District 36 Member Showcase

Humourously Speaking, (club #3636) by John Melmed Photos by Marilyn Mack

One of District 36's newest clubs, a Specialty Club in humor called Humorously Speaking, was struggling to sign on new members. After three months of existence, the club had only 14 members and there was a danger of inbreeding taking place with such a small number.

Stepping up to the rescue were three of the club's funny men - Stan Dambroski, current District 36 Humor Champ, and John Melmed and Jay Moore, previous knock em dead winners of District 36 humorfests.  They said, to build membership, how about some good old fashioned fraud followed by arm twisting and bait and switching.

They put together a team of seven old (some of them really old) District 36 and 27 Humorous Speech Contest winners.  They hosted a four part series of 2-hour educational presentations on humorous speaking. The series was designed for 15 attendees but they got 20 signed up and had to turn others away. The seven mentors were very proud of the fact that very few of the attendees fell asleep during the sessions.

The seven funny men gave presentations on multiple aspects of humor and humorous speaking. This was like a 16 hour TLI.  Each of them delivered their winning speeches from the district contest they had won, and dissected their speeches for the benefit of the Humorcrafters, as the attendees were called. Each humorcrafter gave one or two humorous speeches which were evaluated by two or three of the mentors. The mentors had plenty to evaluate, thankfully!

To say that the mentors saw growth in the attendees was an understatement! 

"We are grooming future District 36 Humorous Speech winners" said one of the mentors. The humorcrafters themselves were enthused about the course.

"It only cost $27.00!!" said one of them.  "I was going to spend $27.00 for a latte at Starbucks but decided to take the course instead.

What else the humorcrafters got for their $27.00 was a free 6 month membership in Humorously Speaking and most of them have availed themselves of this opportunity to learn to be funny. If you're reading this article, you are either thinking you are not very funny or your day has been pretty boring.  On the bright side you're invited to join the laughter on the last Tuesday of each month at GEICO headquarters, Western Avenue, Chevy Chase at 7:00 PM. There is talk of a second meeting a month in Rockville one Sunday afternoon a month. Stay tuned.