Last evening, Mark and I attended the District 47 Toastmasters Humorous Speech Contest.  It was held at the Lake Mary Marriott so it was practically a must that we attend.  It would be a long time before this event  would again be a stones throw from our house.   Conference chicken and a great 90 minute show, at $50 a ticket how could you go wrong.  Not to mention, Lake Mary Toastmaster's own Eddie Selover, made it all the way to the district level competition.  A great honor considering he had to compete at various other levels to win a berth at last night's prestigious event.

The evening's festivities commenced with a processional of the district and area officers.   There was much pomp and circumstance as the officers and their escorts were announced and paraded into the room.   Opening comments and the invocation left a lot to be desired, but the singing of the American National Anthem followed by the Bahamian Anthem was definitely an experience.

A mere 40 minutes until the start of the main event.  The humorous speech competition.  

The Humorous Speech Contest:

As a Toastmaster, you must learn to infuse humor into your speeches.  For those Toastmasters who show proficiency at this skill, they can enter this once yearly event.  Unlike the International Speech contest, this event goes only as high as District.   However contestants must first compete at their club, area and division contests before reaching the district level.  

Creating a speech that keeps the audience rolling for 7 minutes is quite an art and extremely difficult.  Whether you tell a story about raising kids, a trip to Scotland, a roller coaster ride or dumping your dead mothers ashes; weaving a compelling story and then getting up on stage and selling it are skills that take Toastmasters years to develop....7 years if you are Damien Miller.

There are 9 categories in which the humorous contest speeches are judged.   3 of the components are critical to this type of speech, they are effectiveness, speech value and audience response.   For the category of effectiveness, one must build excitement, suspense, twist and surprise by connecting humorous events.  Audience response is a 15 point category and you are judged on audience reception, interest and laughter.  Speech value is another 15 point category where your content is evaluated for originality of ideas and material. 

All 11 contestants were amazing.  Doug S talked about overcoming depression and the myriad of pills he endured, Yahya talked about being 50 and the warranty on your body that starts to fade.  Daniel talked about his trip to Scotland, something which Mark and I related to since we had been there.  Carol talked about raising her kids and Joy about dumping her mothers ashes in the Grand Canyon.  Chuck was truly inspiring as he gave words of wisdom from Mr Rogers and had the only politically slanted speech of the evening.  Damien recounted the 6 previous times he has been to this competition and our own Eddie grossed everyone out with square, round and triangular sandwich meat from K-Mart.   All brought something unique and each were master story tellers and knew how to make the audience roar with laughter.  


As for the winners..........


Mark and I absolutely loved David Lloyd.  He had everyone in the audience rolling with laughter as he proceeded to explain the baffling world of plungers.  That's right, this man wrote an amazing speech  around plunging a stopped up toilet.   He had plungers of all shapes and sizes and even a wooden table area with some configured PVC pipe where he demonstrated how the air compression plungers can literally blow the top off your plumbing system... "just be sure your daughter isn't siting on the other toilet." at the time you are using this mega-air-pumping-plunger.   I want to know if he rigged the toastmasters flag to fall off the wall exactly on cue.  


Mark gave Terry Smid a higher score than I did.  Her story was a personal one of her most embarrassing moment when she rented a wave-runner so she could get up close to her 15 year old daughter's bikini photo shoot.   Poor Terry nearly drowned and needed to be pulled out of the ocean right up onto the beach she was trying to stalk.   What made her speech charming was that it was of a personal story.   She also had great theatrics and sound effects (as did all of the winners) illustrating how she swam up to the surface after a near miss boating crash.


Doug Kent won first place and I gave him a higher score than did Mark.  His story was a personal one of the time his kids coaxed him onto a roller coaster.    Doug took a very simple story and built up the suspense and anguish that he obviously experienced.   One of the reasons I really loved him, was his expressiveness and body movement.  You could really experience what it must feel like to be totally afraid on a coaster-something that is completely foreign to me since I am a coaster-junkie. 



Winners:

First Placeoug Kent

Second Place: David Lloyd

Third Place: Terry Smid



Speaking Order:

Carol Boyd

David Lloyd

Damien Miller

Dan Macdonald

Doug Kent

Terry Smid

Eddie Selover

Yahya Khajeh-Noori

Doug Schnetzka

Chuck Burnett

Joy Ingram