Hi.

It’s been a few days.  Sorry for the lack of updates.  I’ve been traveling. I went to VA to tune some pianos\put Christmas lights on houses\pick up leaves\teach drums to make rent.  I think we’re going to make rent, guys.  How exciting!  I also tracked a new Christmas song.

So first of all, the Tim Burton premier was just phenomenal!  When I was a kid, I used to have this huge book about the animation and production of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and I used to sit there and read it over and over and sketch the animation models.  In those pages I fell in love with animation.  To see the originals in real life gave me a shiver up my spine!  Everything there was amazing though.  Seemingly miles of cool sketches and things.  Another high-point for me was seeing some of the unfinished, sketchy, pencil-tests and little animations that Burton made in college and stuff.  I also saw Batman’s masks, Beetlejuice’s colon, Edward’s scissor-hands, and a corpse’s bride or two.

The day after Burton I went in to a temp agency (the one that our friends uncle works for) in beautiful midtown.  I did really well on all the computer tests because I am an enormous computer nerd.  Then I left the city.  On my way out, I asked this cab driver for directions.  I pulled up next to this Taxi at a light and honked.  The window went down to reveal, instead of the assumed gruff middle-aged hard-ass, a beautiful Indian girl who couldn’t have been over 23.  I asked her how to get out of the city and she said “follow me” in this Indian accent and proceeded to drive like Vin Diesel through the city.  I desperately followed her lead and stayed behind her somehow as we raced and weaved through Manhattan like bats out of hell.  I felt like I was in Grand Theft Auto or The Transporter or The Italian Job.  I mean, this girl could drive, man.

Then I worked and I think I had a birthday somewhere in there.  I’m about to head back, like, now.  I’ll post Tuesday tapes on TIME this week, I’ll record it tonight.

This week, look for the first CM Christmas Song EVER, the best-of album, a new animated video, and a release date for the next record!!!!!!!!!!!  NO REST FOR THE WEARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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AHHHH OK guys you have to remind me about Tuesday Tapes.  A good way is via Twitter or via Facebook.  I’m so busy I forget what day it is. SO much on the horizon guys!!!!!  I can’t keep up!!!

I’ve been so busy just getting by in New York!  We’re having a blast, but I don’t have a steady job yet.  Brett got some part-time serving jobs going.  I’ve been doing odd jobs and things which is actually really great, but it takes up so much of my day because I’m hunting down work most of the time.  I’ve done a lot of moving furniture and things and I’ve been working for this artist up in Williamsburg the last few days.  He’s doing construction on his massive studio.  There were a couple of Chinese builders there too.  One was named Chan and he was a massive, round, bald man who looked like something out of an Anime or something.  He only spoke Chinese but we kind of got to know each other pretty well anyway.  We were working together for a couple days.   I think he might be the strongest man in the universe.  The other Chinese builder was constantly making unbelievably misogynist comments.  He was one of the most hilarious people I’ve ever met.

Tonight I’m going to the Tim Burton exhibit premiere at the Museum Of Modern Art in Manhattan!  I was asked to go by my amazing friend who apparently is cool enough to get tickets to these sorts of things.  I have to wear a suit and tie.  I’m hoping I can piece something together.  I’m kind of a Tim Burton fanatic but I know everyone else is too.  If you want to say anything to like Burton or Depp or What’s Her Name let me know I’ll pass it along for you.

Other things that have happened to me include being offered weed by a Jamaican woman for fixing her DVD player and watching a musical with a guy on acid (him, not me) and eating a slice of the Best Pizza In The Freaking Universe which was in Brooklyn at this place called………can’t remember.

I’ll post again tonight or tomorrow because I have more to tell you but this internet costs me a coffee an hour and the caffeine is making me jittery.

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SSSSSo yesterday (was it yesterday? no….two days ago…geez…time is all crazy and weird here in NYC. It goes by really really fast, like twilight zone fast!) we were about to turn in and then got a text from one of our favorite bands Judd And Maggie and they invited us to see them play at Crash Mansion. We subway’ed it up to Bowery St and then we watched 1.65 songs, and they were amazing, and then we headed back to Brooklyn with Judd and Maggie and Spencer, and the most amazing thing happened. Judd and Maggie and me all realized that we’re all Tim And Eric nerds to the extreme, and then they played me a ten-minute long, personal answering machine message that they recently received from, I kid you not, a man named David Liebe Hart. I couldn’t believe it. It was a rambling message from the man himself and he talked so long he was cut off!

Then we hung out with their amazing uncle and aunt and one of their cousins (apparently there’s another one who is 6′8″), who as it turns out, live right down the street from Brett and I. They were amazingly hilarious and sweet human beings and a wooden plaque hung on their bathroom wall with a carving of a small rabbit and an inscription that said, “Out of all my relations, I like sex the best.”  I don’t know what that means, but it made me start giggling and I could barely, umm,  …aim.

We decided we will be doing some shows together.  Then I asked Maggie to marry me and she said only if it was on the same weekend as our show.  I think she thought I was kidding.

This white pipe in our bathroom makes loud banging noises from 3-5 am in the morning.  It sounds like a poltergeist having a seizure.

Yesterday I locked myself out so Mike (our awesome Kramer neighbor) helped me get a ladder and I got in though the kitchen window, three stories up!  It was both hairy and scary, but I was pretending not to notice to look tough.  Mike showed me how to cook awesome chicken and broccoli and noodles.  It was the first home-cooked meal I’d had in weeks.  Then I played piano for him and he said WAIT THERE and got his 70-year-old mother and I played for both of them.  Dancing ensued.

So many adventures, I can’t even tell you all of them.  I don’t even have time to think!  I love it here.

More from me soon (I don’t have internet yet).  Thanks for the comments, guys!  Keep ‘em coming.  And buy a shirt if you haven’t already, it comes with a FREEEEEEEEE ALBUM!!!!!!!!  YAYYYYY!!!!!!!

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Late again!  I have an excuse though.  My friends Judd and Maggie, also known as Judd And Maggie, were playing in Manhattan and we last-minute -went-to-see-them last night.  It was awesome.  Anyway, I’m down in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and I don’t have my little camera battery thing, but later today I will post up some great pictures and stories from last night.  Meanwhile, putting up fliers, getting work, and generally living like kings.

Here’s a new one called Pretty Bitch

Here’s a NEW one, more of an idea really

Here’s a Christmas song I’m working on

Don’t forget to buy a shirt and get your FREE album download

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New Demos Of Nod shirts are finally here! Check out Brett and Megan as they show off the hottest winter fashions.

Do you want to help Chris and Brett battle the demons of starvation and poverty in their champion month of New York City life?

Now is the time to act!  Buy a beautiful, quality Demos Of Nod shirt featuring the hand-drawn album cover artwork.  When you do, you’ll get a never-before-released batch of demos called Bundle Of Joy, recorded over eight months in 2004-2005.  This batch of demos is my personal favorite.  It contains 36 of the weirdest, catchiest, cheesiest songs I ever wrote.  For me it represents my first batch of adult songs;  I had been writing these quirky, weird things all through college, and these were the first that started to take shape and go somewhere. Some are embarrassing, many are goofy as hell, but all of them are perfect.  I can honestly say that these songs are like my little babies.

On reviewing them this weekend, two even made me tear up.  This is one of them – it’s called Fired Up, and my brother Andrew played guitar and sang the back-up vocals.

Here’s the first ever version of Tower Of Sand:

This one I was always proud of:

There are 33 more of these!  36 songs in all, plus an album cover I just crapped together.

WOW!  What value!  What a deal!!

BUT WAIT

BUY NOW and you’ll also so get a hand-drawn certificate that makes it official:  I HELPED CHRIS MERRITT IN HIS TIME OF NEED

Here’s what’s on the shirts:

There are a limited amount of each size, so act now.  By the way, in the pictures, Brett is wearing a medium and Megan is wearing a large.

Brett refused to wear his shirt like a dress.

Love,

Chris

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Booklyn Public

So, last night was my first official mugging-at-gunpoint.

Just kidding!!  We’ve been working hard looking for jobs and setting up our apartment and meeting people like CRAZY.  Everyone is so awesome in our building.  Lots of them blast bass-y music at all random hours which is AWESOME because we don’t feel bad when we practice.  There is a professional DJ in our building and she is really sweet.  There is another guy who just ran/biked a big race today.  Speaking of which, I want to start running in the park.  But man, we do so much walking, I don’t even need to. I can feel my belly writhing in anguish because it knows it only has a month at most of life left.  It is writing it’s will and it has left its ATP investments (mostly secured in phospholipids) to my other vital organs.

It looks like we found some jobs!  I’ll let you know about them soon.  Meanwhile, we’re making pretty fliers to get music lesson gigs.  Cathy made me some cards too.  The plan is to get up early tomorrow and find some music stores and put some fliers around some of the neighborhoods.  By the way, do you live in New York City?  Do you need drum lessons or piano lessons?  Or your piano tuned?  Or do you need a handsome male escort?  Let us know!  (contact@chrismerrittmusic.com)

I will post again a little later on.  I will be putting up special Demos Of Nod shirts for sale!  Each one will come with a never-before-released batch of demos from 2006 or so!  It’s my favorite batch ever called Bundle Of Joy and it has my favorite songs I ever wrote on it.  If you want to help Brett and I live another day, make sure to come back and buy one!!!!!

I was just thinking about this:  you know when you boot up a computer, how that boot sequence is the process of one binary command (off and on) moving to very tiny simple binary commands, which in turn launch more and more complicated protocols, which eventually lead you to a crude start-up screen, which eventually leads you to a complex, multifaceted operating system capable of running virtual-reality simulators or editing movies?  Or connecting to a billion other computers or whatever?  Well, maybe the universe is like that.  Maybe it’s like one big computer, computing its own existence, starting with a simple on and off switch (The Big Bang) and leading to more and more complicated binary, quantum-mechanical “calculations” like the basic laws of physics, to the strong and weak forces, and gravity, to hydrogen atoms, to suns, heavy elements, solar systems, animals, people, language, cities, comic books, Queen, the Dog Whisperer.  Man I love Cesar Milan and he is one of my heroes.

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This is really great!  I found this video on YouTube and it’s by Jolie and it’s great.  I do an unknowing Frank Black impression at 2:50.

Thanks for the awesome comments people!  Keep ‘em comin’!  It inspires me to keep updating.  I’ll try to respond as well.

This song is so good it makes me want to puke into my own eyeballs.  Does anyone know anything about this fella?

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update:  ok songs work now!

Today I woke up at seven a.m. to an NYPD marshal and an angry guy at the front door.  They accused me of owing them lots of money.  I said we just moved in yesterday and they were nicer but not that much nicer.  So then they said they need to turn off the electricity but I said can’t you just transfer it over to our names and they said no.  So then they turned off the electricity and I put the milk back into the silent fridge and then we went to Jay Street in Brooklyn and got electricity, except it won’t be on till tomorrow.

Yesterday we job hunted all day and practiced and worked on band things.  I’m making a “best-of” album, shoot, I just remembered I need to make a cover sometime today maybe.  Anyway it will be free and they are my favorite songs from Hello, Little Captain, Pixie And The Bear, Demos Of Nod, and Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part One).  There are only twelve songs so it was hard.  It’s poppy but indie-friendly, you know what I mean, so like Tarmac over Dance Karate and Flightless over Virginia and Madison over Tower Of Sand, also I edited some of the longer songs down like filing hooves.  It looks good and I am trying to make new fans with it.

This song is new but it deteriorates into me doing a bad impression of Tom Petty:

At the Brooklyn Library.  Rachyl just brought up coffee but it was her coffee.  But then she gave me crackers.  Haha we’re like little orphan children!

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Well, hello from Brooklyn.  This is where I live now.  I live right next to a beautiful place called Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Library and a zoo and a museum.

Brett Ripley is here with me.  If you’ve been to a Chris Merritt show on the east coast lately, you’ve seen him on the drumset.  We’ve come here to play music and meet people that play music.  I’ve never been more confident in the songs I write and I genuinely think they can go wherever they want to.  Apparently, depending on who you ask, New York is either the worst place or the greatest place in the Universe to try and make music for a living.  I’ll let you know what we find out.  Check back here often to keep abreast of our selfish but noble pursuit, for better or for worse.  My gut feeling after spending a night and a morning here?  A solid surge of “for better”.

It looks like Sesame Street around here except some of the residents are weirder looking.  Most everybody seems genuinely kind.  We loaded up all our stuff into our apartment with our friend Rachyl.  We miraculously parked the moving truck in front.  Rachyl manned the truck and put boxes on the edge and I loaded ten billion tons of equipment into the corridor of our building and meanwhile Brett moved all of it up the stairs into our place.  The neighbors are friendly and endlessly entertaining.  I was ready for a nap after that, but Brett is like on crack or something.  We both feel inspired and energetic.  He keeps on moving things and we got up at six a.m. this morning and I even felt inspired to do pull-ups on some metal scaffolding.

To do first:  find work, find gigs, find bassist for club shows.  Find manager.  Find a place that sells toilet seats and shower curtain rods.

PS – In other news, quickly, I got a new website!  Thanks, Ryan Strong.  Sadly, no more Dreamweaver 1998-style websites for now.  The focus here will be content and updates.  Also, I have a new video to show you by Jolie.  Soon.  Also, I’ll do a Tuesday Tapes later tonight when coked-up Brett sets up all the music equipment.  Also, Jacob Thro and Brett and I have started our brains on Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part Two).  Soon.  Also, yesterday in a moment of dizzying realization I grokked how incredible the human brain is for being so good at recording millions of hours of virtually infinite-definition video (all containing endless amounts of associated pop-up facts and memories and sense information) that is the equivalent of a computer with 1,000 connected cameras all constantly recording and if you take an axe and take out some of the cameras it still works pretty good and you can even hack off parks of the motherboard and it still works pretty good and it all evolved for no reason at all

PPS – Brett does not really use drugs

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Sorry I’m late this week.  Here are three to make up for it.

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