DATE: Saturday, September 13, 1997          TAG: 9709120051

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Maddry 

                                            LENGTH:   77 lines

AUTHOR HAS A LOT OF BRIGHT IDEAS FOR CLEANER TOILETS

THE MAN WHO has us all polishing our furniture with panty hose is at it again.

You remember Joey Green, the guru of weird uses for brand-name products who wanted us to paint our houses with powdered milk?

Now he wants us to condition our hair with a turban made of whipped cream and drop Alka-Seltzer into the toilet.

Yep, he has a new book, ``Wash Your Hair With Whipped Cream,'' containing hundreds more offbeat uses for even more brand-name products. (Published by Hyperion, 153 pages, $8.95.)

Green is slowly emerging as one of the great American authors of this century. And with only a trio of weird-use books behind him, a pattern is emerging.

The pattern I see here is an obsession with the toilet. Until Green came along, I believed toilet cleaning was not an insuperable problem for most of us.

It certainly seemed easy. Put a little cleaning powder in the bowl and go swish, swish with a long-handled brush and flush.

Simple, right. Apparently not. Is it possible that people are cleaning their boat engines in their johns? Or using them as a container for glue when wallpapering the house?

I dunno. One thing's for sure: Green perceives that we have a problem and he's determined to find a better way for us to clean our toilets or die trying. In the process, he has dropped everything from shoe polish to a hand grenade into the bowl to see what works.

His latest is this Alka-Seltzer thing, which follows on the heels of his experiments using Coca-Cola to clean the bowl. Where it will end only God knows. Worse, in several instances he appears to be wasting our money dropping those Alka-Seltzer tablets hither and yon.

In his latest book he says on Page 14:

Clean a toilet. Drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets, wait 20 minutes, brush and flush. The citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous china.

Further down on the same page he says:

Polish jewelry. Drop two Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse the jewelry for two minutes.

Why not just clean the jewelry and the john at the same time?!

In fairness, there are items in the book that seem useful enough. Such as:

Repelling moths with McCormick/Schilling Black Pepper. And cutting a cake with Oral-B Dental Floss. (This can be extremely practical if it's one of those Christmas fruit-nut cakes that wedge particles in the teeth, I imagine.) Preventing snoring with Wilson tennis balls. And cleaning wallpaper with Wonder Bread. (Just the thing to try on one of those rainy weekends when you're loafing around the house.)

But just as the reader begins to have renewed confidence in Green's judgment and advice, he comes at you with the kind of off-the-wall craziness that cannot even be redeemed by Wonder Bread.

Naturally, it take us, at least indirectly, to his favorite location: the toilet.

I refer here to his use for the Dixie Cup:

Relieve an ear ache caused by the change in pressure in an airplane. Dampen a paper towel with hot water, ball it up and place in the bottom of a Dixie Cup. Then hold the Dixie Cup over your ear. The steam from the hot water will soften the wax in your ear, alleviating the pain.

Get out of here! Is it possible Green has melted his brains trying this experiment at home? One thing for sure, it won't work on an airplane. I only find hard plastic cups on planes. The only paper towels are in the toilet, and the water there is lukewarm at best and cool by the time the towel gets to the seat with you.

As we leave the book, Green is back in that place where he's fixated, telling us to clean our toilet bowl with Tang.

``Put Tang in the toilet bowl and let it sit for one hour. Brush and flush,'' he says.

Right, gotcha. Or you might wanta combine the Tang with those Alka-Seltzer tablets and create a fizzing, non-alcoholic screwdriver for your very own john. Whatever turns you on. ILLUSTRATION: This is Joey Green's third book offering offbeat uses

for common brand-name products.

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