SpeechGeek Postings

After months of competition, the National Forensic Association College National Champions have been named.

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Every coach freaks out just a teeny bit this time of year.

It’s a perfectly natural occurrence.  With UIL, NFL districts, state tournaments, TOC, and more, there’s plenty of reasons to be on edge.  It turns out there was another forensics coach who was prone to major mood swings: Hitler.  Seriously.  There’s video footage of it, even.

Thank goodness students have time outside of rounds and school work to put together projects like this.  The video is a derivative of “The Hitler Meme” floating around the interwebs.  This particular iteration puts a speech and debate twist on it.  In jokes abound for forensics friends.

Know Your Meme gives the uninitiated a bit of context on the joke:

“The Hitler Meme” or “Hitler finds out” is a video meme involving the addition of new subititles to the dramatic scene of Hitler’s final meltdown from the German movie Downfall directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The subtitles are often anachronistically altered with humorous English subtitles surrounding current events.

From the NYTimes: “Fire up YouTube. There you can see the Hitler figure erupt in frustration over his Xbox. He flips out because his friends aren’t going to Burning Man. And, recently, he loses it because Sarah Palin isn’t working out as a running mate. Something in the spectacle of an autocrat falling to pieces evidently has widespread appeal.”

Clicky, clicky past the jump to check out the parody. (Note: the video does contain strong language some readers may consider inappropriate.)

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If you’ve linked up to our site via and RSS feed or stumbled here via a Google search, it comes as no surprise that things have been dormant at SpeechGeek postings for the some time.

The blog was initially created when we had an HTML website and wanted a quick and easy way to share site updates and news.  Since launching our new website last fall and offering our products through the Yahoo Store System, we haven’t really figured out what to do with SpeechGeek Postings.

We’ve been busy, mind you.  We partnered with Logan Scisco last fall to expand coverage at our sister site Extemp Central.  We’re now running DebateChamps.  Busy, busy, busy.

However, we’re looking for SpeechGeek Postings to make a comeback at this year’s Kentucky High School Speech League, Inc. state tournament in March.  Our goal to provide live coverage of the event.  Additionally, we’re eyeing offering live coverage of the 2010 National Forensic Association college national tournament.

Hope you stick around for the fun.

Yale University certainly needs very little help in getting students to apply. The prestigious Ivy League school is one of the nation’s most difficult schools to get into, after all.

That doesn’t mean their admissions office doesn’t know how to have fun. Hitting the internet over the past few days has been a 17-minute musical titled “That’s Why I Chose Yale.” The student-produced film has almost 118,000 at the time of posting.

Current students applying to college have grown up accustomed to individuals breaking into song and dance for no reason whatsoever. Think about it: High School Musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and the TV series Glee all rely heavily on bits of the old song and dance.

What’s particularly fun for forensicators is that the star of Yale’s YouTube sensation is Kobi Libii, a 2003 NFL National Finalist in Original Oratory. Check out Yale’s official YouTube channel to see the viral hit, or hop on over to NFLtv to see his final round speech titled “Spin Cycle.”

Keep reading to check out the video.

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by Corey Alderdice

Well, this is interesting. The National Forensic League and their Diversity Challenge Initiative have taken the wraps off NFLtv. The website describes the mission of the joint venture:

NFLtv.org exists to provide the forensic community and the general public a single source for high quality videos dedicated to speech & debate.

The website features a variety of videos across debate, congress, limited prep and interp events. Videos include showcases, instructional items and national final rounds. There’s even some blasts from the past circa the 1908s.

Of recent note, you can relive the entire Stars Fell on Alabama national tournament (including the awards ceremony).

What do you think? How can NFL make this an even more useful resource for coaches and competitors alike?

Keep on reading for a look at the Extemporaneous Speaking Showcase video.

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Overview
What is the first rule of extemp? Answer the question. In the majority of rounds if you are able to answer the question, you will be one of the top extempers in the round. When I say answer the question, I mean this very specifically. Answer every aspect of the question, don’t just use it as a prompt to talk about what you want to discuss. Because answering the question is so important, this brief is going to explain how to break down a question so that you know exactly what it is asking. Once you know this, you can formulate a speech that is a direct answer. Away we go, into how to answer the question land.

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SpeechGeek is excited to share information with our readers about a free new podcast for high school debate.

Loquitur is an Internet podcast dedicated to interviewing academic and professional experts on current National Forensic League debate topics for the free educational benefit of high school students competing in Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum Debate. Loquitur is brought to you courtesy of Trinity Briefs and Georgia Forensics Daily.

For more information, or to have a listen, visit their website: http://loqdebate.com.

Over the years, SpeechGeek has worked diligently to provide you with the literature, services and merchandise that would make any character-poppin’, 30 minute-preppin’, three point-speaking speech geek proud. In the fall of 2003, we featured our first issue of literature geared toward forensics. Today, we produce four issues each season: Fall, Winter, Spring and Nationals, each with fresh and never-been-seen-before pieces of prose, poetry, drama, and duets. Our selection of merchandise has blossomed to over a dozen different shirts to keep you looking stylishly ‘speech-y’ when you’re not in your tournament clothes. SpeechGeek has been working to offer educational services and is excited to announce our venture into providing extemp questions for practice as well as tournament hosting. Additionally, we’ve branched out and made friends with DebateChamps.com, where you can find all of issues available for instant download.As we reflect on how far we’ve come in the past few years, we know that one thing that won’t change is our view of oral interpretation and its role in competitive forensics. As publishers, our goal at SpeechGeek has always been two-fold:

1. To provide current competitors and coaches with access to new performance-friendly material.
2. To create a place for writers, poets, playwrights and forensics alumni to publish innovative and creative works of literature.

We believe that oral interpretation teaches students to look at a piece of literature from a variety of angles – as an analytical critic, as a creative performer as well as a forensics competitor. Furthermore, we believe that the greatest educational value comes from the student performing literature written by an author whose vision and intent for the material is unknown to the performer. We consider this to be the heart of oral interpretation.

SpeechGeek does not encourage nor condone the act of students or coaches publishing scripts with the intent of performing their own material in forensics competition. SpeechGeek does not participate in “instant-publishing” single pieces for individual use. Any piece published by SpeechGeek is available to all middle-school and high-school forensics programs.

While the staff at SpeechGeek is always on the look-out for performance-friendly material that is accessible to coaches and students, we do not believe in sacrificing education in the name of competition. Currently, we at SpeechGeek are doing what we can to ensure that the material we publish will not be used in an inappropriate or an ethically questionable manner for forensics competition. As we examine and review all submissions for publication, authors will be notified of the intent and view of forensics.

As forensics alumni, we understand that most devoted speech competitors read dozens of scripts each season in search of the perfect piece that will bring them competitive success and push the creative envelope. We also know that in the process of searching for the perfect piece and reading countless other, competitors feel the urge to tell the stories that haven’t been told. At SpeechGeek, we don’t want to discourage current forensicators from becoming future authors, playwrights and poets. Anyone is welcome to submit material for possible publication once they have completed their eligibility for high school forensics competition.