The great escape

When I hear the words escape plan, like everyone else in advertising I think it's referring to a way out of the business. A gentle transition into another career, preferably one that isn't ranked below car salesman and personal injury lawyers.

With all the rockin' and rollin' that's been going on in places like the Philippines and Mexico City, I know it also applies to earthquakes.

But the more jokes I hear about the zombie apocalypse, the more I think maybe it's no joke at all and that's what's really coming. They just want you think it's a joke. And that's what I need an escape plan for.

Hear me out.

I don't think the dead will rise and start slow-chasing down a brain buffet. At least not at first. What I think is they've already ingratiated themselves, hiding in plain sight among us. If you've ever worked in an agency, people feeding on the brains of others for survival is nothing new to you.

And while it may not result in the zombie gore portrayed in movies, comics and television, I promise you more often than not it's just as messy and no less brutal.

I believe the theory of Occam's Razor - the simplest solution being the right one - applies here.

Walk faster.

At least this'll work against the slow-walking, brain-eating zombies. However, their more subtle agency brethren have already mastered the World War Z art of the fast walk, usually while carrying a Powerpoint deck or an iPad so as to look important - and alive.

You'll have to be more resourceful planning your getaway from them. If they trap you in a meeting, you're a goner.

One of the most valuable tools in the fight against zombies is a quality shovel. Always good for clobbering them in the head and buying yourself some time.

Of course if you work in an agency, you already know it comes in pretty handy there too.

Guilty pleasures Part 4: Carrie

I know we're all thinking it, so I'm just going to man up and come right out and say it.

Few things are more fun than watching a girl covered in pigs blood take out after the mean girl and give her what she deserves. See, it's better when you talk about it.

Number four in my Guilty Pleasures series is the remake of the 1976 film Carrie. The original starred, and made a star of, Sissy Spacek. This new one stars Chloe Grace Moretz as the prom queen not to be messed with.

A quick recap: Carrie is the daughter of a religious fanatic who sees sin everywhere and in everything. As a result, she shelters Carrie from the world around her, which apparently includes telling her that her Aunt Flo will be arriving when she hits a certain age.

When that time of the month finally arrives for Carrie, it comes in the girls shower room at the school gym. And it terrifies her.

Apparently the only kind of girls that attend her high school are mean girls, because they throw tampons and pads at her then videotape her on the shower floor in her bloody towel and post it online.

Thus begins the theme of blood that courses throughout the film.

The leader of the mean girl pack is a girl named Chris, and if you know anything about Carrie's powers of telekinesis, you know it's not going to end well for Chris.

Julianne Moore as her mom doesn't pack the authentic craziness of Piper Laurie in the original, but she's fine and manages to color all the fanatic numbers.

But because we know what's coming at the end, basically the film is ninety minutes of waiting for the pigs blood to be poured on Carrie and her date at the prom, and Carrie to exact her revenge on everyone who did it. And laughed at her. And tried to be nice to her (say goodbye to the sympathetic swim coach).

Special effects are considerably better as you'd expect, and Moretz gives a good creepy-eyed performance as she's crushing bad boys in the accordion bleachers and causing cars to stop, throwing bad girl Chris' face through the windshield in slow motion.

I know I'm not supposed to like it, but that's why it's a guilty pleasure. Like I said in part 1 of the series, which was about the Final Destination films, there's nothing more entertaining than watching snotty, teenage stereotypes behave badly and then get what's coming to them.

In fact, in this movie, it was bloody good fun.