Hello! Cathy here, in for Chris.  He’s super busy acquiring some steady music-related work in the NYC, and this announcement is just too cool to overlook. Today, two exciting Web video premieres are taking place, and Chris is featured in both. Here’s some background on the first:

Back in July, Chris played a show in the suburbs of Chicago with fellow 8-bit NES rockers, I Fight Dragons.  A friend of the band, Andrew Lothian, who interns with them offered to have Chris stay over at his house during his visit.  It just so happened that Andrew’s brother, Patrick, was working on a new Internet TV series called Maybe Hip, and one of the segments would feature indie musicians.  The result: Chris sat down with Patrick and Lexie for an interview, then played some of his hits live.  The finished product is really well-done — it’s probably the most professional and polished web series I’ve ever seen.  So, CHECK IT OUT! Let us, and the folks at Maybe Hip, know what you think! (Note: If you hear congestion in Chris’s voice, you are correct: bless his heart, Chris was recovering from a terrible cold. I think he did quite well considering!)  Also, be sure to read Chris’s entertaining blog update on Maybe Hip’s site, plus you can view an extra performance not featured in the episode: http://blogs.maybehip.com/2009/12/chris-merritt-2/#more-699

The NEXT exciting bit of news is that the LONG-awaited Cult of Karl animated video that the talented Brit, Steve Pick, has been painstakingly working on for months is DONE!!! Well…nearly done.  Like 3.999/4ths done. It’s being rendered at this very moment and will be live at some point later today.  I’ll let Chris do the honors of posting it, as this is, after all, his blog.

~ Cathy

this isn’t exactly new…..err, more like 5 years old. But I’m posting it because we might be doing something with it for the next record!

to do:  answer ancient rotting emails buy internet post best-of album finish cover “art” for best-of album finish christmas song get internet

I hung out with my German friend Hanna and her German friend Julia last night.  We went to Times Square which I hadn’t done since living in New York City.  I had this weird thought out of nowhere: “I’ll bet I’ll randomly run into my old college friend Jonathan Pilkington Kahnt tonight”.  It happened to me once before, but I was thinking, “what are the odds of that?  There are ten billion people all around” (remember this part for later in the story).  We went to see the ginormous Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center but it wasn’t lit up yet and there were ten billion people all around.  So we went to Union Square which is an awesome spot.  They set up billions of little outside-market-tents on the weekends which I know sounds insanely boring but they’re actually really cool.  Then we went to this bookstore called Strand has billions of new, used, and rare books, and this really weird thing happened:  I ran into my old school friend Jonathan Pilkington Kahnt!  I wasn’t even surprised.  I knew it was going to happen.

We watched Men Who Stare At Goats which I thought was really good.  The German girls were talking in German a lot which is weird because all you can do in those situations is kind of smile and pretend you are part of the conversation, even though you know they’re saying things about your dorky glasses or something.   We were giggly as hell all night.  In a cafe I shamelessly showed them the differences between American accents like southern, boston, new york, california, and then different British accents like london and manchester and southwest england which I was mostly pulling out of my butt.

Speaking of the British, I was reading writer/comedian Steve Merchant’s Wikipedia page the other day and this part made me laugh out loud in public:

Merchant’s considerable height (6 ft 7ins or 2.01 m tall) has been a source of humour and teasing throughout his career. He made a cameo appearance in The Office, playing a character called the Ogg-Monster, whom David Brent called “a big lanky goggle-eyed freak” because of his size^. The Daily Mail newspaper described him as a “giant albatross hopping on stilts”. Friend and collaborator Ricky Gervais has likened him to an “upright lizard being given electro-shock treatment” and a “stick insect with glasses”, or Beaker from The Muppet Show. Radio producer and co-host of Merchant, Karl Pilkington, has described his moves as a “bit of weird art^” in the past, while British comic and broadcaster Russell Brand has likened him to a “graceful grasshopper”^.

A “bit of weird art.”  Genius.

lame excuses include:  -no internet -sick

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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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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!!!!!!!

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.