In 1999, Al released an album called Running with Scissors and featured the song Pretty Fly for a Rabbi on it. This song is a parody of Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) by The Offspring:
The interesting thing about this song is that he almost accurately imitated the lead singer of The Offspring Dexter Holland's vocals for the original song. This is why people felt that it was such an honour for Al to parody their songs because he would do them so humorously and accurately.
The lyrics of the song were inspirational in the formation of my lyrics because in a way they share similarities. I took direct inspiration from lines such as:
"(How ya doin' Bernie?) Oy vey, Oy vey"
"But our new guy's real kosher, I think he'll do the trick"
I also took vicarious inspiration from lines such as:
"Reads the Torah, does his own accounting too"
"Workin' like a dog, at the Synagogue"
"He'll bring you lots of cheer and maybe bagels with some shmeer"
"He shops at discount stores, not just any will suffice"
"Yeah, he keeps his cool and teaches Shul"
I do regret not including as much Yiddish as was included in this song, for example:
"But most of 'em were nudniks and none of 'em would last"
"Just say 'Vay iz mir!' and he'll kick into gear"
"He never acts meshugga and he's hardly a schlemiel"
"He's such a macher 'cause he worked his tuchis off"
Because of these songs and lyrics, I found it ten times easier to write my own lyrics and it really helped with the lyrical content as well. However, I based most of my lyrics on the structure of We Dem Boyz, so we can conclude that it was a joint effort between both pieces of media.
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