Book Coach Blog: Saltburn

Saltburn is such a weird, uncomfortable, and amazing movie. I never watch movies twice, but I rewatched this one just to see Ernesto react to what happens. Also Rosamund Pike’s Elspeth is one of my fave all-time characters. GIVE HER AN OSCAR.

Anyhoo, despite me loving it, I recognized there were a few story problems in the movie. You can check out my (if I may channel Elspeth for a moment) - stunning, gorgeous, and beautiful! analysis here.

Evidently I'm Really, Really, Really, Really Funny

I recently wrote about how being a funny writer is a point of pride for me.

Am I as funny as David Sedaris? Um, absolutely not.

But, I regularly get compliments on the humor in my blog and my professional work. (Putting jokes in my corporate training videos gets people very disproportionately excited.)

This humor does not translate into real-life conversations, though. Very rarely has anyone said, “Tedd, you’re funny in person!” Don’t get me wrong, once I get to know you (or…maybe have a few drinks), I warm up and am not a total dud, but I’m not like Robin Williams or Tiffany Haddish.

My lack of conversational chutzpah is tied to my being the youngest of six kids. Growing up absolutely no one cared what I had to say. There was never really an open forum for Tedd to speak his mind, and, being the smallest, piping up really didn’t do much. When my older brothers were talking about dating, no one really cared about how I was doing playing Crash Bandicoot on Playstation (which was always very well, for the record).

Without much banter/speaking practice, I didn’t hone my conversational skills. AOL Instant Messenger was a game changer for me in high school and college because I could write my thoughts. My brain works much better that way! I don’t have to look you in the eye and SAY anything. I could be funny!

So, my childhood trauma was a push in terms of overall emotional development. Am I a sparkling conversationalist? No. But am I great at observational humor and dialogue? Yeah, kinda!

All that is to say, I had a really weird weekend a while ago where everyone thought I was EXTREMELY funny.

Incident #1

I was at the gym and on the stair stepper machine. The previous day, I had been on the same machine and seen a water bottle on the treadmill next to me. On this second day, a woman was on the treadmill with the leftover water bottle.

She finished her cardio, wiped off her machine, and left.

A man came up and looked at the machine. He turned to me and said, “Is that her water bottle? Do you know?” 

To which I responded, “I don’t think so. I actually saw that water bottle here yesterday.”

If you know me, I usually smile about everything. Like, another one of my issues is I really like to be liked, so I usually put on a big smile and try to convince people I’m engaging.

In this situation, I didn’t do that. I was on a stair stepper, very sweaty, and was, quite frankly, annoyed some guy was talking to me.

So, when I said, “I don’t think so…” I was staring blankly forward with no facial expression at all. Not a smile. Not even a twinkle in my eye. 

It was a shock, then, when the man suddenly doubled over in laughter.

“Oh man! That’s hilarious. You’re so funny!”

I looked at him confusedly, because…what was even remotely funny about that?

But then.

THEN. The guy on the machine in front of him turned around. He was also laughing hysterically and gave me a big smile. “Funny, man,” he said.

WHAT? Nothing about what I said was even joke adjacent. There was absolutely no humor in my sentiment, facial expression, or the verbiage of the sentence. I literally stated a very dull fact.

I would have loved to see my face then, because I had no idea what was going on.

“Oh man,” the first guy continued. “That’s so classic.”

WHAT IS CLASSIC?

The guy then started to talk to me. I had my headphones in, so I gave him my general shirk off statement: “Cool man” and smiled hugely to make sure he knew I was nice, but I also didn’t care at all about what he was saying. (I channeled the expressions of my brothers when I mentioned Crash Bandicoot.)

He tried to engage for a bit longer before giving up.

I still have no idea what was so funny. 

Tangent #1

One of my favorite questions to ask in a group setting is “What’s your ‘go away’ phrase?”

As per the above anecdote, mine is “Cool man.” It’s a phrase I use when I want to do the bare minimum of acknowledging the humanity of someone else and the fact that they said something but also imply that I would rather be strapped to railroad tracks than hear any of their other thoughts.

I became aware of the ‘go away’ phrase at one of my jobs when my coworker would always say “There ya go!” when our boss would come over and question her about something completely irrelevant. In one CLASSIC instance (see, this actually is “so classic”) she said it no less than four times as my boss scolded her about something that did not matter at all.

End Tangent.

Incident #2

Of course, I told Ernesto about the weird stair-stepper incident. I was honestly hoping he had any insight into how “That water bottle was here yesterday” became the best joke of 2023.

Spoiler: He did not.

But later that night, we were at a bar. We’d just gone to a haunted house with some friends and were grabbing a drink after. We got a small table at the back of the bar and put our coats down then went to play darts.

It eventually got pretty crowded, so I went and collected our coats so others could use our table. I had an armful of coats and then a guy at the table next to us tapped my shoulder. 

“You have my coat,” he said.

Rant #1

WHY DID THIS MAN PUT HIS COAT WITH OUR COATS? HE HAD HIS OWN TABLE.

End rant.

Resume Incident #2

So, I was like, “Oh, sorry!” (Again, people-pleasing like crazy.) Then he started weirdly digging through my hands to get his coat.

He grabbed it, but it was tangled, so I was trying to help and relaxed my grip, but then all the coats fell on the floor except his.

Okay. So, on a scale of 1 to HILARIOUS, this was a solid 2. Like…it was mildly humorous. Worth a chuckle. “Oh, that guy dropped some coats! Poor dunce!”

But, once again, I was met with GALES of laughter. GALES. Not only the coat man, but his entire table started laughing hysterically.

I turned to my friends, who had also seen the whole thing, and they just kind of stared at me. They had wry smiles on, which was the appropriate amount of mirth.

Coat man is doubled over, so I pick up my coats and go to my friends.

Ernesto WAS laughing and goes, “Wow, you are just SO funny today!”

Which did make me laugh. Like, WHAT? As I approach my 40s, am I turning into Buster Keaton? Am I just intrinsically middle-aged funny now?

I don’t know what I’m going to do with this newfound power. Should I do a comedy show? I’ve already started 50 Instagram accounts, why not @TeddDropsCoats, too? It could be a huge hit for people who want to know the status of water bottles on cardio machines. And maybe this is finally the forum for me to tell the world, and be appreciated for, how absolutely STELLAR I’m doing at Crash Bandicoot.

Diary of a Disco Weatherman

I’ve always worn my hair short. My failure to experiment stems from a certain trauma when I was eight years old which concerned a chili bowl.

Basically, there was this made-for-TV movie with a fat blond kid with a chili bowl. He like…well, he wasn’t handsome. He had giant teeth and was annoying, and, because he was blond, I assumed if I got a chili bowl I would look like him…which I decidedly did not want to do.

Well, one day my mom took me in for a haircut and told the lady to give me a chili bowl. I don’t remember much about being at the salon, but once I got home, I was absolutely devastated. I sobbed because it was now fated that I would be the big-toothed annoying kid from a made-for-TV movie.

My mom had no idea why I’d lost my mind, and I was 8 and couldn’t really verbalize that I didn’t want to look like a kid from TV, but now I HAD TO look like the kid from TV because we got the same haircut. (And, also, mother, find a good orthodontist because my teeth are about to get giant and out of control.)

Anyway, my dad came home and found me sobbing on the couch and was like “What the eff is going on?”

 So, my mom had to tell him that I had become mentally unstable because of a cute haircut. 

Dad had no time for this (and, also, probably hated the chili bowl), so in fifteen minutes, I was at the local barber who just whacked everything off and gave me a buzzcut.

This buzzcut was the greatest thing in the world at the time. Instead of annoying-chili-bowl kid, I looked like Duke from GI Joe, which WAS SO MUCH COOLER.

Since that time, I didn’t really want to do anything with my hair that would make me look like anything other than an average white guy with short hair.

Well, during COVID, I couldn’t get a haircut, so my hair got longer, and I was kind of like “This…doesn’t look bad.” Paired with my glasses and mid-30s wrinkles, I looked downright professorial. When things opened post-pandemic, I did get my haircut, but I kept thinking about the long hair and wondering if maybe it was time to get a more grown-up cut. After thirty years, maybe it was time for a change? Maybe I should wear tweed and part my hair and like buy a pipe… It could be time.

I’m kind of neurotic, though, so I didn’t want to just grow my hair out and tell people “Oh, I’m growing my hair out, because I want to look like an adult. And, yes, you can get me a gift certificate to Uncle Joe’s Tweed and Pipe Emporium.”

In my head, it sounded better if I said: “Oh, I’m growing my hair out for a Halloween costume. I want to look like a video game character.”

Because, low and behold, in the spring of this year, I found out that they redesigned Link for the new Zelda game, and he is blonde and has slightly longer hair. I’ve always kind of wanted to be Link for Halloween, and his new style lined up nicely with my own desire to grow out my hair, so it appeared to be a very nice solution to a weird non-problem problem.

This May, then, I did a bunch of online research to figure out the best way to grow out your hair. I learned some things that weren’t super useful, like “use conditioner” and “try hair growth formulas”. The one piece of advice that was consistent, though, was to go to a good barber and get it trimmed and consulted on every 4-6 weeks. This, allegedly, would keep it looking good and provide regular guidance on how to style it during the weird, kind-of-long hair adolescent period.

This proved to be fantastic advice. For the first time in my life, I’m going to a place that cuts hair and doesn’t have a bargain price sticker on the window.

You guys! These fancy places wash your hair! And they smell soooooo good! AND THERE’S A SCALP MASSAGE. Literally, I would have paid the $50 bucks after the hair wash and left.

But I didn’t, and I stayed and got a fabulous hair consult with my new hair stylist (a STYLIST!) and have been on a journey to grow out my hair.

It wasn’t until about 3 months in that I lost resolve about my decision. My hair was getting kind of long and hard to manage. If I let it lay flat it looked like I was trying to be an emo kid from 2008, and if I put product in it, I looked like a 70s weatherman.

Around this time, I got a hair trim and my stylist (STILL EXCITED I HAVE A STYLIST!) took just a bit off the top and trimmed the sides.

I picked up my friend for bowling (yes, I am in a gay bowling league…that may necessitate another blog post), and he looked at me and said, “Oh! You got a haircut.”

To which I responded: “Yeah, I’m kind of trying to grow it out.”

“Cute,” he said. He looked at me a bit longer then added: “It’s like…bold.”

OH GOD.

IT’S BOLD?! BOLD. LIKE THE FONT SETTING?

When I was little and my grandma absolutely hated something, she would describe it as “different.”

I think “bold” is the gay “different.” It implies bravery, which…I mean, if I died my hair platinum blond or orange, or I got a weird European cut, I’d be okay with “bold”… But it literally is just slightly longer than usual. Is it bold bad?

But I’m also now obsessed with hairstyles being fonts and typographical settings.

“Your hair is italic today.”

“I woke up and my hair is san serif!”

“Did you see Claudia? Her updo is giving Garamond.”

Anyway, “bold” did nothing to assuage my hair insecurity, but it was also August with Halloween only a few months out, so what was the worst that could happen? I mean I was exactly at the midpoint, so why not just push through?

Two weeks out from Halloween, I got my final hair spruce up from my…. … … [wait for it] … STYLIST!

And it looked fine? There were some waves? It gave some Calibri Light, not quite Calibri Body.

I realized that with longer hair and my Link costume, I just looked like a douchebag in a toga. I could have won a costume contest as a Bold Roman.

Anyway, Halloween has come and gone, and I’m scheduled for a haircut this week. I’m leaning toward a restoration to average-white-guy-with-short-hair because I feel like I look kind of gross with sad, limp long hair.

I asked Ernesto his thoughts, and his response was, “Oh, well what do you think of the long hair?” Which, quite frankly, may be worse than “bold.” 

And, even in a worst-case scenario, if I return to short, non-professorial, non-disco-weatherman style, I still won’t look like that poor kid with the chili bowl.

That haircut is pure wingding.