The ACH Year-In-Review

The only wrap-up that matters.

I know what you’re thinking.

If I have to read one more year-end synopsis, I’m going to stab myself in the neck in front of everyone on this city bus!

And this is a perfectly valid response.

But never fear. This isn’t some lame ass in January doors started getting sucked out of planes, in February Taylor Swift won the Super Bowl nonsense. This is the ACH year in review! Which means it focuses solely on matters pertaining to me, ACH!

For I believe it was Voltaire, in the musical Hamilton, who battle-rapped, “To thine own garden be true.”

So here I am, in December, vacantly staring at the remains of my garden, the gnarled roots, and the tattered husks.

“When will papa return?” my boys ask their mother, as they gaze upon me through the window, concerned.

“When he is ready,” she assures them.

But she and I both know papa may never be ready. Emotionally speaking, papa went out for cigarettes years ago and never came back. And the realization haunts us both.

So then, to 2024!

Fortunately, this will be easy. You see I keep an actual physical calendar, like some old pocket watch repairman at a long-forgotten stall, openly mocked by all the other kiosk-men in the mall. But fuck you, Hilarious Boxers Guy! You too, Man of a Thousand Scents! Who’s laughing now? I won’t have to wrack my brain for this year in review. I’ll just flip through the pages of my Humane Society 2024 Animal Lovers Calendar that I have for some reason, and let the highlights pour onto the page.

Pour forth, 2024! Pour forth from mine able fingertips!

January!

In January, my whole damn family caught pinkeye. Gross. Yet we still attended a production of A Year With Frog and Toad at the Arvada Center.

NOTHING keeps us away from the theater.

Relax, we were days into the disgusting affliction, and the doctor assured us we were good to go, so long as we didn’t rub our eyeballs against other people’s eyeballs, which as far as I know, we did not. Still, it felt weird. Especially when the usher led us to the front row. I’m talking seats 1-4, feet up on the stage. We watched the entire production that way, and I’m pretty sure the guy playing Toad could hear us blinking.

January also marked the premier of my latest comedy special, Wallpaper, which came out on YouTube January 18^th! Since then, it has racked up tons of views, plus Hulu picked it up, which is pretty dang cool. You can stream it on Hulu at this time of publication and loads of folks are finding it and loving it! Loads.

February!

Honestly, February kind of blew. Very little of note. I did a bunch of podcasts to promote my special, so that’s cool. Beyond that the only thing that leaps out at me about February was how I had to get a sonogram for this weird growth in my armpit. It’s like a fatty deposit. I was worried it was going to be cancer and I’d drop dead on the spot, but it’s just like this weird lump thing, totally benign. So that’s good, I guess, but honestly, like, whatever February. Whatever.

March!

I did comedy at the Cannon Beach Comedy Festival, in coastal Oregon, where they filmed parts of the movie Goonies. It was March, in the Pacific Northwest, freezing, and gray, darts of sharp rain pelted you in the face wherever you went. And I loved it. I took a walk along the desolate beach one day, past foreboding, Tsunami Evacuation Plan signage, and came across a lone elk, walking through a river, en route to the ocean. It was so striking my brain initially didn’t even comprehend. But, elk are from the mountains, my feeble mind told me. No. Fool. Elk are everywhere. You are from the mountains. This elk is on the beach. Furthermore, Oregon is where the mountains meet the beach. MIND BLOWN. I would have watched him until he disappeared, but the weather took a turn for the worse, and I retreated. Later, in the gloom of the little beach condo where they put me up, I couldn’t tell where the roar of the waves ended and the wind began, and it didn’t seem to matter. It all blended into a crashing din that sounded like it was going to suck the entire complex out to sea.

I got up early the next morning and went on a hike. The festival had put me in touch with some birders in the area, and they recommended a great one. It was gray and sleeting, pissing wet. I didn’t care. I was high on all of it. I wound through old growth forest in my raincoat, gawking at the towering knots of swinging vines, the looming, ancient evergreens, fat mushrooms splintering their bark. I saw two varied thrushes flutter through the forest, their plumage brilliant against the impossible greenery. They are relatively common birds, but they were the first I had ever seen.

I kept walking for maybe twenty minutes, completely alone, then the trail let out into a rocky cove, a spit of beach that hugged the shoreline for a mile or so. It was completely empty. I had it all to myself: the crashing waves, the howling wind, driftwood the size of sedans littering the beach. I filmed a video to show my family. I screamed at the top of my lungs, and you can’t even hear it. The wind and the waves are too loud. The din. It was the most alive I had felt in I couldn’t remember how long.

Comedy got me this, I remember thinking. Next time you’re bitching about butts in seats or doom-scrolling on your phone, spinning out as you perceive other’s successes as greater than yours, remember these moments, Adam. Remember what a silly, perfect life you lead.

March. Glorious March.

April!

April marked twenty years in comedy for me. I celebrated the occasion by doing two shows at the dive bar where I started, Denver’s illustrious shit hole, The Lion’s Lair. I had my buddy Nick Holmby (@dudeIDK) tape both shows figuring it would be worth documenting. Worst case scenario, I’d clip it up and offer it to the gods of comedy disposability via social media. Then the evening absolutely ruled. So, Nick edited it into a killer special.

It looks amazing, in a stripped-down, no frills kind of way. I’m calling it, “Twenty Years in Comedy and All I Got Was This Lousy Special,” and it’s coming out in March in some way, shape, or form. Stay tuned.

I also finally got to go to the new Casa Bonita in April. We took our kids. They fell in love with the place like I did when I was young. Like my wife did. Baton passed. These are Colorado boys I’m raising. Let it rain sopapillas from the sky.

May!

Jesus. I’ve already written a ton! Gotta be more concise. Just the facts. Pair it down, ACH. You can do this.

I wonder if people think it’s cool that I call myself ACH? Or do they think it’s lame?

Off track already! Save that thread for another Substack! Get back to it!

May was boring AF. but I went to two Nuggets games and got together with some friends to play the board game Wingspan.

Not a total loss.

June!

June, baby, June. June ripped the tits right off my dick. In June I turned 44, did two great shows in Minneapolis, taped a Don’t Tell set in San Diego, went camping near Leadville, Colorado, then saw Blink 182. June ripped. Ripped the tits right off my dick.

July!

Took my family on vacation to Orcas Island, in the San Juan’s, off the coast of Washington. The Pacific Northwest seems to be becoming a theme in my life, a place I keep returning to, and I’m not mad about it at all. We saw the titular orca whales. We ate incredible seafood. I held my little boy’s hand and showed him star fish in a tide pool. That same afternoon he broke a dolphin sculpture at a pottery shop by the sea. We asked how much. They said $150. But then they just decided to let it slide. Kids are kids and all that. Good folk out there, at that pottery shop in Orcas Island.

On the Fourth of July my wife and I sat at the edge of our rental property, overlooking a cove, and sipped ice-cold beer as fireworks exploded over Eastsound Village. After it was over, the calm of the island resumed, and we watched sea otters splash in the surf, listened to the call of rhinoceros auklets below, and felt like America could run itself right off a cliff, so long as we could sit here forever.

Alas, we could not. I had to get back to the mainland. Dick jokes to tell. Which I did in Chicago. At the Lincoln Lodge. Maybe my favorite show of the year? Had dinner the next night with Daniel Van Kirk at Ever, a top five meal of my life. Then I came home and got a vasectomy and now I can’t have any more kids.

August!

Nursed my nuts for the first week of August and took in the Olympics. Naturally this meant rooting for Team Serbia against the world, on account of my main man Nikola Jokic (see last month’s entry). I even rooted for Serbia over the United States because I’m Denver over country, always. Serbia almost pulled it off too. Thrilling game to watch with a bag of frozen peas draped across your (former) manhood.

Did a one-nighter at the Secret Room in Houston and had a damn ball. That room is so great.

September!

September marked the High Plains Comedy Festival. That festival is so much work, and I often wonder why I even do it, and then it happens, and it’s my favorite weekend of the year, and I’m like why don’t you remember this feeling every time? In those moments of doubt, why don’t you remember?

And the answer is because I’m very, very stupid.

But not so stupid that I didn’t cap off that weekend by seeing Built to Spill play “There’s Nothing Wrong with Love,” in its entirety, at the Ogden Theater, arguably the best venue in Denver.

You never know which Dough Martsch you’re going to get when you see Built to Spill. He’s cantankerous, and moody, and often seems indifferent. Doesn’t say a word between songs. But he was totally locked in the night I saw him. And I realized he’s just an awkward guy, he’s anti-social and insular. He talks through his guitar. And his lyrics. And what he has to say is so worth hearing.

I cried three times that show. Probably just fiercely hungover from High Plains.

Still, it got me.

Then a week later I drove to Wyoming, for a show in Casper. The show was at 7 p.m. But I got up early and made it to Casper by noon. Because I had a Zoom that I did not want to fuck up. A table read for my movie, “See You When I See You.”

I checked the wi-fi connection, logged into the call, and suddenly there was the incredible cast of the movie, right on my computer screen. We read through the script in its entirety, and it gave me chills. After the Zoom the director and I exchanged giddy texts.

Holyshitholyshitholyshit, this is actually happening!

I’ve been tinkering on this script since 2020. I wrote so many versions, so many drafts. Then we got Jay Duplass to direct, and there were still so many turns, literal years where it was progressing, but with stops and starts, strikes, false leads. Things always felt encouraging, but I know how this stuff works. It could have all fallen apart at any minute. Then suddenly we secured financing, and it was like the entire production got shot out of a cannon.

It was go time.

October!

I flew to Atlanta to start production on October 22^nd and spent the next five weeks making a movie. About my life. That I wrote. It still feels insane this happened. Watching this thing come together day in and day out was such a monumental experience for me, I don’t think I quite grasp it yet. But I will say this: I learned so much, I was so inspired by everyone I worked with, and I can’t wait for people to see this movie. I think we made something beautiful. And heartbreaking. And funny. And real. Like my little sister Lydia.

Like life. Like my life anyway.

November!

October beget November, and still we made this movie. I flew home on weekends; my wife brought the boys out to see me twice. A six-year-old and a three-year-old. She just packed them up and flew from Denver to Atlanta. Twice. Prior to that, we had only traveled with them together, and even with all hands-on deck it was a raging shit show. But my wife pulled it off. She essentially single-parented for five weeks. And I’m so grateful to her for that. It was hard on her. On the boys. On me. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to do something like that when you have a partner cheering you on, holding down the homestead while you’re away.

She turned 40 in November. I flew home for the party that I had planned for her. We celebrated at Bastien’s, an old-school steakhouse that’s been around since 1937, a true Denver treasure, and I hope she felt the love that I, and all her friends and family, have for her. Because she’s a Denver treasure herself.

Even if she grew up in Aurora.

December!

Got to go to New York to do my one-man show Happy Place, at the new UCB Theater, got to go to Albuquerque for a fun one-nighter courtesy of the fine folk at Dry Heat Comedy, got to headline the Comedy Fort in Fort Collins for a weekend and it pretty much restored my faith in stand-up comedy. Most importantly, I got to spend the month with my family, after five weeks away, enjoying the holiday season and basking in the sweet sweet glow of Christ.

So, there you have it kids, the ACH Year in Review!

At times funny, revelatory, sentimental and shmaltzy. I’m proud of this year. And honestly, going back through it helped me to realize how lucky I am. Looking at all those days on the calendar, I didn’t fixate on the tedium of meetings and appointments; I didn’t dwell in the disappointments. I just saw it all as part of the vast tapestry of being alive. All these amazing highlights merely stand out a little more, the icing on an already delicious cake.

I hope this experiment encourages you to look at your year in the same way, your life in the same way. Yeah, a lot of things suck, and it hurts when I drink cold stuff on the left side of my mouth, but all in all, things are pretty okay.

And 2025 will probably be the same.

Oh wait! I just remembered we elected Donald Trump.

Never mind, we are so, so fucked.

Whelp, that’s a wrap, America!

Hope you enjoyed this artifact of a better time.

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January Shows!

If you’re reading this early in the month, and happen to be around Cincinnati, come to my show! Please dear god, come to my show!

January 3 - Cincinnati - Commonwealth Sanctuary - Tix

Really killer Grawlix this month. I’ve known about Brittany Carney for years, but seeing her at High Plains this year I realized she has absolutely level-jumped. So funny. So unique. You do not want to miss this show.

January 25 - Denver - Grawlix, Bug Theater - Tix

My new hour is coming together really nicely. I always like to get a crack at it at Comedy Works, where I leave it all on the field. If you want to see me in about as perfect setting as possible, this is the show.

January 29 - Denver - Comedy Works - Tix

Lastly, ever since my buddy Rory Scovel moved to Denver, we’ve been doing these really fun shows where we riff over movies. We’ve decided to take our show to the big screen, and we’re excited to debut it at the Bug! Get tix now to be part of history! History where we do a show that lots of people have done before. BUT BETTER.

January 30 - Denver - Movie Night, Bug Theater - Tix

The Monthly Clip

Here it is, the greatest joke ever told.

God damn, great joke, Adam. Way to go.

Before you go, follow on the socials!

Thanks so much for being a part of my Substack. Holler at me in the comments! Let me know how you’re doing out there. Appreciate the support, and hope to see you at a show!

Share, if you feel so inclined, and take care of yourself out there. Shit is about to get weird.