When you get more experienced at speaking, you can get back to dry wit and piercing insight. It is difficult, but I find TED to be very bland compared to the talks I'm used to watching.
I'm in the PL community, so talks by people like Gilad Bracha, Richard Gabriel, Guy Steele, Dave Thomas (the OTI founder), Christina Lopes, Simon Peyton Jones are really good. I saw a Bret Victor talk that wasn't really bad either, with lots of wit, though he seems to be a bit more subdued than I'm used to (which is fine, it is important to stay real to yourself as a speaker). I'm sure I'm missing many people in the list of good speakers.
Also, James Mickens in the systems community (and also a colleague at MSR) is really good. He tends to go off the wall a bit more, but that is just part of his rhythm.
The point of TED talks isn't that they're supposed to have a stand-up comedian's level of presentation skill. It's about captains of industry talking about their slice of the world.