Once again, thank you for video-taping "Dharma & Greg" and freeze-framing on my vanity card. I'd like to take this opportunity to share with you some… - Chuck Lorre

Once again, thank you for videotaping "Dharma & Greg" and freeze-framing on my vanity card. For those of you who are new, this is my sporadic attempt to share my personal beliefs with millions of people (hence the term "vanity"). This attempt has led me into communicating many deep thoughts, and, I'm afraid to say, quite a few shallow ones as well. But what I've found most interesting is that after a few weeks, I've discovered myself scrounging for new beliefs. Things about which I could stand up and say with pride, "I believe in this, dammit!" Now that's not to say that I couldn't fill the card with a lot of mindless aphorisms. But do I waste my precious moment in the sun by proclaiming, "I believe that sex with multiple partners in a moving vehicle isn't all it's cracked up to be?" No, I do not. Do I squander this priceless opportunity to announce, "I believe we are better than the animals because we're capable of reading in the bathroom?" Once again, I do not. And so it is for this reason, I have no beliefs to share with you this week. No wait... actually I do believe that JFK had a much better understanding of the word "perks".

Thank you for videotaping "Dharma & Greg" and freeze-framing on my vanity card. I'd like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my personal beliefs. I believe that everyone thinks they can write. This is not true. It is true, however, that everyone can direct. I believe that the Laws of Karma do not apply to show business, where good things happen to bad people on a fairly regular basis. I believe that what doesn't kill us makes us bitter. I believe that the obsessive worship of movie, TV and sports figures is less likely to produce spiritual gain than praying to Thor. I believe that Larry was a vastly underrated Stooge, without whom Moe and Curly could not conform to the comedy law of three (thanks, Lee). I believe my kids are secretly proud of me. I believe that if you can't find anything nice to say about people whom you've helped to make wildly successful and then they stabbed you in the back, then don't say anything at all. I believe I have a great dog, maybe the greatest dog in the whole wide world, yes, he is! I believe that beer is a gateway drug that leads, inevitably, to vodka and somebody oughta do something about it. I believe that when ABC reads this, I'm gonna be in biiiig trouble. I believe that Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High", is the greatest rock song ever recorded. Once again, thanks for watching "Dharma & Greg". Please be sure to tune in again to this vanity card for more of my personal beliefs.

Back in the days of network television, a vanity card in the end credits was a means by which writer-producers could express their creative dominion over the just-viewed show. It was dubbed a vanity card because vanity was all it had going for it. The actual producer of the show was the company that financed the show - that took the financial risk. The hierarchy was simple, the writer-producer couldn't fire the company, but the company could fire the writer-producer. I can vouch for this because I've been fired. A couple of times. But here we are now in the world of streaming television. On the plus side, a world where end credits are barely viewed by anyone. The viewer is actually encouraged to skip over them and quickly re-engage with another episode, or a different show or movie. Which brings me back to vanity cards. Why on Earth am I writing vanity cards for Bookie? My friends and family won't bother to read them. They might not even be able to find them. One might say, "If a vanity card is written on Max, and no one reads it, was it amusing?" Fuck if I know.