Samuel Sidler

How to walk to Manhattan

A lot harder than I’d imagined.

This is Water

The Glossary put David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College commencement speech to video, adding in quite a bit of context. It uses an abridged version of the audio recording, but is well worth watching.

Be sure to read the entire 2005 commencement speech.

Magic is Everywhere

From the Hotpipes’ album “Dust.”

Two months breaking ice

From Cassandra Brooks, a five minute video of her two month trip in the Ross Sea of Antarctica on an ice breaker. Not footage you get to see very often.

The Challenge

A Spock-based Audi commercial.

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

The 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of Indonesia, is considered the deadliest tsunami of all time, taking over 230,000 lives. A couple of videos have covered it including this one called Tsunami, Caught on Camera. It uses survivors’ footage and testimony from Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka to paint a fairly grim picture. Warning: It can be pretty graphic at times.

More recently, the Perennial Plate went back to Sri Lanka where eight members of a small fishing family were taken in the tsunami.

Just last year, Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor starred in an English-language Spanish true-story film called The Impossible about a family caught in the midst of the tsunami.

Abe

Short film from Rob McLellan. So yeah, maybe we shouldn’t teach robots to love…

LEGO Breaking Bad Video Game

Since the premier of the final season of Breaking Bad is getting ever closer, I’m not surprised to see this spoof on what a LEGO video game of the AMC series would look like. It should go without saying that if you’ve never seen the show… spoilers!

Two Chips

An animated short from Adam Patch, in which his wife tells a story after a bottle of wine and he animates it.

Japanese Wall of Boxes

Japanese game shows are the best. Gaki No Tsukai apparently has a Wall of Boxes challenge.