined by a desire to experiment, and a need to always provide as solid a piece as possible. Rol’s, by a pitch perfect sardonic sense of humour and the ability to almost always make you commit that rarest of acts, the Laugh Out Loud.

For your reading pleasure, here are a few of my favourite pieces by the two authors so far:

Andy Cheverton:
The Scare Crows of Mars -

But Donny and me, we made it onto the surface of Mars.  The spaceship was dented because Sam was supposed to help.  We’re the first men on Mars.  That means it belongs to us now.

The Longshanks Bill Quartet -

Longshanks Bill Reaches The End Of The World
Longshanks Bill And The Great Space Elevator
Longshanks Bill Hits The Ground In The Sky
Longshanks Bill Falls Up To His Waist In Love

The Last Snow Of Summer -

If they allowed illegally cute women to be bag ladies, Cookie would be their queen.

On Montague Road -

There was a man dwelt by a churchyard.

Rol Hirst:
Keep Out Of Lake -

This is what I’m thinking as I stand outside her room, reading that old tin sign she’s got pinned on the door, ‘Keep Out Of Lake’, wondering if that’s like ‘Do Not Disturb’ where she comes from, wondering what I’m even doing here tonight.

They Were Robots All Along… -

“And the twist was – they were robots all along.”

On The Air -

Jesse reads the report like he’s supposed to, like he has every night for twenty-eight years, then he taps the screen that fires off Celine Dion on the playout system and stares out at the stars. Celine Dion! Has it really come to this?

I Can Read You Like A Book -

Of course you would. You’re no different to me. Unless you’re the sort who’d do it, but wouldn’t ever admit to it. In which case: at least I’m honest.

It’s Five O’Clock Nowhere -

Sometimes it felt like even the second hand was fighting a losing battle.

Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only The Piano Player -

They called it The Dangerous Interval, Diabolus In Musica – The Devil In Music.

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Everyone did a nice job. Mine went last. In a quite exciting twist, it has been posted at 50 Years From Now almost simultaneously! I am awesome! (As is Monk at that site, of course.)

It is called “The Boulevard Of Broken Glass”. As an Elephant, it’s here, as a slice of the England of 50 Years From Now, here. Here’s a taste:

In some parts of town, the ground crunches underfoot – accumulated years of discarded glass, broken and ground down, coat the concrete pavements. The city gave up on maintaining these streets. Crossing the imaginary boundary from nTown to nHigh, Siân stepped onto one of these glittering pathways. Like a native, she took it in her stride.

I haven’t read any of the posts this week yet… The image is scaring the hell out of me with the lack of ideas I am having based on it, and I don’t want to confuse myself with the other writers’ smart thinkin’.

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