The Young and the Connected is an online soap opera spoof centered around the lives of vapid but socially connected and well-proportioned young folks.  Sponsored by LG and created Rainy Kelly Campbell UK, the project was mysteriously pulled before it’s closure. But who cares? While neither I nor you have the interest in sorting through the webisodes, it won’t hurt to browse through these funny idents.

Photoshop wizardry that  makes bagels look absolutely scrumptious in these ads by Squid Ink USA.

And I don’t even like bagels, which clearly are the high maintenance cousins of donuts. You gotta love the simplicity of donuts. With bagels, you’ve gotta have a knife around to cut ‘em in half, then you’ve gotta have some cream cheese available to spread around, then you have to chew a billion times just so they’re soft enough to go down the pipes, then you have to slap yourself for not buying donuts which would’ve saved yourself all the trouble. Really, eating bagels is like self-flagellation compared to eating donuts. They’re like celery… you’d die of starvation if you were stuck on an island with them. Boy, this is going off on a tangent. Yeah… bagels are lame. From Ads of the World.

A true viral, millions of  folks have already seen the Levi’s-sponsored ‘Walk Across America’ stop-motion video. The video took 14 days and 2,770 still shots from a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. To make up for being late to the game, I give you the Making Of as a bonus.

From The Daily Mail. PS: The video’s’ soundtrack is “Home” by the  incredible Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, who clocked in at #2 on my favorite albums of 2009.

Hot off the frickin’ press: The Zack Snyder directed film (Watchmen, 300) that made waves at Comic-Con. Described as “Alice in Wonderland with machine guns,” do you really need any more reason to buy a ticket?

From EW.

Cyriak Harris returns with more of his twisted brand of dementia. I love his stuff so much, I worry what that says about me. From Motionographer.

See more great Cyriak work.

Rhett & Link are back in the saddle, using Dentyne Pure to fund a video rap battle.

Sorry Canal+, but Inception’s hallway fight scene (which required a 500-person crew and took three weeks to shoot) blows away your sad little attempt at set-tilting. C’mon media planners…  you should’ve anticipated Christopher Nolan’s greatness.

Fiat joins forces with Diesel to launch the limited edition Fiat 500. The campaign encourages folks to “disconnect” from their online social lives and experience social media behaviors out there in the real world. As evidenced by the sex and potty humor, this spinoff campaign fits right in with Diesel’s current Be Stupid campaign. Which is kind of stupid.

Sent by Kevin Fuller.

ReadWriteWeb has the scoop on how the Old Spice response videos were made; in other words, how Wieden + Kennedy managed to own the Internet for two days. The summary? Real-time surfing for comments, writing, taping, editing and uploading in order to average about seven minutes per video… and a very long couple of days for the W + K creative team and Isaiah Mustafa.

From t-minus.

Here are other recaps/results from the campaign:

• The Old Spice Social Media Campaign by the Numbers (Mashable)
• We Are Social’s Old Spice Analysis (We Are Social)
• The Old Spice Campaign Generated 35 Million Views in Seven Days (ClickZ)