Amber Tamblyn Likes to Mix It Up With High-End Poetry and The Real Housewives

Who Amber Tamblyn

Age 30

Accomplishments Stars on CBS’ Two and a Half Men as Jenny (Thursdays 9:30 p.m.); poet and co-founder of the Write Now Poetry Society

Base Los Angeles and New York

What’s the first information you consume in the morning?

Probably last night’s dreams. Sometimes I’ll lay in bed for a while and try to remember them, and if they’re really good, I’ll write them down. I might put it in a poem or something.

Where do you get your news?

I usually check out Boing Boing. It’s got a lot of tech nerd stuff, but it also picks up some great news stories. I’ll learn something crazy about Edna St. Vincent Millay and then scroll down and there’s a story about something that NASA discovered. There’s a variety of really cool stuff.

What’s your favorite tech gadget?

I am obsessed with the Jawbone wristband. You can use it to monitor all kinds of things like your heart rate and your workouts and your sleep. What I love about it is that you can have teams. A couple of my friends and I are all signed up for a team, and basically we just trash talk each other. We leave comments for each other like, “I cannot believe what a lazy slob you are! Pick it up!”

How about social media?

I’m on Instagram. I felt like I needed to do at least one thing that was social media-related, so that’s the one I chose.

Do you watch a lot of TV?

I don’t. I watch TV shows that everybody got into, like Breaking Bad. And if I have any kind of guilty pleasure, it’s The Real Housewives. It’s funny because my husband [actor David Cross] hates those programs—hates them—yet he’ll come in and tell me, “Why don’t you just turn this crap off,” and then stand there and watch it for like 20 minutes, and before you know it, he’s like, “Oh, that’s not what she said! Kim is so crazy!”

How do you wind down before bed?

I go between checking Instagram, reading some Mary Ruefle poems and ripping my cat’s claws out of my stomach. In that order.

What books are you reading right now?

I am currently reading Blake Butler’s There Is No Year, and it is one of the best books I’ve read in years. It’s a narrative short story about a family that comes home one day to find a copy family in their house—identicals of them with blood pumping and hearts beating, but they don’t move. They’re like dolls. The story is so far out and so well written and so good.

How about magazines?

I read the American Poetry Review and The Paris Review. When I’m at the airport, I always read the same three things: New York magazine, The New Yorker and Scientific American, even though I can only understand half of what I read in there. And I’m an avid Wired reader.

What’s your favorite app?

There’s an app called MoonPhase that I really love. It’s really simple. It just monitors the moon and what phases it’s in. When there’s a full moon and you open the app, it immediately lets out a wolf howl, which I think is so cute.