The incident began when the little deer "ran between people" and leaped into the lion pit, then was attacked and toyed with by a pair of bloodthirsty beasts for "as much as 20 minutes." Then, as is depicted in the below video, the little deer broke free! And escaped to the relative safety of a body of water. The crowd shrieked, gasped, cheered, and caught it all on video. When zoo personnel finally broke up the crowd to rescue the nimble survivor, the harrowing tale reached its happy ending...

OR SO IT SEEMED.

For there, in The Washington Post's Monday Metro section, was the tale's true, tragic conclusion:

Alerted, zoo personnel sent visitors away and brought the lions indoors. With the enclosure empty, the deer left the moat on its own. It was anesthetized and taken for evaluation by specialists. ...

Baker-Masson said the examination indicated that in addition to head and neck scratches, the deer had a serious wound on its belly. ...

They found it "pretty evident" that the deer "would not survive," and it was euthanized, Baker-Masson said.

And thus concludes the sad story of the Deer That Almost Lived, the saddest viral video ever uploaded to the internet, in retrospect. Even sadder than Bambi's mom and the Lion King's dad, because this one is real, and must have caused at least one 5-year-old to wet his pants out of terror that day at the zoo.

Eric Spiegelman put together a great time-lapse video of the fires, set to Grizzly Bear's— and really, what's with all the Grizz these days?—"All We Ask." He also did one of the fires at night. Leave it to Angelinos to make great art out of disaster. Most New Yorkers are fine until something bad happens, after which they mostly curl into the fetal position and go think smart deep thoughts about it for $300 an hour. Send me your citizen's reports and photos, or throw them in the comments. Godspeed these fires away, and please keep the Kogi Truck safe.

Time Lapse Test: Station Fire from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

Arguably the best part of this video, written and directed by Todd Bieber at UCB, has to be when the guy playing Dov has one of his model's posing in an awkward position and he leans in to whisper, "I want you know that you can trust me." It's funny because that very line has probably come out of Charney's mouth in the same situation hundreds of times.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

via YouTube

Judson Laipply's pop-choreography clip "Evolution of Dance" hasn't made a dime from his stardom. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, no one in the crowd could place him. His nine-figure viewcount has proven to be nothing more than the transitory flitter of eyeballs.

So he's been pursuing a career as an inspirational speaker, while Avril Lavigne dethroned him as YouTube's top attraction. A new version of "Evolution of Dance" is coming Monday, backed by awkwardly named self-help site PeopleJam. Laipply hopes to make a small amount of money after paying $80,000 for the music rights, he tells the Wall Street Journal

A depressing tale for anyone who sees YouTube as a vehicle for fame and fortune. If a genuine talent like Laipply, at the top of the charts, can't break through to the mainstream, what hope is there for the ability-free masses taking their turns in front of the webcam?

One Man Band

Numa Numa

Dramatic Gopher

How the Dramatic Prairie Dog was Born

Afro Ninja

Diet coke and Mentos experiment

GI Joe Gay

Guiness World Record for most T-Shirts worn at one time.

Chris Crocker - LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

Star Wars Kid

Crank That Soldier Boy

Evolution of Dance

"Chocolate Rain" Original Song by Tay Zonday

K-Fed Popozao

Daft Hands - Technologic

Daft Bodies - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Shoes the Full Version

Charlie The Unicorn

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!!

Will it Blend

Dear god, it's — I mean at least the Ray-Ban video was pretty entertaining, the jeans jumping video a bit cool since it might be real. But "the perfect pour"? Is pouring beer from a height even impressive? I'm pretty sure any of my friends could practice for a few days and pour beer off a roof. Plus I instantly hate these guys for crashing that fictional party, and I'm pretty sure the cameraman does not know what "coup de grace" means.

In what I hope is not an authorized endorsement, sketch comedy group Wicked Awesome Films made a parody. The skit is wretched but I do admire the two-day turnaround:

So honestly, why is this the only format I've seen a in a YouTube stealth ad? Are the others just subtle enough that no one's exposed them?

After the first guy jumped into his jeans, I realized what the whole video would be: a shot-for-shot rehash of a viral ad for Ray-Ban. The two ads are so similar that the creators (unless they're phenomenally short-sighted) clearly wanted to be discovered. First, let's look at the two ads:

Levi's, 5 May 2008: Guys do backflips, swinging jumps, and other stunts and land in their pants.

Ray-Ban, 6 May 2007: A guy catches sunglasses on his face in increasingly impossible maneuvers: Off a house, off a bridge, in a moving car.

Similarities
The stories are the same: A simple trick to establish what we're watching. Then increasingly elaborate iterations, culminating in a stunt so dramatic that it requires a slow-motion replay.

The music is the same: A cool innocuous background beat loosely timed to the action.

The editing is the same: Quick pacing. Slick with dramatic angles, but calculatedly rugged with lingering shots on the guys congratulating each other.

The packaging is the same: Ray-Ban's ad was posted by "neverhidefilms," a YouTube user with no previous videos. The new Levi's ad comes from "unbuttonedfilms," another first-time user. The new ad is one day shy of coming a year after the old ad. The titles are analagous: "Guy catches glasses with face" versus "Guys backflip into jeans." No product is mentioned.

Background
While Ray-Ban's ad was launched anonymously, the creative team behind it soon came forward. Josh Warner, president of The Feed Company, explained how he promoted this viral video to Adweek. The team posted more videos, now more obviously advertising Ray-Ban though still without using a traditional ad format, to the YouTube account that hosted the original viral ad.

Extra evidence
Note the line at 0:36 of the Levi's ad: "At least there's no zipper." That's what clinched it for me: Levi's is the only jeans brand to actively advertise its zipperless buttoned jeans. The user name "unbuttonedfilms" corroborates this.

How well it's worked
Blogs like Laughing Squid and Neatorama posted the video with no guess about the creators (though political blog Hot Air guessed this might be a Levi's ad). Even G4TV's Attack Of The Show discussed the ad, crediting it to an unnamed group of gymnasts and making no mention of Levi's.

And of course even this debunking is giving them publicity. (Not that I mind as long as I'm getting some too.)

My Theory
Obviously the new ad has the same goals as the old: to market a product without actually naming it, by appealing to the public's love of Internet stunt videos. Most likely, The Feed Company made the new Levi's ad. If any other agency was ripping them off, they wouldn't release the ad a year later with the exact same techniques. And in a few days, The Feed Company will come out, because who can really deny themselves another round of publicity?

Like the 01/18/08 release date that came to represent both the setting and the cultural catchphrase for Cloverfield, a quick browse through IMDB's release dates — 10/17, specifically — points to Sony's big mystery-disease horror flick Quarantine. The plot summary, which features an L.A. news crew's footage the only record of the illness ravaging the building in which it's trapped — fits as well.

So there you have it! I know, I know — you're impressed. And with only seven months to wait, at least the studio doesn't have to worry about peaking too soon.

• Case 1017 - Please help identify this [YouTube]

HandHeld is borrowing $24 million, largely to finance the eBaum's deal. That leaves it with $9 million — not enough to pay eBaum's the extra $15 million it's owed under the earnout deal. That means that eBaum's $67.5 million isn't just conditional on its traffic — it's conditional on HandHeld's ability to raise money.

No matter. The takeaway from this deal is that buyers, for a host of reasons, are paying for performance when buying interactive properties. Either they're shelling out modest amounts, as Discovery did for the TreeHugger green blog, or they're placing conditions even on the most promising acquisitions, as Disney did in holding back half of its $700 million payout for Club Penguin. That's a clear sign, that despite the blog-business hype, it's still a buyer's market.