A Slightly Off-Kilter Goodbye

Barry Maher
Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:52:57 -0800
Opinion

A few years ago, my brother Shannon and I were booked to speak at the same conference in Luxembourg. As an over-hyped professional speaker, I was opening the conference. Shannon, a Google VP, was doing the session right after mine.

It was July, so of course, the air conditioning in the meeting room had died. Outside it was 38 degrees Celsius, which translates into the approximate temperature of the Sun. Inside it was worse. The metal chairs were hot to the touch. I wouldn't have been surprised if they started to melt.

My panicked introducer looked as if he was being forced into it. Like maybe his kids were being held hostage. Sweat was flying from his shaking hands, and he condensed my quarter-page introduction into a punchline ripped out of context. "Our opening speaker today is Barry Maher. His favorite magazine is Funeral Service Insider." That was the entire introduction. Now the audience was confused as well as sweltering.
Updated: Mon Feb 09, 2026

A few years ago, my brother Shannon and I were booked to speak at the same conference in Luxembourg. As an over-hyped professional speaker, I was opening the conference. Shannon, a Google VP, was doing the session right after mine.

It was July, so of course, the air conditioning in the meeting room had died. Outside it was 38 degrees Celsius, which translates into the approximate temperature of the Sun. Inside it was worse. The metal chairs were hot to the touch. I wouldn't have been surprised if they started to melt.

My panicked introducer looked as if he was being forced into it. Like maybe his kids were being held hostage. Sweat was flying from his shaking hands, and he condensed my quarter-page introduction into a punchline ripped out of context. "Our opening speaker today is Barry Maher. His favorite magazine is Funeral Service Insider." That was the entire introduction. Now the audience was confused as well as sweltering.

I went into my full dog and pony show, roaming around the place, enlisting unsuspecting "volunteers," standing on chairs, making dumb jokes and generally doing what I had to do to keep the attention of an audience entering the third stage of heat stroke. I'd been doing this for years — and somehow making a nice living at it — so in spite of the conditions, it was going pretty not-awful.

But Shannon was sitting in the front row, and I could see he was getting increasingly nervous. Because he was planning on doing a straight, factual, business presentation, PowerPoint and all, delivered standing at the lectern. I'd tried to get the promoter to put him on first, since it's easy for me to follow a straight business session — the average business presentation is so boring I'd pay to follow it. But it's difficult for a straight business session to follow Bozo the Business Clown. Unfortunately, my suggestion went to somebody who took it to somebody who probably asked his wife or his pastor — who was, after all, a public speaker — who turned me down.

So just before I went into my closing, I started talking Shan up. How great his presentation was going to be. How lucky they were to have the chance to bask in the glow of his expertise. Because everyone in that room needed oxygen, and I was worried that Shan was going to be talking to an audience of empty, sweat-drenched chairs.

While this bloviating was going on (bask in the glow of his expertise?) Shan was doing everything but standing on his own chair and waving the Luxembourgian — Luxembourgioni? — flag, trying to get me to stop. Obviously, he didn't want me setting expectations too high, and I didn't blame him. Now I may be a bastard — literally, as Shan once pointed out to my mother in one of his less brilliant moments. And we did enjoy yanking each other's chain. But I also knew that audiences are far more interested in even a lackluster presentation — they'll pay more attention to it and rate it much higher — if they think it's coming from a celebrity or, failing that, from some variant of "one of the world's foremost authorities."

Shan opened by doing his best to lower expectations. Fortunately, nobody left. He told what's known in the family as "a Shan joke." Even then, nobody left. I mean, I thought about it, but at that point I figured the worst was over. Which it was, because then my little brother Shannon — under impossible circumstances — delivered a compelling, well-thought-out presentation, so packed with stunning expertise that we all somehow forgot the heat. He wowed them. He wowed us. I'm almost as happy I got to experience it as I am that afterward we got to tour central Europe together.

Shannon Michael Maher: April 27, 1956, to March 17, 2020.

Barry Maher's dark humor supernatural thriller, "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon," has just been released. Contact him and/or sign up for his newsletter at www.barrymaher.com.