Offbeat Museums

OFFBEAT MUSEUMS Saul Rubin (Santa Monica Press, $17.95) Some people like yakking about Monet. Others get a kick out of garbage sculptures or items made entirely from human hair. Hey, this is America, where the Nut Museum is just what it says (price of admission: one filbert or the equivalent). If there’s something weird, gross, or trivial, odds are some U.S. hamlet hosts an exhaustive tribute to it, which you’ll find whilst paging absently through this guileless travelogue. Resist muttering ”Freaks, they’re all freaks.” Where else, after all, would citizens dutifully erect shrines to Liberace, toilet paper, and cockroaches? You have to love a country that faces its demons so squarely. B+