WRINKLE ON THIS

Another cross-post from Act Your Old Age. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And against the ravages of time.

DESTRUCTION AS ART

Who knew fire could be so cool? Click here to watch the vid in HD.

A FILM LIKE NO OTHER

The latest add to the CHATTER Wish List: Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, the closest thing to an acid trip without gnawing on blotter paper. No tinny aftertaste, and Helen Mirren is sensual.

We remember seeing it during a trip to D.C. and wishing, in vain, for the film to hit Springfield. Time to track down a DVD and add it to the library.

DESTROYED, NOT DEFEATED

Forty-seven years Wednesday since Ernest Hemingway went pop in search of his lost generation. Proof that all men do die equally, and that electroconvulsive therapy is probably not a good thing. There is also the truth that a double-barreled shotgun to the face is an effective way to check out, though it may leave the well-lighted room a little less than clean.

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them," the man once said. We aim to take that advice.

NORMAN MAILER, 84

"The Executioner's Song" may be greater than Capote's "In Cold Blood." It's certainly just as great.

Reuters reports:

In more than 40 books and a torrent of essays, Mailer provoked and enraged readers with his strident views on U.S. political life and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Mailer's first book, "The Naked and the Dead," is considered one of the finest novels about World War Two and made him a celebrity at age 25 when published in 1948.

Mailer's works were often filled with violence, sexual obsession and views that angered feminists. He later reconsidered many of his old positions but never surrendered his right to speak his mind.

The writer knew his voice and used it.

TOO THIN IS IN

Click this link to the UK Times and tell us -- is this beauty?

The poster girl is Isabelle Caro, a French actress. She is 27. She weighs 68 pounds after 15 years with anorexia.

New billboards in Italy show her naked. They are supposed to highlight the hell of anorexia. But they're also promoting a fashion label.

As the UK Times reports:

Her emaciated body, framed by the controversial photographer Oliviero Toscani in a campaign to coincide with Milan Fashion Week, appears alongside the slogan “No Anorexia” and the brand name Nolita, a label intended for young women.

Fashionistas hailed the poster campaign as a turning point but health experts were outraged and voiced fears that teenage girls might be encouraged to “compete for extreme thinness” after seeing the images.

“I’ve hidden myself and covered myself for too long. Now I want to show myself fearlessly, even though I know my body arouses repugnance,” Caro told the Italian edition of Vanity Fair. She said that her own troubled childhood had provoked her illness, even if some in the fashion world conceded that stereotypes promoted by the industry itself were to blame.

Nolita, an Italian clothing company, said the billboards are supposed “to use the naked body to show everyone the reality of this illness, caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion." That, and to push the brand.