How is L.A. comedy trailblazer James Adomian facing 2025? With Amtrak travel and surprising optimism

The live-comedy industry never played a larger role in sociopolitical debate than it did in 2024. But how much of that commentary, wonders James Adomian, was actually entertaining?

“Funny is funny. There is a lot of surprising material that can make an audience lose it, whether they agree or not,” says Adomian, a Los Angeles resident since age 9. That said, “I believe in being funny more than I believe in being correct. It’s almost a political belief I have: Comedy has to be funny. But there’s a curious system of algorithms, botnets and paid publicity that will scream the opposite at you.”

Following Adomian’s YouTube special “Path of Most Resistance,” released in September, his North American tour concludes Sunday, Jan. 19 at the Irvine Improv. The comic, impressionist and vocal actor will return to SXSW Comedy in Austin, Texas the weekend of March 7, performing a “keynote speech” in character as Elon Musk on opening night.

Adomian began performing post-9/11 during the early years of George W. Bush. He frequented shows in the basement of the Vermont Avenue Ramada Inn, downstairs at El Cid and the “show in Santa Monica near the promenade at a venue that no longer exists,” which was underground in terms of both street level and legality. “Maybe if we’re entering a terrible right-wing period again,” Adomian predicts, “the best comedy is just going to have to be underground for a few years.”

He became a regular on Scott Aukerman’s “Comedy Death-Ray” weekly at Upright Citizens Brigade and the show’s Indie 103.1 radio broadcast, then followed the renamed “Comedy Bang! Bang!” into podcasting and IFC’s 2012 to 2016 TV series. His hugely influential 2012 album “Low Hangin Fruit” was the debut release from Aukerman’s Earwolf Records. Adomian publicly embraced progressivism and proudly celebrated LGBTQ+ identity at a time when gay marriage wasn’t yet legal in all 50 states.

With Anthony Atamanuik, his satirical “Trump vs. Bernie” debates commanded a 40-city tour, special programming on Comedy Central and Fusion, a “Trump vs. Bernie: Live from Brooklyn” album and countless media appearances continuing years beyond the 2016 election cycle. He even sat down with Anthony Bourdain over Armenian food at Sahags Basturma to discuss politics and culture on the late chef and host’s “Little Los Angeles” web series.

After more than 20 years in comedy, “Resistance,” Adomian’s improbable first solo special “is a long time coming. I’ve been edging it,” he says in his opening minutes on stage during the special. The high-energy and layered hour is “a stand-up art piece, basically.”

Portrait of James Adomian, a beloved L.A. comic before his Irvine show Jan. 19 on the heels of his latest special “Path of Most Resistance.”

(Marcus Ubungen/Los Angeles Times)

His takes on Elon Musk, Alex Jones and his long-running Bernie Sanders appear during the hour. Adomian examines news media portrayal of Armenians, Turner Classic Movies, bigotry, the Federal Reserve and aging as a “notorious homosexual,” noting, “I used to be gay. Now I’m like an advisor on campus.” On the scourge of social-media expectations, Adomian says in the special, “If you see crowd work tonight, that means something terrible has happened.”

“I love to bring up an important or intelligent topic and then make very stupid jokes about it,” Adomian says. “People have said before that my comedy is smart or intelligent. That starts to sound like it’s one of those acts where you’ve got to have a degree in liberal arts to understand it. Nothing I do is difficult to understand. It’s all very basic and moronic.”

With Jared Goldstein opening, Adomian filmed “Resistance” at Echo Park’s “beautiful, dark and strange” Elysian Theater, where he’s a “Stand Up and Clown” veteran and had his own show for Netflix Is a Joke festival.

He admires the bravery and experimentation of newer comedians, calling fellow Elysian regular Courtney Pauroso’s October release “Vanessa 5000,” a sex-robot exploration of technology, “a dark work of genius.” Of experimental half-hour “How to Bake a Cake in the Digital Age” from Christina Catherine Martinez, he says, “I’m so enamored.”

In Los Feliz for more than a decade, Adomian is reputed as a vocal comedy-scene supporter and cheerleader. He cites his neighborhood’s Tuesday “Comedy Night at Best Fish Taco” among L.A.’s best stand-up offerings. Other indie-venue faves include Silver Lake’s Akbar and Lyric Hyperion, Eagle Rock’s the Fable, Echo Park’s Bar Bandini, Atwater Village’s Club Tee Gee, West Hollywood’s Bar Lubitsch, Koreatown’s R Bar, Highland Park’s the Offbeat bar and Westlake’s Dynasty Typewriter.

Adomian took the opportunity to complete a long-awaited side quest when his tour paused for the 2024 holiday season. He wanted to see the country and to reduce airplane travel “as we enter the next video game level of the climate apocalypse.” Riding two Amtrak trains over three days from Washington, D.C. to Chicago, then onward to Albuquerque before returning to L.A., he got little sleep but had great views.

He thought about the ways he wanted to approach the New Year and its myriad changes. The journey was “fun, uncomfortable, relaxing, exhausting, beautiful and fascinating. And now I know how to take a shower at 100 miles per hour.”

There’s a balance somewhere between angry and openness that Adomian hopes to achieve in 2025. Or maybe it’s about staying invested while remaining spiritual. As a guy who says he believes in reincarnation, Adomian thinks that living beings — politicians included — will always reap what they sow. Karma can be a b—. And most important, it’s time for far less reliance on crowd work.

“Life on Earth is kind of a playthrough of painfulness, pointlessness, beauty and a deep trove of meanings that we have to find somehow,” he says. “It’s therapeutic for me to say funny things that make me feel better about being alive. It’s sort of playing a very silly game, but also bringing up something important and making it a funny thing that’s not scary or objectionable. To make a good time out of a bad time.”