For some reason in ArchLinux with FireFox 20.0.1 and Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202, I am unable to actually play the video in the browser,

Me neither, I watch the video on vimeo

or view the comments, even with JavaScript enabled.

Well, its disqus, so you have to enable javascript for disqus too -- firefox -safe-mode does a good job of enabling all javascripts and showing the comments :)

That actually fixed the code. I wish I had seen the comments so I didn't look like a dork posting here.

I don't think you did :) I think you looked like me :) I had to go out of my way to discover the comments section ; videos are great for showing whats possible, but they're practically never corrected for typos.