1) The CoffeeScript version is:
$('#cust_select').chosen() # just the same
$('#container').bind 'cocoon:before-insert', (e, inserted_item) ->
# ... do something with the inserted item
2) inserted_item is indeed the inserted item:
From here
To listen to the events, you to have the following code in your javascript:
$('#container').bind('cocoon:before-insert', function(e, inserted_item) { // ... do something });
Where e is the event and the second parameter is the inserted or removed item. This allows you to change markup, or add effects/animations (see example below).