Toastmasters Humorist: Politician Bloopers and Gaffes

My Toastmasters Club has a long tradition of beginning each meeting with a 2-minute joke or humorous story, to kind of break the ice and get the meeting off an a light note.  This week, I took my first attempt at being the "humorist."  I thought I did well, using much more expression and tonal variety than in my first 2 speeches.  I'm also very pleased that I was able to make it through the whole thing without referring to my notes!  Here is the text I put together to get folks laughing:

We have all been subjected, in the last couple weeks, to a rather large dose of partisan politics from Washington, D.C.  The air in our nation’s capital is said to be toxic with partisanship.  Well, today, they have ALL earned the right to be roasted, in a non-partisan way, as we take review some of my personal favorite bloopers and gaffes from politicians.

First, on the 2008 Presidential campaign trail, then-Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden famously declared, “Look, John’s last minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: Jobs.  J-O-B-S.  Jobs.”

Over to the other side of the aisle, former Vice President Dan Quayle had so many classic bloopers, I have to give you at least two of them.  Once as Mr. Quayle began a speech at NASA, he quipped, in all seriousness, “Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.”  In another speech, Quayle profoundly observed, “If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.”

Back to the left, during an investigation in the midst of her husband’s presidency, Hillary Clinton put her foot down.  “I’m not going to have reporters pawing through our papers,” she said.  “We are the president.”

Finally, my #1 all-time favorite, from whom else, but the eminently quotable former President George W. Bush.  In the opening of a 2004 speech in Nashville, as he acknowledged various dignitaries and notable audience members, Bush said, “Karyn is with us.  A West Texas girl, just like me!”

Toastmasters Speech #1: An Independent, Entrepreneurial Family Man

Hi. My name is Adam Feik, and I am an independent, entrepreneurial, family man. Allow me to introduce the story of how I came to be who I am today.

First, the story of becoming independent. I enjoyed a wonderful youth & childhood, and felt very prepared to go out on my own after high school. After my freshman year of college, I served a full-time mission for my church for 2 years, then returned home for 6 months to work and earn money to go back & finish school. I worked nearly full-time throughout the remainder of my college career, and I must say this experience of supporting myself probably gave me more applicable knowledge and wisdom than the college courses themselves. In college, I also became an avid reader of The Wall Street Journal, which has developed into a passion for lifelong learning.

After college, I married and we moved to Boise where I took a full-time, entry-level job to start my career. Within a year, I had upgraded to a job with another company, who encouraged me to take advantage of their tuition reimbursement program to pursue an MBA at Boise State. I thought I was done with school, but I realized this was an opportunity I should definitely take! So, back to school I went, this time with 3 years’ real-world experience under my belt, working more than full-time, and with a wife and baby boy at home. I was seemingly gone all day and all night, and when I was home, I was studying. By the time I finished the MBA program 2 years later, we had 2 sons… I always tell friends we’re not sure how that happened! But I was an even more dedicated student this time around due to having a little more maturity, and my whole education was a great experience. I came out of it prepared for a great career in the financial advice business, and ready to find my own success. And that’s my story of independence.

Now, about being entrepreneurial. This happened only about 10 months ago, when after 7 years working at investment brokerage firms (2 of them), I “saw the light” and “went independent.” Being an independent has been a natural fit for me and my clients, as you might imagine. I love having open architecture, access to everything, and the ability to be completely objective in my investment advice to clients. It’s also been fun to brand my own business and promote it, and has been very gratifying to attract new clients who are comfortable enough to trust me with their life savings, and sometimes even introduce me to their own friends and colleagues so I can work with them. I named my company Beacon Rock after a place in the Columbia River Gorge near where I grew up. Beacon Rock & my business are part of who I am, and I’m sure I will be in business for myself until I retire.

Finally, my family. My mom & dad have been & continue to be a huge positive influence in my life. I love them, and my 2 younger brothers & 2 younger sisters, and my wife & kids. We have 4 sons, ages 11, 9, 7, and 3, and I could have spent the whole 4-6 minutes talking just about them! They are so awesome, and they are what life is all about for me. My sons are really, really, REALLY into sports, big time. They never think about anything except basketball during basketball season, football during football season, or baseball during baseball season. Except my 3 year-old may not realize the football season just ended. Last night, he was sleeping next to me and I heard him say in his sleep, “Cardinals beat the Bengals. Are you kidding me?” When he woke up, I asked him if he dreamed about football. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he said, “Yeah. And basketball and baseball.” They are pretty funny. They play sports, too, and that has become one of our family’s favorite pastimes.

So there you have me, Adam Feik, in a nutshell – an independent, owner of Beacon Rock Investment Consulting, and a son, brother, husband, and father of 4 great boys.

Toastmasters Speech #2: Baskeball Road Trip Weekend

What an amazing road trip my two oldest boys and I had last weekend! I had forgotten how much fun a good, spontaneous basketball road trip can be – but this one was filled with extra meaning for my boys & me, and the friends we went with. More than just a trip to see a game, our experience brought us all closer together, transformed my family’s perception of my own alma mater, and – to quote a popular college basketball broadcaster – was flat-out AWESOME BABY!

It started at 10:30 Friday morning, when I received a text message from my friend Mike, who lives 2 doors down from us and has 2 boys the same ages as my 2 oldest. Mike’s text said, “3 open seats in our van for a 2:45 departure to Provo for the big game. U, Cam, and Ky?” This sent my wife & I into a flurry of activity to decide if the 3 of us could miss the rest of the weekend at home – including getting Camden & Kyler out of school early.

Mike’s use of the words “big game” was no exaggeration. The New Mexico Lobos, ranked #11 nationally, would be playing 12th-ranked Brigham Young University in a de facto conference championship game – one of the last regular season games of the year. Both teams would come in with records of 26-3 and hoping to receive a #3 or #4 seed in this month’s March Madness NCAA tournament. Then I remembered New Mexico is now coached by one of my boyhood heroes, Steve Alford, who was a deadly shooter on the Indiana Hoosiers’ 1987 national championship team. Suddenly, the old college basketball adrenaline and passion began flowing back into my veins. But this weekend would be the 1st time since Danny Ainge in 1981 (which I was too young to remember) that my basketball excitement would involve my alma mater.

I graduated from Brigham Young University in 1997. And even though I love sports and attended almost every home football and basketball game while I was there, I ironically never became a true fan of BYU Cougar sports teams! BYU’s basketball team won only 1 game during my senior year there. Besides, I’m a lifelong Oregon Duck fan, and now a Boise State Bronco fan along with my wife & kids. Since leaving Provo, we’ve never really even followed BYU sports. In fact, we weren’t even aware of BYU’s collision course with New Mexico’s team until a few days before the game.

My sons have big-time sports dreams of their own, none of which have ever involved BYU. My 11 year-old Kyler believes he’s destined for the NFL or Major League Baseball. And my 9 year-old Camden KNOWS he was born to become the greatest ever point guard in the NBA. When they dream of college sports glory, they have always envisioned themselves in the colors of national powerhouses like North Carolina, Michigan, Alabama,… or Oregon. After our memorable road trip last weekend to BYU, they would seriously entertain a scholarship offer to follow in their dad’s footsteps! Provo has now officially splash-landed on the college hoops map for Ky & Cam. They were so excited, I think the world now has a couple new BYU fans.

Our road trip truly was AWESOME baby! The kids had an absolute blast. I picked them up from school, and they had no idea what was going on. I said, “Have you guys ever seen a Top 25 basketball team play in person?”

“No.”

“How about 2 Top 25 teams?”

“No.”

Then I held up a printout of an article from the Internet that had the headline "Number 11 New Mexico vs. Number 12 BYU," and said, “Wanna go?”

They looked at me as if to ask “Are you crazy? What are you talking about?” then said, “We’re going?”

I said, “Yep, we leave in 5 minutes. Let’s go.”

We ate at In N’ Out Burger in Provo and stayed at Nathan & Danny’s great-grandma’s house near the BYU football stadium Friday night (she was on a trip to Seattle, so we had the place to ourselves… but we were good). Tip-off was Saturday at 2 PM, so spent most of the morning exploring BYU’s campus. The kids loved the science building, which has a huge pendulum that moves with the earth’s rotation, as well as science and geologic exhibits, kind of like the Discovery Center of Idaho. We probably spent an hour there. We showed them the huge library, which has one wing that is underground. We explored the famous BYU bookstore, walked all over campus, saw the apartment where I lived when I met their mom, and saw the apartment where Mike lived when he met Nathan & Danny’s mom. At about 1 PM, we met my sister and her husband, who live about 10 minutes away, for a lunch of gourmet hot dogs just off campus, then we walked up to the Marriott Center for the moment we had all been waiting for – the BIG GAME.

The atmosphere was electric, like nothing I had ever seen before at BYU. I thought we were in Cameron Indoor for a Duke-North Carolina game. Well, almost. It WAS awesome! The game was tight the whole way. BYU fell behind by 8 going into halftime, then took the lead again less than 5 minutes into the 2nd half. We were being treated to one heck of a barnburner! In the final, fateful seconds of the game, New Mexico pulled ahead and won, 83-81. Interestingly, the outcome of the game barely mattered as far as our experience was concerned.

After the game, we toured some more areas of campus, including the brand new BYU Sports Hall of Fame, where we saw Ty Detmer’s actual Heisman Trophy, Steve Young’s actual Super Bowl MVP trophy and NFL MVP trophy, Jack Morris’ World Series MVP trophy, and Danny Ainge’s jerseys from both the Boston Celtics and Toronto Blue Jays. Needless to say, all of that made quite an impression!

Finally, as you can tell, we got to know our friends, Mike, Nathan, and Danny a lot better. And the trip was good bonding time for Kyler, Camden, and me. When you travel 12 hours with someone in a weekend, you get to know them on a level you didn’t know them before. I must say we are blessed to have neighbors and friends like Mike, Nathan, and Danny, whom we have only known for about 2 years. I hope we get to stay close friends throughout our kids’ years growing up, through Eagle Middle School and Eagle High School, and then… who knows? BYU? And then maybe the Portland Trail Blazers?

As you can tell, our basketball road trip this weekend certainly did open up the kids eyes to what a great university lies just 6 hours down the interstate, helped build friendships and family bonds, and was totally awesome and fun!

What is FeikSpeak?

I have given many speeches, talks, and lessons in my life (although the picture is not of me), and have written some articles and stories along the way as well.  Regrettably, I have saved very few of those... but that is about to change, thanks to my idea to start FeikSpeak.blogspot.com!
Today, I gave my 2nd prepared speech in my new Toastmasters club (Boise Bible College Toastmasters).  I joined Toastmasters recently at the invitation of a CPA friend of mine, and accepted the invitation as an opportunity to improve my skills and develop what I hope will become a professional ability. 
On the way home from today's speech, I conceived the idea for FeikSpeak!  This blog will be the EXCLUSIVE place to find the entire future collection of my creativity and wordsmithmanship (not a word, but pretty impressive made-up one, right?) on all kinds of topics.  I hope you (whoever you are out there in the blog-o-sphere) will enjoy what you read!
In preparing my 2 Toastmasters speeches thus far, I have written out the text verbatim, then created index cards for the main ideas to help me during delivery.  The written text is what you will see here; I'll post my 1st 2 speeches today!  Look for the following upcoming speech and article topics: The Genius of the U.S. Constitution, and The New Optimism: Self-Reliance.