The Museum of Modern Poodle: Downtown artist...

The Museum of Modern Poodle: Downtown artist Doren Garcia likes poodles well enough. But it’s their owners he really finds fascinating--”their bad taste especially.” Garcia explains: “They sculpt them, they fluff them up, they dye them, they put bows on them--they really turn poodles into organic sculptures.”

So great is Garcia’s interest in the breed that he has amassed a collection of “1,000 examples of bad taste in poodles,” which he will unveil to the world Saturday night.

One of his most treasured pieces of kitsch is a set of poodle boot trees--yes, poodle-shaped devices to maintain the shape of boots. “It’s hard to imagine how someone could come up with the idea of making his fortune by manufacturing poodle boot trees for America,” the canine curator observed.

But, of course, the Modern Poodle has numerous other relics. Garcia will also set out his “spaghetti poodles” (figurines with ceramic hairs), poodle broaches, poodle lamps and poodle liquor bottle covers between 6 and 9 p.m. in his loft at 1401 S. Santa Fe Avenue.

The exhibit is sponsored by the Los Angeles Cacophony Society, a group of artists and gagsters, which is inviting the public to celebrate “the spirit of the nasty-tempered little specimen of canine topiary.”

No pets allowed.

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We’d like to hear from the former occupants first: The Times received a copy of The Trans Times, a newsletter for those cryogenically inclined--that is, interested in having their bodies frozen after death. It carries this ad:

“Trans Time has two used cryogenic storage containers for sale, which we have used for long-term storage of human patients.” Prices: $5,000 and $8,000.

The high-priced model is “a two-patient unit.”

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Breakthrough: a water repellent umbrella. What will science think of next?Perry Jaster of West Hills bought an umbrella, whose tag reveals that it can even be used to shield its owner from the rain.

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L.A. has more poodles, too: In its California-theme edition, the February issue of Spy magazine announces that “on the question of San Francisco vs. Los Angeles, we feel compelled to advance a minority view and admit that we generally like L.A. . . . San Franciscans ridicule Los Angeles as a tasteless, sybaritic hellhole where everyone who is anyone drives a red Maserati and dates, or is, a blond bimbo. Precisely.”

Not that Spy ignores the state’s other major municipalities. It sums up California’s second-largest city thusly: “Farther to the south lies San Diego, which has a zoo.”

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Our theory is that they were drawn there by a great sucking sound: Art Vinsel noticed that the San Pedro branch of the city library has two copies of “Not For Sale at Any Price” filed in the science fiction section, listed alphabetically by the author’s last name, Perot.

miscelLAny:

In the recently published “Rivers in the Desert,” about L.A. pioneer William Mulholland, author Margaret Leslie Davis notes in passing that L.A. Dist. Atty. Asa Keyes was convicted of bribery and sentenced to 14 years in San Quentin in 1929. Keyes was released after 32 months and, a week later, “reported to work at his new job as a used-car salesman at a Pasadena car dealership.”