Andy Griffith's television persona was such that 18 years later, he parlayed another series, the courtroom drama Matlock, into a perennial favorite for nine seasons.

But I'll always remember him as the frightening vagrant-turned-political demagogue Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes in Elia Kazan's eerily prescient 1957 drama, A Face in the Crowd, more than holding his own against such acting heavyweights as Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau and Lee Remick.

It was a virtuoso performance that completely belied Griffith's forthcoming role as TV's beloved Sheriff Andy Taylor, and is remembered today by film critics as one of the towering big-screen performances of the mid-20th century. Griffith later recalled convincing Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg to cast him as Lonesome Rhodes, by doing his impression of noted evangelist Oral Roberts performing a faith healing.

For the record, Ms. Duckworth lost both her legs in November 2004, when the Army helicopter she was piloting was hit by an insurgent RPG and shot down. For his part, Walsh thought it perfectly cool to pay child support for his three kids for the better part of a decade, until finally compelled by a state judge a few months ago.

When your country has its birthday in summer, it's nice to have the party with fireworks.
When you have your country's summer birthday party with fireworks, you sometimes think they're done.
When you think the fireworks are done, you wet them down to be sure.
When you check, you find they didn't all go off.
When perfectly good fireworks get wet, you dry them with a torch.
When you dry fireworks with a torch, you get hit in the face with fireworks.

Don't get hit in the face with fireworks.

Lest you wind up with an eye patch, in which event you might wind up waking up in a roadside ditch.

In this guy's case, it appears that despite melting the contact lens into his eye, he will not lose the eye.  So far.

I had to get a friend to upload Mozilla onto a flash drive just to get to the internetz.  I got no more IE.  All of my Word docs, pictures, etc. have been corrupted.  I can't open squat now....

Very discouraging.  I got to say...I don't like FireFox.

On the other hand, my auntie gave me her new Toshiba that one of her cats decided to get sick on.  The keyboard doesn't work but everything you can "mouse" works fine.  

I have decided to spend my limited funds on the new one rather than the old one.  

Or, if you're a Hulu+ member, you can watch "War Room" the great documentary about Bill Clinton's '92 campaign.

Or how about Sidney Lumet's "Network" which is available via Netflix streaming?

Or, if you feeling like mixing a bit of May Day with your Fourth, how about Warren Beatty's "Reds"? Also available for streaming via Netflix.

But maybe you just want to shut off the brain, grab the popcorn, and watch Roland Emmerich's "Independence Day". Not available for streaming. (Though his movie "The Patriot" is.) But you probably have a copy.  It's been in DVD bargain bins for years.