Wednesday nite

I went with AC tonight to see Glen David Gold read at Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens in San Clemente today. Gold wrote a big, bestselling book called Carter Beats the Devil, which is a pretty good name for a book, and is finishing up a new novel called Sunnyside, which he read from tonight. I think he said it was his first reading from the book, so we got a glimpse of something most people have not yet seen. Awesome. The book appears to be about Charlie Chaplain among many other things, and the opening chapters he read were funny and well-crafted. At one point he was describing a train and all of a sudden we could hear an actual train in the distance. He stopped and said "I bet you're glad I'm not reading the passage about Howitzers." Also of interest: he has written a few short stories for comic anthologies.
The Casa Romantica was nice, and struck me as a quintessential Orange County non-profit deal -- very clean, great view of the coast, with some interesting exhibits about Mexicans and Native Americans and hardly a person in sight who wasn't as white as the mission-style walls. It was, shockingly, more ethnically singular than Chapman. I almost felt like I was back in Oregon.