amber-tamblyn

Actress Amber Tamblyn, most famous for her roles in “Joan of Arcadia” and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, is releasing her second book of poetry, Bang Ditto.  Tamblyn, more recently involved in such projects as dating David Cross and ABC’s canceled cop show “The Unusuals,” will read from her new book this Thursday at the Bowery Poetry Club, which I might go to if I didn’t already have plans to go see Mike Tunison read from his book.

tamblyn-bang-dittoAnyway, as much fun as it is to make fun of (a) poetry and (b) actors’ side projects, I have to admit that Tamblyn sounds pretty cool about this whole thing:

“I do this really fun vaudevillian act with my mom [folk singer Bonnie Tamblyn] where she plays guitar, I read the poems and we sing together and make fun of each other,” [Tamblyn] said. “I call her the womb and she calls me the mistake. And we drink whiskey.”

Among the tales in the book: the time Ms. Tamblyn lost a role she really wanted to an actress she was not too fond of, and subsequently got inebriated on Maker’s Mark and stumbled into the Scientology Center (“I think Scientology is funny sometimes”) [and] the time she found out she had a half-sister, who did not know their father until she was 17 years old. [NY Observer]

Again, I can’t dismiss anything I haven’t read myself — well, I can, but I choose not to in this instance — but I just find it odd that the young star of a show whose theme song was Joan Osborne’s “One of Us” is also a poet.  I think I’d very much like to hear a serious reading of “One of Us.”  What if God was one of us / Just a slob like one of us / [...] Tryin to make his way home / Back up to heaven all alone / Nobody callin on the phone / ‘cept for the pope maybe in Rome.

**adjusts beret, smokes clove**