THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 1996 TAG: 9609270077
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 76 lines
JOEY GREEN has made his second plunge into the anatomy of household products with various uses.
His first plunge ``into the bowels of American know-how,'' resulted in his useful and mind-boggling book ``Polish Your Furniture With Panty Hose.''
You remember that one, right?
It not only gloried in the polishing properties of panty hose but touted Efferdent denture tablets as a cleaner of toilet bowls. And it astonished all of us with the good news that Spam can be used to remove condensation on bathroom mirrors.
Green, you probably recall, is a retired copywriter whose future was as murky as a Spamless bathroom mirror during a hot shower until his first book on unusual uses for everyday products hit the stores.
Skeptics said the book would go nowhere because people weren't interested in luring a trout by coating small pieces of sponge with Vaseline jelly so that they resembled fish eggs.
Wrong-o.
The public was hooked on the book. To his delight and astonishment, Green sold copies by the hundreds of thousands.
``I was convinced I was a misguided consumer with too much time on his hands, a fluke of the universe,'' he recalled.
He's still a fluke in my book. Possibly a flake. As exhibit A, I offer his latest book, which skirts the bowels - to everyone's relief - and plunges into ``the heart and soul of American ingenuity.''
Published by Hyperion, it is called ``Paint Your House With Powdered Milk.'' (Whatcha do is add water to Carnation Nonfat Dry Milk and add a little color). This is good news for you budget-wise house painters. Possibly better news for neighborhood cats.
I think Green is treading on thin ice in his latest book. And speaking of thin ice, he says nonfat dry milk can also be used to thaw frozen fish.
``Milk eliminates the frozen taste, returning the fresh-caught flavor,'' he explains. He neglects to say whether the milk will eliminate the flavor of petroleum jelly used as bait when the fool fish thought it was gobbling a mess of fish eggs . . . but nobody's perfect.
Having read both books, I'd like to make a jiffy observation. Nearly anything liquid - remember, Coke was recommended in the first book - poured into a toilet bowl will make it cleaner, it seems. This says plenty about the way we keep house in this country . . . not much of it good.
In his latest work, the author exposes the secret lives of more than 30 popular household items from Canada Dry Club Soda to Wrigley's Spearmint Gum.
Did you know that pouring the club soda over rusty nuts and bolts will loosen them? (The carbonation bubbles away rust). Now, that's information we can use . . . right?
On the other hand, I'd sooner soak my head in Lipton Iced Tea to give it golden highlights than follow Green's suggestion for making a poor man's lava lamp.
Green says: ``Fill a glass with Canada Dry Club Soda and drop in two raisins. The carbonation will cause the raisins to repeatedly bob to the surface and then sink again.'' Get a life, man!
Honestly, there are places in the book where I believe Green is losing his grip faster than one of those rusty nuts splashed with club soda. For instance, he says, without checking his nose to see whether it is growing like Pinocchio's:
``Lure crabs. Chew a piece of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum and use it as bait on a fishing line.''
If Mr. Green really believes he can catch crabs with a wad of chewing gum on a line, he is living in a fool's paradise - possibly the same one where people sit around watching raisins rise and fall in a glass of club soda, thinking they're watching a lava lamp.
I firmly believe Green has gone a bit too far in some suggestions. He needs to focus more on down-to-earth stuff. He's at his best when telling us how to dry salad greens with a Conair Pro-Style 1600 Hair Dryer, relieve a toothache with Tabasco pepper sauce, and make a bubble bath with Wesson Corn Oil.
But let us hear no more of this crab catching with wads of Wrigley's. If he removes idiocies like that from his next book, I'm sure we'll all rush out to buy it.
Faster than he can plug a mouse hole with an SOS soap pad. by CNB