His Book Won’t Wax Furniture, but It Makes Handy Reading

Who would have thought?

Last Christmas the stocking stuffer of choice was Joey Green’s “Polish Your Furniture With Panty Hose.” Not expecting sales on the order of Stephen King’s, bookstores quickly sold out of the paperback guide to unintended uses for brand-name products. As Hanukkah and Christmas approached, people undertook frantic nationwide searches for the title, quests of the sort usually reserved for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and other hot toys.

The book sold some 85,000 copies, which means there are an awful lot of people out there who know you can shave with Jif peanut butter, if you so choose, or polish your furniture with Spam, which some claim is its best and highest use.

Green, who lives in West Hills, hopes to do it again this year. His new book is no “Anna Karenina,” but then it doesn’t claim to be. Like its predecessor, “Paint Your House With Powdered Milk” (from Hyperion) is a collection of offbeat uses for familiar products.

Capsule histories of the products are included, as are relevant factoids. But odd uses for that half-empty bottle of Wesson corn oil and other household staples are the heart and soul of the slender volume. (Odd is the operative word. Bet you never thought of slipping a teaspoon of Wesson oil into the cat’s Fancy Feast to prevent hair balls.) Got a MasterCard lying around? Play your guitar with a corner of it. In a salt marsh and suddenly realize you’ve forgotten your chicken necks or other bait? Chew a piece of Wrigley’s spearmint gum, stick a ball of it on your hook and use that to catch crabs.

Green, 38, says he was surprised and delighted by the response to “Panty Hose,” which sold two or three times better than any of his previous books, which include “Hi Bob! (A Self-Help Guide to the Bob Newhart Show)” and “The Partridge Family Album.”

As to why it was a hit, Green can only speculate. “My theory is that these are all products that people have in their kitchens and medicine cabinets, and they enjoy being able to test them out.”

As Green explains, consumers often write to manufacturers telling them of new uses they’ve found for products they have on hand. Coca-Cola doesn’t advertise the fact that its eponymous product cleans a mean toilet, but such information is kept on file. “I got the secret files,” Green exults. He then personally verified the majority of alternative uses.

But can you really paint a house with powdered milk? he’s asked. “You definitely can,” he replies. American colonists painted their houses with milk tinted with berries, and you can, too. He recommends using 1 1/2 cups of Carnation nonfat dry milk, mixed with a half cup of water. Add water-based color until you get the shade you want. “When it dries,” he promises, “it’s there forever.”

Green, who went on a two-year, round-the-world honeymoon after his 1987 marriage to wife Debbie, is already at work on “Wash Your Hair With Whipped Cream.”

Earlier this year, Macmillan published the former ad man’s seventh book, “Selling Out: If Famous Authors Wrote Advertising.” It’s a collection of parodies, including an example of what Tom Wolfe might do if called upon to pitch Grey Poupon mustard.

Last time he checked, Green says, “Selling Out” wasn’t.

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The Skirball Cultural Center has announced its inaugural literary series.

The series opens Oct. 22 with an evening with John Edgar Wideman and will feature Larry McMurtry and other writers reading from their work and interacting with the audience.

Robert Kirschner, program director at the Skirball, selected the program in cooperation with the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City. In addition to Wideman, the series will include memoirist and fiction writer Tobias Wolff (Oct. 29), Chicano writer Gary Soto (Nov. 21), an evening with novelist McMurtry and his sometime collaborator Diana Ossana (Dec. 10), poet Anthony Hecht (Feb. 4) and novelist Mona Simpson (March 20).

Tickets for individual events are $10 or $12. Cost for the entire series is $55 (call [310] 440-4500 for further information).

Like the 92nd Street Y, the Skirball is an institution with Jewish roots but multicultural aspirations. “Although this is an institution that foregrounds the American Jewish experience,” Kirschner says, “it has a larger obligation and a larger ambition, which is to enhance the appreciation of the arts, literature and cultural traditions of all people who would choose to come here.”

Kirschner says that the list includes writers whose work he admires and whose participation he thought would have resonance for Angelenos. It is Kirschner’s hope that the Skirball will become a major interactive venue for writers of the first rank from around the world.

“In Southern California,” he says, “such readings are very often confined to the campuses and major bookstores.”