Video: Charlie Sheen “winning” in his own special way

Uhhh…Charlie Sheen isn’t a lone nut on the tree.

Read this:

‘Two and a Half Men’ Creator Chuck Lorre Breaks Silence: ‘I Am So Outta Here!’
by Catherine Lawson, posted Mar 1st 2011 9:12AM

During the increasingly bitter Charlie Sheen vs. Chuck Lorre and CBS public feud, both sides have slung insults at each other with abandon. Lorre called Sheen “a degenerate,” and Sheen responded with a whole bunch of slurs.

In recent days Lorre vowed to stop writing his trademark “vanity cards” and has since remained silent, but now, in the midst of Sheen’s marathon round of TV interviews, he’s broken his silence. … Kind of.

Eagle-eyed viewers spotted a rambling rant on one of Lorre’s famous vanity cards in the closing credits for his other show, ‘Mike & Molly,’ last night. Reading like a riposte to some of Sheen’s odder pronouncements in recent days, it ends: “I am so outta here!”

The vanity card came two weeks after Lorre posted a provocative one in the closing credits for the last episode of ‘Two and a Half Men.’ That one read: “If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I’m gonna be really pissed.”

Having worked on tumultuous shows like ‘Roseanne’ and ‘Grace Under Fire,’ Lorre is no stranger to dealing with difficult stars, and he’s become known for the trademark stream-of-consciousness vanity cards, which he inserts into the closing credits of each episode of his shows. The cards, which contain his — sometimes totally random — musings, appear only briefly, and CBS has been known to censor them on accasion.

However, last week the closing credits of both ‘Mike & Molly’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’ contained a “farewell” vanity card, in which Lorre declared that, “It was more fun writing these things when I was fairly certain no one was reading them. That is no longer the case,” he began.

“These days it seems like every vanity card is getting scrutinized and criticized by network executives, corporate legal departments and publicity departments, TV journalists and tabloid bloggers. … Lately it’s gotten out of hand. Which is why I’ve decided to take a break for a few weeks. Let things cool off a little.”

The latest vanity card ends with a somewhat hard-to-decipher reference to “Grace,” which may hark back to Lorre’s days on ‘Grace Under Fire.’ That show ended abruptly because of star Brett Butler’s drug problems. After one unplanned hiatus while Butler was in rehab, her increasingly erratic behavior lead ABC to pull the plug despite strong ratings. (Sound familiar?)

Here’s that vanity card in full:

“CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #334

“I understand that I’m under a lot of pressure to respond to certain statements made about me recently. The following are my uncensored thoughts. I hope this will put an end to any further speculation.

“I believe that consciousness creates the illusion of individuation, the false feeling of being separate. In other words, I am aware, ergo I am alone. I further believe that this existential misunderstanding is the prime motivating force for the neurotic compulsion to blot out consciousness. This explains the paradox of our culture, which celebrates the ego while simultaneously promoting its evisceration with drugs and alcohol. It also clarifies our deep-seated fear of monolithic, one-minded systems like communism, religious fundamentalism, zombies and invaders from Mars. Each one is a dark echo of an oceanic state of unifying transcendence from which consciousness must, by nature, flee. The Fall from Grace is, in fact, a Sprint from Grace. Or perhaps more accurately, ‘Screw Grace, I am so outta here!’

“Questions?”

Lorre’s “vanity card #334″ isn’t exactly the statement of a well-balanced mind.

And, the Vanity Card he apparently applied to credits of “Two and a Half Men” about Sheen seems to have inspired Sheen to burst forth from his new-found sobriety onto the airwaves in protest.

Not saying Sheen’s O.K. but there’s a back-story there of provocation, a tete-a-tete between two mostly-badly-set personalities, Lorre and Sheen (or, Lorre vs. Sheen or vice-versa).

Lourdes on March 1, 2011 at 9:47 AM

One day, feather duster, next day, cock-of-the-walk.

Presto: druggy is a Producer!

Lorre fled from the pathos and attempted a college stint at SUNY Potsdam — where he says that he ”majored in rock & roll and pot and minored in LSD” — before dropping out in 1972 to pursue a career as a songwriter. He spent the next decade touring the country as a guitarist for hire. In 1976, he began experiencing a searing pain in his gut. Desperate and broke, he found his way to a Los Angeles hospital, where — adding insult to injury — he was diagnosed with colitis, a disease that can cause dangerous ulcers.

By 1986, Lorre gave up the music business and turned his attention to TV. ”I was always enamored of telling stories as a songwriter,” says Lorre. ”And it was a natural inclination to make them funny.” Though he had no formal screenwriting training, Lorre broke into the business by writing for animated shows before parlaying that experience into the sitcom world — ultimately scoring a supervising-producer gig on Roseanne in 1990.

Lourdes on March 1, 2011 at 9:53 AM