If you’ve been a fan of any of the sitcoms produced by Chuck Lorre over the past 15 years — Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, or Mike & Molly — you probably know about Lorre’s “vanity card,” i.e., the screen that comes up at the very end of the show’s closing credits. Most vanity cards are just a logo of some kind for the show’s production company, sometimes involving a little animation or brief film clip; think of MTM’s cute little kitty, or JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot, or “Sit, Ubu, Sit,” that sort of thing. But at some point, Lorre started doing something different, using his card almost as a sort of blog on which he posts little essays, makes observations on life, cracks jokes, or, most famously (and stupidly, from a legal standpoint), shot off his mouth about the troubles Charlie Sheen was giving him during Sheen’s infamous psychological disintegration. The cards aren’t on-screen long enough to actually read them, but that’s part of the fun. You have to record them (or watch the DVD) and freeze-frame them in order to catch the complete content. Back when Lorre first started doing this on Dharma & Greg in the late ’90s, it felt like an almost-underground “cool kids only” kind of thing that not many people even knew about; nowadays, of course, it’s a built-in part of Lorre’s brand, an expected schtick, and all his “postings” are easily available online. The cards have gone mainstream, man, so of course they’re not as cool anymore…

Anyhow, the Girlfriend and I have recently gotten hooked on The Big Bang Theory — that’s a development I probably ought to discuss in its own entry — and we’ve been binging the last few weeks on the DVD sets for the first four seasons. And after each and every episode, we pause the playback and read the vanity card. Most of them are ephemeral, a momentary amusement that’s forgotten within seconds as we forge ahead into the next episode. But there was one I spotted over the weekend that perfectly suited the mood I’ve been in lately, and some of the things I was getting in my previous entry on my semi-annual frustration. I thought I’d share it here, faithfully copied from Lorre’s own archive so I get it right:

Mornings are the worst. The mind seems undefended, easy prey for both memories and imagination. What happened. What should’ve happened. What might happen someday. Your fault, my fault, no one’s fault. The only way to relieve the torment is to get up, empty the bladder, drink the coffee, read the paper, run the treadmill, perform the animal sacrifice, paint the chicken blood on the groin and call upon the demonic spirits to bring you back.

 

Nights are bad too. Once again, exhaustion makes the mind vulnerable to obsessing over woulda, shoulda, coulda. The only thing to do is sit alone and eat the chicken which was senselessly murdered in the morning.

Mmm, murdered chicken. Pass the barbecue sauce, please…