Think about how far viral videos have come since then: before the internet, someone actually had to actively show this video to people on TV or something. Also, this vid is from 1986, the same year as the release of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, who desecrated his own memory in a car ad last night. While the Giants lost in the ’86 playoffs, the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl, but ended up losing to the Bears, just like they lost last night. Also, Reeboks.

“The Giants fan is quite a man, women and children too/if you back another team, something’s wrong with you.”

Do you have any of that noppy crunch?

Soon, the days when you could justify buying that big 2-liter bottle just marked “SODA” that was like $2 cheaper than Pepsi will be gone. Yes, even the lowly generic brands many of us rely on to squeak through under budget at the grocery store are getting pricier. Consumerist points us to this WSJ story that shows stores have caught on to us crafty consumers and are raising the prices of private-label goods: 5.3 percent on nonperishables and a huge 12 percent for perishables. Meanwhile, name-brand prices have only gone up 1.9 percent and 8 percent respectively. They still cost 29 percent more than the store-brand stuff on average, but the gap is closing in many areas: Target’s Archer Farms almonds cost  37 cents per ounce, a penny more than Planter’s version, for instance.

The nut (sorry) of the issue here is that you, the consumer, have become loyal to your Archer Farms,  365 Everyday Value or Key Food brand mustard, and the stores think you should pay for your loyalty. So tell us: do you have a favorite generic brand? And will rising prices make you go back to the big boys?

A humble little slice of the Catskills dream: 576 feet, 3 acres, $54,900.

This we did not know until we were turned on to the addictive new real estate blog Upstater, which has a weekly budget-friendly house roundup called Five-Figure Fridays, featuring rock-bottom Catskills properties. To be sure, not all are beauts, but there are some cute finds. In the latest FFF roundup, “at least three of them seemed inhabitable,” Upstater writes. “A couple of them could probably transform into something closer to adorable with a little love.” The favorite: a 576-foot cottage on three acres of land.

Upstater was launched in April  by former Brownstoner writer Lisa Selin Davis, who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment in Park Slope and swaps a  bedroom with her brother up in Tivoli. Since she’s perpetually in search of her own pad, we asked Davis where the deals are north of NYC. She told Brokelyn that Sullivan, Greene and Delaware counties are cheaper than Columbia, Dutchess and Ulster Counties. What if $100K is still too much? Try a bungalow:

If you want a serious deal, then, yes, a bungalow is the way to go. We’ve covered bungalows for sale for $6,000! The most expensive one we’ve seen is $59,000. There are annual co-op fees–usually less than $,2000–and most places have a pool and some other communal facilities. They’re vacation houses, three-season places, so you can’t get a mortgage on them. And, of course, you can’t use them in winter, unless you want to “camp” in them. Here’s a sample.

Hmmm… no interiors? Upstater also has winter Catskills rentals that you could split with some friends (this Hopewell Junction place is adorbs) as well as a handy blog item on half-off ski lift tickets at Plattekill, but you may have to use these.

Attn all the single ladies (and, uh, dudes).

Brooklyn, we work hard. TOO hard, apparently, to get sumpin’ sumpin’ on the side. The Daily News this week looked at newly released Census data that seem to indicate all of us busy ass hustlers in the borough are too focused on paying rent to worry about getting your romantic life in order. The paper quoted experts who said Brooklyn’s socioeconomic diversity means these results are not surprising. “They are beginning their careers and postponing marriage,” CUNY sociologist Richard Alba told the News.“They tend to concentrate in the same neighborhoods,” which means Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick, the area that has the most balanced cluster of both single men and women. Hm, not really surprising. Editorial comment below. 

The Census data do not mean that everyone in Brooklyn is blue balling/whatever-the-female-equivalent-of-blue-balling is all the time. It means that we don’t marry or settle down right away because we’re either not that interested in it, not that worried about it or just don’t have time in between gigs and jobs and assignments and school to commit to full-scale relationships. It does not count that kinda-casual hookup person you end up going home with again at 3am when the only people left in Rosemary’s are the crusty old locals, or the one night stands, or the friends with benefits, or whatever permutation of 21st century relationship you might have.

Listen, I just got back from a week in San Francisco where you can actually feel a different degree of hormones in the air: you know that thing in New York where everyone walking on the sidewalk looks at everyone else up and down to size them up? And occasionally you get the smile or the hungry eyes? That doesn’t happen there.

Several friends and local experts in SF bemoaned the dating scene: too few girls, too few datable dudes, that sense that people just don’t socialize in public as broadly as they do here and, perhaps most of all, the fact that the bars close two hours earlier (last call was 1:20 at one place!) — the crucial two hours when lots of totally awesome hookup decisions are often made.

In summary, we have it lucky here, so run with it while you can. Hell, who wants to settle down when there’s just so much fun stuff to do and so much of the world to be conquered? Now, back to work with you.