"I'm Not Living Here" is from the 1966 Present Tense album from Sagittarius - a short-lived studio group created by Curt Boettcher and Gary Usher. The lyrics are pretty amusing, but unfortunately I can't really do Boettcher's falsetto for the chorus. The original is unabashed, up-tempo sunshine pop, so I arranged a more... dialed down version.

• I'm Not Living Here (3:02, 3.5 MB, written by Sagittarius, performed by Brian Kobashikawa)

Here's yet another foray into covering some of that indie music the kids are listening to these days. Crazily (and perhaps embarrassingly) enough, I continue wading into Garageband by venturing into vocals territory... using a microphone that's designed for Karaoke Revolution (see right). It seems to work pretty well for a $20 purchase - but it often clips and captures a lot of extra noise, which can narrow ones dynamic range (and tuning) a bit. Hopefully I can re-record when something better comes along.

Anyway, this is a cover from Bright Eyes's recent Cassadaga album. I picked up the song one day and recorded it the following day, and did the vocals earlier today.

• The Brakeman Turns My Way (4:39, 5.4 MB, written by Bright Eyes, performed by Brian Kobashikawa)

As you can see below, erudite hipsters - driven by the confluence of BitTorrent, NPR, and a general distrust of the media - unsurprisingly lead the way. (There is that notable faction of hipsters who watch TV strictly for ironic purposes, something that requires more study.) And when Tom Bergeron starts providing wacky narration on YouTube, it's pretty much all over.

Aside from a modified intro and ending, the piece itself hasn't changed all that much after all this time. Maybe I can dig up some other high school compositions later.

• Considering August (4:58, 5.7 MB, written and performed by Brian Kobashikawa)

But another thing that I noted was that Bacharach seems to be posting blog entries at pretty brisk clip. For example, he's outpaced me, difficult as it may sound. This is very interesting. Of course, I'm pretty sure that Bacharach has weightier issues than my usual standby topics - that is, television and video games.

Then again, I am also one without the handy anecdote involving Hal David, Dionne Warwick, a couple whiskey sours, and deciding between placing a flugelhorn and a muted trumpet solo within "Close to You". "Flugelhorn!" Warwick would exclaim, before collapsing back in the couch, giggling, knocking over a picture frame.

David would then grow surly, demanding whether the presence of an instrumental solo suggested that his phrases weren't up to snuff. "It's slant rhyme, you ignoramuses!" he manages to sputter. Does he lunge at Bacharach with a stretched mic cable, before the haze of alcohol and cigarette smoke sends him back to the floor? Not sure. I'll be eagerly awaiting Burt's next entry, however!

• If You Find Yourself Caught in Love (4:29, 5.1 MB, performed by Brian Kobashikawa)

And, you may notice that I'm trying yet another blog design - a sad commentary on the state of kawabunga.com, where new designs seem to be outnumbering wholly original articles. But on the brighter side, I think most of the older images are now working again. I have yet to test this on Windows' Internet Explorer, so bear with me.

But the last thing I want to do is leave you with one of those "Hey I redesigned my blog" type entries, so here's an instructional video produced by some hipster/geek types on how to make a Monte Cristo Sandwich. But because they don't have access to a deep fryer, it has to be kicked down a couple notches on the awesomeness factor.

What stuck out, however, was a curious similarity between one of my blog illustrations and one of their T-shirt iron-on designs. (Download their ZIP file, or click on "Tour shirts" on the McRib microsite to see it for yourself.)

On the left, my Tufte-esque blog illustration. On the right, the McDonalds rendering, decked out in the effective Cooper Black, no less. Just a case of coinicidence? Or is there a fast food e-marketer burning deep within my soul, just waiting to bare itself out?

Unfortunately, I can't tell which isometric rendering of reconstituted pork and bun came first, but I do know that my McRib entry was posted in January 2005, and the McDonalds PDF file was last updated in October 2005. Indeed, truly one of life's great mysteries.

To prepare for yet another TV special, the American Film Institute has produced a list of 300 films for 100 Years... 100 Movie Cheers, a selection of the most inspirational movies ever made. Ever.

Invariably, that renowned Hollywood bias we've all come to grudgingly respect has led to the regettable omission of several powerful films, which I've listed below:

* I'm actually pretty sure that's really how the movie ended.
** For example, William McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, accurately predicted the Ionic Breeze from The Sharper Image.

But there's one thing I absolutely don't get: the mistreatment of Mark Linn-Baker.

You all know Mark Linn-Baker. He played Larry Appleton on Perfect Strangers. As such, I considered him a role model, if not a hero, for most of the 80s. And as it turns out, his big break came on Manhattan, filling the role of "Shakespearean Actor", appearing opposite of none other than Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy!

Needless to say, I watched Manhattan quite closely, trying to figure out where they were. Didn't see them. So I watched again. And it turns out that about two and a half minutes into the movie, they appear in the middle of a montage for exactly two seconds - sans speaking parts - looking like specks on the movie screen:

That's it? No droll monologues whilst engaging in an urban leisure sport such as racquetball or target shooting? Not even a single utterance of "Forsooth?" And as if that were not enough, they misspelled his name in the credits, giving him a different gender in the process!

(Yeah, I know you all don't care. You're probably more excited that the Inconceivable!!! dude from The Princess Bride happened to be in this film as well.)

Luckily, things are looking up for Mr. Linn-Baker. After a ten-year hiatus, he's returned to network television, starring against Melanie Griffith on a show on the WB. Contrast this to Balki, who spends his time alternating between looking like an ass on The Surreal Life and chilling with Tom Bergeron on The Hollywood Squares. It's like one of those rare episodes of Perfect Strangers where Larry was right for once in the end.

However, I made the unfortunate decision to leave the pumpkin in the office over the weekend. Presumably, the huge, nascent growths of mold eventually caused the jack o'lantern to topple onto the floor, where it quickly decomposed into a revolting puddle of brakish, "fermented pumpkin juice", outside the aforementioned interaction designer's cubicle (see above right). It's probably a metaphor for something, but too many early morning infomercials and repeats of MSNBC's Hardball have stunted my brain.

* If you backtrack in June's Flickr photostream, you might see bits and pieces of a rather surreal somersault contest from a previous UED offsite. Indeed, it's a strange group.