Adam Is Freaking Out Right Now

My hometown

Yesterday I filmed a sketch with my friends Ben Roy and Josh Blue. This is a still from that sketch. Seemed worth sharing.

43 in a 30

We here at Adam Is Freaking Out Right Now are all about celebrating humanity’s flaws. Specifically our own. That’s why when we get caught speeding around the city by one of those creepy Big Brother photo vans, we don’t bow our head in shame. We throw our hands up in celebration! Huzzah! Never mind the fact that they just recently changed the speed limit on this street (that I use to drive every day to high school) from 35 to 30 and I was completely unaware, we’re just happy for the great photos! Because breaking the law is the only way to get these choice shots so there’s no use crying over spilled fuck-you-17th-Avenue-is-a-major-thoroughfare-that-street-should-still-be-35-MPH-and-you-fucking-know-it, is there? Of course not. Yes search back in these here blog posts and you’ll find several awesome pics of your boy ACH straight hauling ass in my pimp Honda CR-V – grainy surveillance photo after grainy surveillance photo, all courtesy of a Denver Police Department who just can’t stand how hot my fire be. And that’s cool, coppers, we don’t see eye to eye on some things, so what? At least we both know  great photographs when we see them!

And this one is no exception. With my stern grimace and cool Terminator 2 shades I kind of look like a hired killer. A hired killer who really has to take a shit. Where’s that story, Hollywood? Who’s banging out that script, right now? Somebody talented, I hope. Like the guy who wrote Crash or something. And I’ll tell you what: when they finally do get that sucker green-lit, why don’t you give your boy ACH a call to come audition, huh? Shoot, I’ll even provide the poster.

No more.

Last night in Denver, Colorado marked the end of an era: the final Tuesday night Squire Lounge Open Mic Comedy Night. Anyone even remotely involved in comedy knows how hard it is to run a room for seven years, let alone an open mic, and anyone in the Denver comedy scene knows just how pivotal and influential the Squire was. And host Greg Baumhauer was responsible for that. The room had its ups and downs, some nights were electric, some needed to be electrocuted, but I’m thankful for what went on there and I’m going to miss it. I wrote up my feelings towards the place in an address I intended to read at the show last night. But mic problems cut me short. And seeing as several people asked me about it, I figured I’d post my musings here for those who were curious. And for those who were bi-curious: grow up. You’re just gay.

Squire Lounge. I really can’t believe this is goodbye. I mean we’ve said goodbye a few times before – I’d get annoyed with your behavior, your whorish, unwashed ways and I’d be all, “To hell with you girl, you need to clean your act up if you want to keep fucking around with Cayton-Holland. I’m different than most of the riff-raff that pours through these walls – I got wait-listed at an Ivy League School!” But then a couple weeks later I’d come crawling back, pretending like nothing ever happened, and you’d be like, “That’s a’ight.” Cause that’s what you be like, girl. You’s a freaky ass two-way street.

You realize you’re the longest relationship I’ve ever had Squire Lounge? I’m kind of embarrassed even saying that but seven years? That’s my record. By far. God, I remember when we first started. You were so cute back then. We all rolled in here fresh off the Lion’s Lair open-mic and we were like,  “Oh shit, we can have an open-mic of our own? And Greg will host it? Fuck yeah, let’s do this, girl.” And you were like, “You all cute as hell. The more the merrier.” And we all used to fuck around with you back then. Urrybody. Me, Greg, Ben Kronberg, Andrew Orvedahl, even Brian Hocker, until that inevitable point in the evening where he would get too drunk and start creeping you out. You’d let all of us shine through you, wouldn’t you Squire Lounge? Provided we wrote the jokes and brought the fire, you’d fool around with any one of us.

But then you and me got real exclusive, didn’t we Squire Lounge? Yeah we did. Seems like for a spell there every Tuesday night it just became about you and me. Like there was no one else even here. And you’d reward me with $25 bar tabs after each of those Tuesday nights, your little gift to me, your tokens of appreciation. Eventually I acquired so many of those gift certificates I didn’t even know what to do with them. I built a small addition on my house out of bar tabs, nothing fancy, but a nice little office space with a window to the back yard so I could watch the birds. But then winter came around and the snow got all those bar tabs soaking wet and the whole addition fell apart. In retrospect, I don’t know what I was thinking. Paper is a terrible building material. It was foolish, but whatever I was in love. And I wanted to celebrate what you had given me.

Then other upstarts started fucking around with you, Squire Lounge. It wasn’t uncommon to come in here and see you slow-dancing cheek-to-cheek with Nathan Lund on some nights. Then other times I’d come in and Kevin O’Brien would be yelling at you or Bobby Crane would be speaking hipster hip-hop nonsense to you, and you’d eat it up! You’d be all about it! Then you’d fool around with those fools for awhile! And who can forget that whole Sam Tallent phase you had? That fire between you two was white hot!

But then I realized that’s what was so great about you, Squire Lounge Open Mic Night. Sure, you were a giant, giant whore, but in your unfathomable slutitude, you allowed so many of us to consider you a muse. You took in the hungry comedian and allowed him to flourish. And if I say him, even though many female comedians have performed at the Squire, that’s just because women aren’t funny.

And now you’re dying, Squire Lounge. Dying of AIDS and cancer and syphilis and cheap cocaine eating away at the lining of your heart; and I’m gonna miss you. There I said it. Yeah I don’t need you any more. I’m fucking around with hotter hos now; New York bitches, LA beyalyalches; I’m booked in Alaska in March, I’m fitting to hit me some Eskimo pussy! I don’t need you at all anymore, Squire Lounge. But that doesn’t mean that a part of me doesn’t still want you. That doesn’t mean some nights I won’t stumble in here after a few too many and try to bang you once for old time’s sake. And you’ll be like, “Oh Adam, there’s no comedy night here anymore; that’s the only reason I was into you in the first place. We’re over now. Okay? It’s done. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

And then I’ll be like, “Yeah, but we had something for awhile, didn’t we, Squire Lounge? We really had a good thing going for awhile didn’t we?”

And you’ll lean in and kiss me on the cheek and be like, “You know what, Adam. We did. We really did.”

Then you’ll get up and walk out that door, Squire Lounge, off onto that boulevard of broken dreams just beyond these walls, perhaps a few snowflakes drifting in as you drift out, like an apparition, like a shadow of a memory in the back recesses of my clouded mind.

And after I watch you go, I’ll be like, “Cameron, another shot of Beam!”

And the bartender will be like, “I told you man, Cameron doesn’t work here. He hasn’t for years. No one knows what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s 2021, and you’re really creeping everyone out.”

And I’ll laugh to myself and mutter something under my breath as I walk out the door. And some curious guy at the bar will go, “Who was that guy? What was his problem?”

And the bartender will go, “Oh just one of the drunks that comes in here all the time. Says he used to be a comic or something. He won’t tell me his real name. All the other homeless people just call him ‘Chicago.’”