THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602230073
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY MADDRY, STAFF COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
DID YOU KNOW that furniture can be polished with pantyhose and that Nestea can remove corns from your feet?
Talk about news we can use. Forget the GOP primaries and whether a pig will win an Oscar. Let's hear it for Joey Green, the man who spent 10 years ``exploring the bowels of American know-how.''
While bowel exploring is always a gas, only Joey Green has emerged from the adventure with a book.
It's called ``Polish Your Furniture With Panty Hose And Hundreds of Offbeat Uses for Brand-Name Products,'' published by Hyperion, and a steal at $7.95.
This useful book may turn Green's life around a lot faster than you can lure a trout by coating small pieces of sponge with Vaseline jelly resembling fish eggs, as he suggests.
It began when Green was a copywriter for the J. Walter Thompson Agency in New York and attended a meeting to uncover alternative uses for Nestea Iced Tea Mix.
Well, here, let him tell you in his own words. ``Until that meeting I had no idea that bathing in Nestea soothed sunburn pain. Nestea never advertised that fact - unless, of course, that was the subliminal message in `Take the Nestea Plunge.' ''
He quit the agency to discover hundreds of mysterious uses for products such as Coca-Cola, Vaseline, Colgate and WD-40.
If it hadn't been for Green, would anyone have learned that you can clean car battery corrosion with Coca-Cola? Or shave with Jif Peanut Butter (Hmmm wonder if Smucker's Grape Jelly would make an after-shave?) Or know that you can polish your furniture with Spam and fertilize your lawn with Listerine?
Just glancing through this remarkable book persuades the most skeptical that some American products are truly as remarkable as Leonardo DaVinci in their versatility.
One of these is Efferdent, a product which, if it were a person, would be suffering from chronic stress syndrome. Those denture tablets think nothing of cleaning a toilet bowl, polishing diamonds (just drop in three tablets and let sit in water for an hour), unclogging sinks, cleaning vase stains or cleaning hubcaps, before your dentures have had breakfast.
And if you think pantyhose have been on their bottoms when there was all-purpose work to be done, think again. L'eggs Sheer Energy Panty Hose can shine a wood floor or your furniture, strain lumps from paint, clean dentures, prevent lint from sticking to clothes in a dryer and - now why didn't we think of this before? - help you scrub your back with soap. Pantyhose can also be placed over a broom stick with a rubber band to help you clean dust from beneath the refrigerator and do a great job of cleaning bathroom tiles.
Like more conventional authors, Green says he did his research in a public library, reading about folk remedies and brand-name lore. And he learned so much there's a sequel. ``Paint Your House With Powdered Milk'' is due out from Hyperion in May.
But Green obviously also relied on personal observation and the testimony of satisfied costumers in sleuthing unusual uses for commercial products. But his book sometimes raises more questions than it answers.
For instance we learn that Spam can be used to keep condensation off the bathroom mirror while shaving. But we are not told whether it will work on car windshield condensation or whether, if so, it might attract hungry animals as large as bears.
And how, pray God, did someone, anyone, learn that Spam would remove condensation from a bathroom mirror? We can only speculate. Scene: foggy bathroom.
Husband: ``There's condensation on this mirror, hon. Hand me a towel so I can wipe it off.''
Wife: ``I just put all the towels in the clothes dryer.''
Husband: ``Well hand me something.''
Wife: ``OK, try this slice of Spam.''
Husband: ``Yeah, that should do it.''
Get out of here!
Well, this is a book that is not only useful but shows the extraordinary care taken by the author to ensure accuracy. You can tell he tried the product uses himself. For instance he suggests that while using Jif peanut butter for shaving it is preferable not to do it with Jif Extra Crunchy. Hey, is this a user-friendly book or what? ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
BELIEVE IT OR NOT
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB