Feel Good Hit of the Summer 2007

In '96 I took a job with a consulting company in South Jersey. I took it to get away from a job with a defense contractor that paid peanuts and caused untold grief as it was a pit of despair, fit only for masochists and people with psychology degrees.

I only stayed with the Jersey job for a couple of months, but that was long enough to know what 'Cracked Out' is referring to in their song 'Bennigan'z', a cross between Run-DMC's 'You Be Illin'' and Jeff Foxworthy's 'You might be a redneck' routine. Only in this case it's 'you might be a wanna-be Gotti boy'.

You got the highlights hair, barb-wire tattoo, You're Bennigan'z
You just bought the brand new Dave Matthew(s), You're Bennigan'z

You can see Rapzilla and MC Record Deal perform it here on MTV's 'the human giant show' (the actual performance doesn't happen until a couple minutes in).

So yeah, the job in New Jersey was straight Bennigan'z, I stayed in a Bennigan'z hotel (Hampton Inn) and ate at a Bennigan'z restaurant (Chili's). Bennigan'z sales guys decided my fate. (You can maybe get in on the ground floor on the Bennigan'z thing. At this writing, Google only brings back 1,100 results for 'Bennigan'z').

Back to Cracked Out. Lazy music reviewers sometimes say things like 'Kelly Clarkson could sing the phone book and I would listen'. Cracked Out spits the numbers from 1 to 100, and damn, that shit is dope. Kind of like DJ Shadow's 'The Numbers Song', but with more numbers. Another video here. This one has an ad at the beginning. Fuckin' MTV.

Here's what those Lebowski costumes were about:

• The monkey with the napkin and spork represented the line 'you gotta feed the monkey'
• The Irish caricature was a reference to when the guy in the VW thought the Dude was a 'brother shamus' (an Irish monk?)
• The new piece of shit carrying the flashlight symbolized the line 'new shit has come to light'
• The globe that beat on the guy inside w/ the hammer and axe was the 'world of pain'. He entered a world of pain, see?