Brad Pitt’s Legacy: Airplane Seat Belts

Today is a day of great discovery, comparable to Darwin’s Galapagos finches and Magellan’s global trek across the globe.

   Today, I learned, via Brad Pitt’s new flick World War Z, the intended purpose of airplane seat belts.

   I’d like to preface this post with a big thank you to Mr. Pitt for helping me understand this previously unsolved mystery and giving meaning to an aspect of my life that prior to today had none.

   Just so you lovely Internet folk know, the “Z” in the title stands for "zombies" even though everybody is infected with what is essentially rabies, as opposed to Undead Syndrome. For accuracy’s sake, it should be entitled World War R, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue as sweetly, now does it? 

   Pitt, however, does roll off the tongue very sweetly, even with his shirt on for the duration of the film.

   Jeez, Brad, do you even age at all?

   Okay. Here’s the scene:

   Hint: It helps to picture yourself as Brad Pitt. Just trust me.

   You are aboard the last flight out of a city being overrun by rabid, rabies-infected undead. You’re sitting in the front of the plane when a scream from the back echoes through the thick blue curtains that separates business class from economy seating. You and your companion, a badass female Israeli soldier, exchange panicked glances before the infection starts to spread to everybody aboard the flight.

   It’s very Snakes on a Plane.

   You, being the only one who remains calm – naturally – take the hand grenade from your Israeli companion and blow up the back half of the aircraft, creating a hole the size of a mini van that sucks all of the undead out into the air, where they fall to their deaths … meaning they become more dead than they already are.

   What a perplexing thought. Do the undead die? Can you take the life from something that is lifeless? How to you define something that is neither dead nor alive.

   I digress.

   Anyway, you manage to survive the grenade explosion and fight against the pull of this gaping monstrosity in order to buckle yourself and your companion into one of the few remaining seats while the plane plummets toward the earth.

   The plane crashes, there’s an explosion (because these things are always accompanied by an explosion), and you pass out.

   You awaken, still in your seat, suspended in the air with a large piece of shrapnel cutting transversely through your abdomen. However, you are not dead. Your Israeli companion is not dead. And the only other zombie-slash-rabies-infected individual who happened to be fastened into a seat belt is not dead…. Not more dead than before, anyway.

   The lesson is this: if the world is overrun by zombies, you manage to get onto a plane to escape the madness, the plane is overrun by zombies, and you have a hand grenade readily available, make sure you can securely fasten your seat belt low and tight across your lap so that you can survive and save the human race.

Unfortunately, I did not take this photo. It was posted by the UK's The Telegraph and can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/9717405/Brad-Pitt-in-plane-crash-film-scene.html
The Telegraph credits the photo to Splash News.  

   Also, congratulations on being Brad Pitt because that is an accomplishment in itself.

XOXO,

Safe Travels!

Check out the trailer here. It's pretty nifty.