I recently chatted with a hot dog server at a Costco lunch counter. He said he’d held several jobs at Costco during the past five years—since leaving his job as a high school teacher. So I asked the obvious question: “Why do you stay here serving hot dogs?” “Because of the way I’m treated,” he said. “I actually make a bit more than I did teaching. Plus, I know that sooner or later I’ll be given a bigger job—perhaps one with some management responsibility, and that’s exciting to me.” I’m still looking to find the employee who isn’t favorably disposed toward Costco

I have nothing against hot dog man at Costco. But it’s ridiculous that you can make more and be treated better than as a teacher. If he messes up, the customer gets heart burn. If a teacher messes up, a kid gets turned off to learning forever. Stories of lousy pay / poor treatment for teachers are cliché, but this one takes the cake (or is it the hot dog?).

My freshman year of college, my future roommate and I had both toyed with becoming teachers. We quickly decided against it since it was clear even in 1995 that this is where the world was going to.

I know there were great future teachers in my classes and I’m sure there are great future teachers studying now. They love their subject matter and more importantly, love kids. But… but, there’s a lot of horrible ones too. John & his roommate and lots of other potentially good teachers never sign up for this. So there is a smaller pool of teachers and hence more demand for lousy ones. Two events from my college days really drove this home to me.

Abstract Algebra is a hard class - it’s toward the end of the curriculum for undergrad math major. When I took the class at Purdue, most of the class future high school math teachers, with a few industry bound folks. (There was an honors version for the future Phds.) When we got the results from our tests back, the class average was in the 40’s. One of the other non-future math teachers and yours truly scored in the 90’s. The class size was ~15, so 2 90’s could raise the class average quite a bit. (7 points if the class had 15 and the average was 45 points counting us.) It’s not that we were smarter. We cared and worked hard. The future high school teachers seemed not only to have checked out (drinking etc, which they were), but they were not even the slightest passionate about any type of math from what I could tell.

A far worse experienced happened in a Brit Lit class. One of my classmates was a future English teacher. I asked him once what he was reading for pleasure. He told me that he hated reading and was proud of it. This really, really pissed me off. I asked him why the hell he wanted to be an English teacher with that attitude. We had some words. Let’s leave it at that. I’m sure he’s still an English teacher since he doesn’t care about anything - not the bad pay or treatment or the fact he’s making other kids hate reading.

I compare this to my experience in grade school and high school. Most of my teachers were geeks in their various fields. My English teachers lived / ate / breathed literature. My history teachers could tell you anything about anything, even outside their fields. I heard it 2nd hand (but I believe it) that as our Calculus teacher chaperoned us during our senior trip, she read an advanced math book for pleasure. The few that were not geeks in there fields were always younger.

My premise here is of course you have to care about the subject you’re teaching as well as kids. Maybe at grade school where you just cleanup runny noses all day that’s not true, but even at high school the specialization you need demands passion in your subject area. Kids will pick up on this – they’re not stupid, even if some of their teachers are.

So - if you know a good teacher be extra nice to them. And be nice to the hot dog guy at Costco, too.

Which of the following do you want to do?

1. Try to be funny and have the audience rolling on the floor.
2. Try to be funny and bomb.
3. Be cute / feel good, but not going for any laughs.

Let’s say that you don’t know if you can get (a). No one can ever be certain, after all. If (a) is off the table, which is better - (b) or (c)?

For real-life scenarios, it’s (d). Don’t try to be funny or cute if you’re not funny or cute. You don’t want your presentation to the board of directors to elicit groans at your bad jokes.

But remember - this isn’t real life, it’s Toastmasters! (I imagine my fellow blogger, ex-TM Jeff is chuckling .) In particular it’s a humorous speech contest. You’re better off going for jokes that will get the audience laughing and screwing up than playing it totally safe. Another advantage of these contests is that they’re short. No matter how poorly you do, at least 7 minutes later the nightmare is over. For longer speeches, trying to be funny repeatedly and failing is truly painful.

An example of playing it safe with a humorous type speech is Prairie Home Companion, a radio show on NPR. They try to have little cute, feel good stories and situations and all and it’s supposed to be funny. It’s not. One of my favorite Simpsons gags was when Homer was watching Prairie Home Companion on TV and didn’t get it. Finally he got up and started banging on the TV and said, “Be funny.”

A lot of humorous contest speeches are like this. They try and describe kind of cute situations, but at best they’ll leave you with a smile, but won’t come close to making you laugh. They generally don’t do well at contest season.

I’m not trying to be harsh on TM’s who have a softer, NPR sense of humor. I’m assuming that if you’re still reading you’re serious about winning one of these contests and you want to know the harsh truth about what it takes to win. Most of the judges are like me. They want to hear the audience actually laughing and they want some pop in the speech. If you want you want a non-contest speech to be cutesy, that’s fine. I’ll give you %95 chances you’ll still be better than our friends an NPR.

(If you’re wondering — my dad listened to Prairie Home Companion and I caught it 2nd hand as a kid and I never got it, which is why I’m picking on it in particular.)

I’d also rather do (b) than (c) if I’m speaking . Let’s say that I give a 5-7 minute humorous speech and it’s a disaster. I go for huge jokes and no one laughs. OK. It’ll be the longest 5-7 minutes of my life, but I can at least do a post-mortem to figure out what went wrong. It’s not always your fault. I’ve seen good speeches bomb because the mood of the audience isn’t right. More likely it is your fault though, which is good because you can fix the next time.

If you get up and don’t try to get laughs or play it really really safe, you don’t learn as much about being funny. Learning is what the contests are about after all, even if we get obsessed with winning.

The take away is despite my warnings against standup comedy, you have to be willing to get up there and swing and miss.

1)        On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your first speech? Why?

2)        On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your last speech? Why?

3)        In your opinion what is the most important part of a speech? Why?

4)        In your opinion what is the least important part of a speech? Why?

5)        Why is public speaking such a paralyzing fear in the world today?

6)        Who is the speaker that you admire the most and why?

7)        What are your thoughts on writing a speech word for word prior to delivery?

8)        Why were you initially drawn to public speaking?

9)        List 3 common myths about public speaking that you hear constantly. Tell us why they aren’t true.

10)        What advice would you give someone who was about to deliver their first real speech before an audience.

You can check out my answers on Marcus’s Blog. I’m a bit embarrassed because I think my answers were long-winded in retrospect, but oh well. Thanks Marcus & good luck.

Let’s say you have some iffy piece of humor. Maybe it borders on offensive, or maybe it’s kind of out there, the type of thing one or two judges won’t get. Let’s also say that there are 6 judges. And for the sake of this discussion, let’s say that when the contest comes you run away with it. At most contests it’s obvious who the first place is and most of the time it’s obvious who the 2nd place person is, too. Having three speeches that are viable doesn’t happen as often as it should, even at the District Level.

(You may think I’m a snob saying that having >2 speeches in a contest that deserve to win is not common. I’m not. I’m not trying to discourage people, I’ve entered contests with so-so material and I learned from getting clobbered. I’m just being brutally honest.)

Anyway, let’s say you have some joke about how you did pot in college. It was done in passing, no one laughs because TM’s are conservative, but the rest of your speech was beautiful. Only two people were truly offended at your pot reference. Unfortunately, those two people were judges. They were so offended they decide to leave you off the ballot entirely. You don’t even get a measly 3rd place out of them because they don’t want you continuing.

So on the 1st 4 judges ballots, you got all 4 first place votes. 4 1st place * 3 points per = 12 points. Your nearest competitor got all the 2nd place votes. So 4 * 2 = 8. So far, so good for you.

On the offended judges’ ballots, you’re off entirely, so you get 0 points. The guy (or gal) that came in 2nd on the other ballots came in 1st here. So 3 * 2 = 6.

When you add it together, you get 12 + 0 = 12 points. Your competitor got 8 + 6 = 14. Who won?

I’ve been at contests where I swear that has happened. I’ve never seen a pot reference, but it feels like a contestant must have rubbed a few judges the wrong way, because when they don’t get 1st people ask how it played out like that.

This applies to any contest of course, but humorous and table topics are the ones people are more likely get themselves in hot water. 

My main competitor had a tribe - probably 15 people - supporting him. This guy was insanely funny and got tons of laughs and earned them. But of course in most funny speeches there’s some stuff that’s just marginally amusing. He had those moments too, but he got uproarious laughter anyway. I’m pretty sure was led by his club mates. And laughter is contagious, so what should have fallen flat got roars.

I want to make it clear that I’m not upset at all about how this played out. This was one of dozens of factors that went into me getting clobbered that day. Most of this guy’s material was really, really funny and deserved to get huge laughs. Had the contest been close, though, there’s no doubt his huge support crew would have pushed him over the edge.

If you look at the judging sheet for the contest, it says that 10 points is for audience reaction. That’s understating it. The judges are people too and are going to be influenced by the audience response. If the audience is falling out of their seats laughing, that will favorably influence the judges’ opinions about your story development, your overall speech value, etc etc. The same thing works against you if no one laughs.

So try to get as many of your friends - in TM and out - to show up to support you as possible. I’m not suggesting you coach your friends to be silent for other folks routines; even I’m not that hardcore.

As a follow up - I’ve been over to the guy’s house who beat me a few times and his wife is a fantastic cook. Maybe that’s why I don’t mind losing.

The best advice on how to handle borderline offensive material in any context is, “When in doubt, leave it out.”

TM’s are much more conservative deep down than you probably realize and maybe a lot of them realize themselves. People that stay in TM and especially people who volunteer for stuff like judging contests have a certain inner organizational nerd. I’m over-generalizing I know, but organizational nerds tend heavily toward traditionalism in my experience. I’ve learned this the hard way in the last time I made a run at this by pushing people too far.

I live in the Seattle area, part of the Left Coast, and even here TM’s (or TM judges at least) don’t tolerate humor that’s too “progressive.” I imagine in other parts of the country it’s even stronger.

One example is a guy who made a joke about drinking too much and got a huge laugh because it came out of nowhere and was really funny. (We’re not so traditionalist to be against a passing alcohol reference, though your mileage may vary.) Then the guy extended the joke except he replaced it with him smoking pot in college.

There were some gasps and then awful, dead, silence. It was like a chill was on the room. The pot reference is the type of thing that a judge will remember and if they’re inclined, will leave you off their voting ballot entirely for. I’ll show you how in the future one or two judges doing that almost certainly mean you can’t win, no matter what the other judges think. And never mind the judging nitty-gritty. If you have a chill go over the audience after your pot reference, you have you work cut out for you just to win them over for the rest of your speech.

When in doubt, leave it out.

The guy who won the Humorous Speech Contest for D2 had the title along the lines of, “Ramblings of a Redhead Russian Redneck” or something like that. It was a very funny speech about a poor Russian immigrant trying to learn English.

I spoke with the Evaluation Champ after the contest was over and she explained her make the title funny rule. She suggested that the speaker could have token one of the lines from his speech and made it the title instead. The alternate title I think is much better. “Billy Ray Cyrus Taught Me English”

The one way this can backfire of course is if your speech title isn’t funny. Of course, that’s the same as the rest of your speech - you can bomb just about anywhere. Isn’t this process fun?

Related closely to the title is the fact that you want people laughing as soon as you possible can once you start talking. I know this sounds obvious but it’s not. I’m not preaching against people bombing on opening jokes. That’s OK, because they’re trying at least. I’ve bombed by share of openings, too. I’m talking about people that don’t even try to be funny for the first minute or two because they’re so interested in setting the scene, introducing characters, or whatever.

You also have to make sure you set the right tone. One of the funniest speeches I’ve ever heard was from a guy who told about how he volunteered in his town’s flood rescue team back in Germany. Most of the story was about how he thought there would be a raging flood, so he put on his full scuba gear, and as it turned out there was only an inch of water on the ground. He walked around with the whole town looking while he had his Oxygen tank and flippers on through tiny puddles. I’m not doing it justice since he acted it out really beautifully.

The problem was that the guy started with a quote about greatness (or something like that) from Bruce Lee. When I think of Bruce Lee, I think of someone who died well before his time. I didn’t know this German guy at the time, so I thought his speech was going to be some weird and very dark Eurotrash stuff. It was the opposite, but by putting the thought of Bruce Lee in my mind it took me literally minutes to get back into the zany humor he had.

So be funny of course and be funny early, even in the title if you can.

The one rub here is that if you’re going to practice, you shouldn’t be doing it a week or two before your club contest. The reason here is that most people will remember your jokes and it won’t be as funny the second time around. If you can practice six months before the contest begins, then that’s a different story.

In my entry years ago, I had some very questionable material. I gave my speech in February and was told bluntly that I had to remove the offending lines. When the humorous contest came around in September, I was able to reuse jokes that I knew worked with confidence that no one’s memory was good enough to remember them.

The best place to practice is in another Toastmasters club. You don’t have the same “seen it” already danger. And if you do end up winning at your club level, the feedback you get at the other club will be even more valuable as you head onto Area (and beyond hopefully!) where it’s not your chums who will get inside jokes.

• “I’ve been getting into astronomy so I installed a skylight. The people who live above me are furious.”
  
• “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”
• “Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.”
• “I went to a store that had a sign that said “Open 24 Hours” and it was closed…I asked the manager ‘Why are you closing? It says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said ‘Not in a row.’”
• “If it’s a penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, someone’s making a penny.”
• “I finally got around to reading the dictionary. Turns out the zebra did it.”

Your humorous speech contest entry is a humorous speech. That sounds obvious but it’s not. To rephrase it, your humorous speech is not stand up comedy. You can’t get up and tell a bunch of unconnected jokes and expect to win out too far. You need to have the standard opening, body, and conclusion of a speech, that just happens to have funny material in it.

If you look at the judges’ evaluation form, you get a sense of this:

Also recall all the points you get for vocal variety, moving around, and so on in the humorous contest judging section.

But it’s more than just that. Most judges I know have knee-jerk reaction that a humorous speech is not standup and will knee-jerk vote down anyone that they think is a standup routine. A standup can not move around at all and be totally monotone like Steven Wright because he’s not judged by the same criteria Toastmasters are come contest-time.

That said, you need elements of standup - namely the people laughing when you tell jokes.

I wrote a lot about understanding the contest rules already. Anyway the same applies for humorous, once again our good friends in Chicago have posted up the contest rules for us.

The take away here is that you have to move (physical + manner, 20 points combined), use vocal variety (10), and have a developed speech (~45). In the next post I’ll have a lot more to say about speech development versus standup comedy. But for now, if you’re weak on any of these areas be aware you need to stretch a bunch if you want to compete at a high level. That’s the point of the contest after all, anyway.