ann's rants

20 Things Not To Say at My 20 Year High School Reunion

2012-05-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

How sweet of you to bring your dad!
I see you still take off your shirt, put your tie around your sweaty head and do The Running Man when you’re wasted. That looks different now.
Whenever I’m on Etsy I think of you and those tacky ribbon barrettes we used to wear. And…oh my, still do!
Can I have a turn in your Dad’s Bjorn, little fella?
Want to go harmonize in the stairwell?
So do you still identify as a skinhead or is this a pattern baldness work-around?
Would you say that whole GED thing ended up working out about equivalently?
I see your wife is about as nice to you as she was to the rest of us.
I know you were a late bloomer, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t have those at our 10th.
So what exactly qualifies as “good behavior” in prison?
Tell me more about your dissertation!
Remember when I used to get my hair all over your desk?
Deja vu! You smell exactly the same.
All these years and I just figured out which gnarled Hobbit you remind me of.
Why yes, I’m open to any and all ideas of how I could make a good living from the comfort of my own home.
Please parlay this 17-second conversation into an excuse to contact me under false pretenses next month and invite me to your _____ party.
As a matter of fact I’ve been looking for another book club it will take me a decade of guilt to quit.
Does anyone have any causes I could give my money to and volunteer for?
Congratulations, doctor! You finally found a way to possess those legally.
Perhaps you’ve heard of my blog annsrants.com?

A Very Sweatshop Mother’s Day: A Vignette

2012-05-10T19:40:00.000-05:00

My mom and I just took the Tenement Museum Tour in NYC, and this conversation happened afterward. In my head. And this is not a sponsored post, except by guilt.

Cast of Characters:

Ann Imig: Stay-at-home humorist LTYM National Director 2012, Mother of 2.

Jenny Levine, Tenement Sweatshop Matriarch 1892 , Mother of 2 going on 5.

Ann: I’m tired.

Jenny: (translated from Yiddish) Worrrrrd.

Ann : I’m working so hard! I’ve precious little energy to blog or tweet!

Jenny: I’m working so hard in my 300 square foot tenement apartment/garment workshop filled with my family of four, plus three workers (presser, baster, finisher) with no electricity (hasn’t been invented) nor running water, I’ve precious little energy left to clean out the tuberculosis spittoon in the cutting/basting/presser/sewing room/parlor/sauna or cough the coal soot out of my lungs. CLEAR! Watch the garment runner. He may only be 12, but he’s fast as hell.

CLEAR! Watch the midwife-- she’s got to run down three flights for some water so I can give birth to my third in the back room before dinner.

Ann: Back room? I thought that was the pantry.

Jenny: CLEAR! Now if the presser could just get the hell out of my kitchen for once, I’ve got to make lunch for seven and then go protest the kosher meat price-hike before my water breaks.

Ann: Kitchen? I thought that was the walk-in closet.

Jenny: Do me a favor and keep an eye on baby Hyman. Yep, that’s his crib adjoining the stove and the twenty-pound iron. As soon as baby Sollie pops, Hyman gets the big-boy bed under the ironing board.

Ann: Bed? I thought that was the rag pile.

Jenny: Yes.

Ann: I can’t stay. Just stopped by to drop off a postcard for my show! Would you mind putting up a poster in your no-bathroom? Please join us at Listen To Your Mother Barrymore this Sunday at 3pm in Madison, Wisconsin!

Jenny: We work Sundays. Please stop leaning on Paulines’ bed. I know, you thought it was the kitchen chair, because it is the kitchen chair. Now either pick up the sheers or a sewing needle or come downstairs and help me beat back the meat-scabs. Those wenches don’t know what’s about to hit them if they buy brisket at 20 cents a pound.

Ann: Sorry Jenny, I’m plum tuckered out from sight-seeing and stuffing my face. You know how that goes. Well, Happy Mother’s day! Easy labor!

Jenny: Easy labor. That is when we work 12 hours instead of 17, no? CLEAR!!!

***

Please do join me for the 3rd Annual Madison LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER SHOW this Mother’s Day Sunday at 3pm at The Barrymore Theatre.

For a recap of our first five shows, click here.

For a round-up of the incredible press we’ve received (i.e., New York Times! Huffington Post! Washington Post!), click here.

To link up your own LTYM-style essay click here.

If you just want to hear me go blah blah blah LTYM blah blah watch this!

Intermarriage: Cut Crystal? Meet Dreidel. (my stand-up routine)

2012-04-25T18:20:00.001-05:00

Last weekend at the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop I had the chance to try stand-up, below find an expanded version of my set…

Hi. My name is Ann. I hold the distinction of being a third generation Jewish Wisconsinite. Such a cliché, right? Because when you think Wisconsin you invariably think cheese curds, The Green Bay Packers, and plucky Jews.

My Mom hails from Janesville, Wisconsin. Her Dad hails from Janesville, Wisconsin. His Dad—my great grandfather--had the audacity to leave Janesville, Wisconsin to spend his later years on a Kibbutz in Israel. Other members of our extended family have followed suit by making their lives in Israel, including my brother. So naturally, my sister and I went West and found ourselves a Mormon to marry. No. Not the same Mormon.

The first time I went home with my husband, I didn’t find the religious differences as jarring as the cultural and political ones. Nevertheless, his parents welcomed me with open arms, open hearts, and open Fox News.

I remember walking downstairs to the basement and facing a huge framed poster of a peanut shell that read Election 1980: Get Rid of The Empty Shell. Jimmy Carter, blasphemed! Understand the context: In my Madison, Wisconsin elementary school presidential election of 1984, Walter Mondale won by a landslide 86% of the vote. Jessica Hallam copped to voting for Ronald Reagan, becoming the first Republican any of us bleeding-heart-fifth-graders met. She went on to confess her parents’ votes for Reagan, and moreover, that Reagan had actually won the “real” election. We had our doubts, but Jessica owned the first and only pair of Guess Jeans in our school, and suddenly we wanted in on trickle-down economics.

So, here I stood in a Springfield basement with my beloved, next to an autographed photo of Phyllis Schlafly, a book case lined with Coulter and Limbaugh, and window valances framing non-existent basement windows.

At My First Springfield Christmas, Husband’s family gave gifts with all sincerity that my family would classify as white elephants. A special edition Ronald Reagan coffee table book was bestowed with reverence and nostalgic sighs. Yuletide Hummels changed hands. My MIL-to-be gave me a solid cut-crystal…dreidel! I’d never received a decorative dreidel before, and if ever a gift symbolized intermarriage, the cut-crystal dreidel took the prize.

Husband’s family does Christmas the American way—huge and with plenty of salad starring marshmallows, mayonnaise and whipped-topping. I find Christmas overwhelming. As a kid I received presents at Hanukkah, but nothing like the three hour Springfield gift-athon that literally caused a two-year-old grandchild to cry and beg to STOP THE UNWRAPPING. Once, at a family Hanukkah dinner, I asked my Granny what she did for Hanukkah in her youth. She replied My Dad put 8 candles on a brick, gave us a dime, and that was it. Good thing Granny never had to play Santa.

Lasagna makes up Christmas dinner. Not just any Lasagna, but pork and cheese lasagna. Let me tell you that this Jewess goes hog wild on some pork and cheese lasagna, which only warms up the house for the main attraction: gift-opening snacks! On one Formican Island chipped beef (more meat plus cheese!) coexists with shrimp cocktail (shell fish!) and Ritz Crackers in their own specially-molded plastic Ritz cracker tomb (retrofitted crackers!).

In fairness, Husband did not find my family holidays exactly familiar. I thought I’d prepped him well for his first Last Supper. I briefed him on matzoh balls and Maneschewitz, and the names of the family short and balding. I warned him of atonal consonant-heavy sing-alongs. At some point during the Seder service, I turned to him for a spouse-survival check-in. I found my 6 foot 2 inch, blue-eyed, redheaded beau sweating profusely about the face, his head resembling a radish. I’m still not sure if I forgot to tell him about the jelled gefilte fish or the beet-horseradish.

*cue faux SNL get off the stage music*

My name is Ann. Good night!

I didn’t go on until midnight. Can you tell?