don't you know i'm loco

17 Pop Culture Crazies, from Aerosmith to Eddie

This weekend sees the premiere of the horror movie The Crazies, so titled because the movie is about people who are crazy. No, they really are crazy. Like, violent and screamingly psychotic. But you were right to be suspicious, because you’ve probably been burned before: The word “crazy” is so overused in pop culture — in movie and song titles, powerful adhesives, card games — that one should always check ahead to make sure “crazy”-branded things are in fact crazy before spending your valuable crazy-allocated time and money. And so we give you a slideshow of the seventeen most influential pop culture “crazy”s in recent memory, and gauge their actual craziness. Anyway, in the words of Prince, “let’s go crazy!” (No. 8, by the way.) And, of course, let us know which crazies we left out, crazy.

The Oscar vehicle stars Jeff Bridges as a hard-livin’, no-respect-gettin’ country musician, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the plucky reporter who maybe, just maybe, can redeem him. Craziest Moment: When Jeff Bridges pours out a bucket of pee. How Crazy Is It? Not at all. A truly “crazy heart” would likely put its owner in the hospital immediately, with a heart attack.
John Cusack, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Demi Moore are “out of school, out on Nantucket, and out of their minds.” Not Demi, actually — she’s running away from a motorcycle gang, but whatever. Craziest Moment: All things Bobcat. He’s so out of control here he makes Police Academy 3 look like Police Academy 2! How Crazy Is It? Frankly, as summers go, this one was only moderately crazy. But stacked up against, say, a crazy winter, this shit is in-sane.
One of Prince’s biggest hits starts with a funereal exhortation to get through life and make it to the after-world, where “never-ending happiness” awaits. The rest of the song continues on this Christian-themed tip, and the “de-elevator” of the chorus (“Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down? Oh, no, let’s go!”) is thought by many to be the devil — the craziest guy of them all. Craziest Moment: “Let’s go crazy / Let’s get nuts / Let’s look for the purple banana / Till they put us in the truck, let’s go!” How Crazy Is It? Quite crazy. Keep looking for that purple banana, P.
When Melissa Joan Hart gets dumped by her hottie boyfriend, she decides to clean up bad boy Adrian Grenier, who also just got dumped (by Ali Larter), and get revenge, or something. Craziest Moment: That Sabrina would ever date Vince! How Crazy Is It? It is not crazy, it is boring. It is the least crazy thing on this list. No one is driven crazy, except maybe the audience, har har (27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes).
Neil Young and his Crazy Horse band (originally made up of Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina) teamed up over and over again from 1969 onward, but are probably best loved for their first album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which includes the game-changers “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down by the River,” and “Cowgirl in the Sand.” Craziest Moment: In the late-seventies Rust Never Sleeps tour, roadies scurried around the stage dressed as Jawas. Back then, that was crazy, not nerdy. How Crazy Is It? Not too crazy, as crazy things go. It was a band. The original Crazy Horse (the Lakota hero who fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn) wasn’t too crazy, either, really. Technically it was his horse who was crazy. “Technically.”
A “shedding-type” card game (thanks, Wikipedia!), Crazy Eights is a wild and bumpy ride down the exciting road of being babysat. Craziest Moment: The look on her face when you’re like, “Blam,” and she’s like, “I didn’t think you had an eight left!” and you’re like, “I did!” How Crazy Is It? Insane! One number can completely change the suit? Whaaaaaaat?!
17 Pop Culture Crazies, from Aerosmith to Eddie