Magazine Madness

Sometimes in my presentations I hold up magazines and read the titles of articles contained within. Of course, these are not really articles contained within... these are titles I have made up. Point is, it is pretty funny to hold up, say, a copy of Oprah and read a title from it.

The way it works is that you mickey up whatever title suits your topic. I was recently presenting a keynote, "Nobody Powerwalked When I Was a Kid" talking about the bombardment of self-improvement in our lives and I used some magazines to parody some self-improvement articles.

My favourite was "Create Your Entire Spring Wardrobe from Duct Tape" This got a big laugh. I had another part of the title, but I was holding it back so that I could judge whether it would be suitable for the particular audience. It was, they were largely a women's group who where in a very good mood... so I added the rest of the title "Free Thong Pattern Included" which got another laugh.

Magazines look like great props, help you remember what you wanted to say and generally enhance a humorous presentation.