IF A PICTURE’S WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS, THIS IS PRICELESS

Who says the art of purple prose has faded?

Not Vanity Fair. Waxing poetic for body buddies (“Fated to Be Mated”) Sly Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen, its November cover and inside photo-fashion spread sings of a god (“Adonis in hot wax”) and goddess (“She is Venus in fur”) who “darken the sky with their volcanic kisses.”

She’s the “amazon worthy of his benchpress.” He’s “America armored and oiled. . . . When their bodies converge, it makes for a virile thunder. . . .”

An awed Outtakes put in a call to the magazine’s New York offices where art director Charles Churchward recalled a Sunday in August when Sly and Brig posed at a beach club on Long Beach Island (off Long Island). “It must have gone on for about seven hours. We were surprised at how hard Sly worked for us--he really kept the mood upbeat.” As they’re cavorting around the beach, he’s in swim suit, muscles and gold jewelry and she’s in a bathing suit, jewels and furs.

Vanity Fair didn’t ask Sly to show up with the fashionably unshaven look. “That’s just the way he came--it really adds to the photos, don’t you think?”

Nor, said Churchward, did the magazine let the couple know what kind of copy was forthcoming. “We honestly didn’t know what we’d write until we saw the photos. But we were looking for an angle--a fresh way of approaching Stallone.”

Mortals can have a peek at the grandstanding on the 29th, when the issue hits the newsstands.