I Am Not Whoopi Goldberg

I won my local Humorous Speech contest and will be representing my club at the Toastmaster's division speech competition on next month! The speech I gave is below:

I am Not Whoopi Goldberg:

A Toastmaster's Speech

It should go without saying, given that I didn't waltz in here with an entourage, that I am not Whoopi Goldberg. Yet, the chances are that at some point today, if I have done something other than just stay at home, someone has come up to me and said “you look like Whoopi Goldberg”. Now, this isn't a bad thing, it isn't a good thing, it can be, at times, a source of humorous situations.

I've been hearing that I looked like Whoopi Goldberg since I was in the Army, long before the dreadlocks and when I was skinny, skinny, skinny. The first time was in the produce department in a grocery store. I didn't hear it too much until Whoopi started playing Guinan on Star Trek: Next Generation and showing up on Hollywood Squares. Then it took off! Oh, did it ever take off!

Now, sometimes, it's an annoyance. In '96 I was out in Ames, IA with my girlfriend, visiting her family for Christmas. For nine days, in what felt like, to my Alabama-born and California-raised body to be the tundra, I could scarcely walk outside without some perfect stranger going out of their way to rush up to me to say “You look like Whoopi Goldberg!” To which I would nod politely, say a few kind words about my far richer and more well-known look-alike and then be on about my merry way. Nine days of this. Several times a day. For nine, long and cold days.

I mention this only because it brings me to one of the few times that this resemblance has worked in my favor. On that same vacation, as we were boarding the plane for our return trip, we had just sat down in our chairs, just posterior of first class. A man got on the plane and said, loudly:

“Oh my god! It's you! You play the bartender on Star Trek. You did those nun movies, I LOVE YOU1”

To which I replied, loudly but as calm as I could manage given that it was 11:00 at night.

“Yes, I'm Whoopi Goldberg. I'm flying a red-eye coach on a bargain airline on New Years Eve because I was trying to fly incognito. Thanks for blowing my cover!” If this sounds somewhat harsh, I remind you, several times a day, for nine days. At any rate, there was this raucous laughter from the stewardess just on the other side of the wall, yet more raucous laughter coming from the cockpit and then the stewardess comes back and says “Are you really Whoopi Goldberg?”

“No, I'm really not”. I replied.

“Well, you just made the entire aircrew's evening. Would you like to come up to first class?:

My parents didn't raise me to be a fool so, of course, I accepted and so we drank champagne over the Sierra Nevada mountains as 1997 began.

Other times, it has provided endless amusement to friends of mine. Like the time I met a friend for dinner at a restaurant just outside of Olympia. We were meeting for a end-of-the-workweek feeding frenzy and she got to the restaurant before me. When I arrived, there was a short waiting list so I asked what name she put it under. She said “ you'll see”. No sooner had she spoken than the hostess calls out. “ Goldberg, party of two. Party of two for W. Goldberg”

We walk into the restaurant, we've been given a table near the center and now everyone is looking at us! My friend could barely contain her laughter. I, on the other hand, still plot my revenge.

The next day we go shopping at, I believe Wal-mart or somesuch like that and the cashier insists that I give her my 'autograph' as Whoopi Goldberg. Now, I've paid with my credit card, I have established beyond any possible illusion that I am NOT, in point of fact, Whoopi Goldberg and she STILL wants my autograph.

If I were of a more larcenous bent, I might try to pass myself off as her.

So, while I am me I also appear to share enough facial features that Whoopi Goldberg's fame is tied up, in some fractally strange way, with mine. So if you see me on the street, even if I do look Hollywood, remember; I am NOT Whoopi Goldberg.