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The Discovery channel isn't just celebrating the nation's most famous obelisk when it presents "The Washington Monument: It Stands for All" at 8 tonight. Discovery actually chipped in more than $2 million to the monument's recent restoration and its new visitors center.

This program explains the ins and outs of the painstaking three-year repair job, along with a history of the monument and a tour, where you'll find nearly 200 memorial stones sent from around the world. If you miss this show, something tells me the visitors center will sell you a videotape copy.

Fourth of July programming

Plenty of star-spangled viewing choices today, starting at 8 a.m., when CNBC celebrates "financial independence day" with five hours of programming aimed at the personal investor. It starts with an overview on managing your stock portfolio, then looks at the year's most important stock categories: telecom, health, biotech and big technology. If you're sleeping in on this market holiday, the programs repeat at 3 p.m.

At 7:30 p.m., A&E presents its annual "Pops Goes the Fourth" from Boston. The live extravaganza, which repeats at about 9:30 p.m., features Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops. Don McLean will sing "American Pie" — just as he did a long, long time ago — and Arturo Sandoval will blow his horn.

PBS (check local listings) joins in at 8 p.m. with "A Capitol Fourth" from Washington, featuring the National Symphony, Ray Charles and James Galway. That's followed at 9:30 by "Cincinnati Pops Holiday" with performances by Doc Severinsen and Rosemary Clooney. "Macy's 4th of July" (9 p.m., NBC) offers up the music of Broadway.

Other related shows: a repeat visit to the "St. Louis Arch" at 8 p.m. on Travel Channel; "Homes of Our Heritage," with a look at presidential estates, 10 p.m. on HGTV; and, for those who'd rather cut to the chase, "World's Most Powerful Explosions" and "Pyrotechnics" from 9 to 11 p.m. on TLC.

Mary Connelly, Mary Connelly

When I read that Mary Connelly had been named the new executive producer of "The Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn," my heart leapt. Mary Connelly! Coming back to the fold!

As all true David Letterman fans know, Mary Connelly was the staffer on NBC's "Late Night" who in 1991 beat two of the NFL's finest in a game of throwing the football across Dave's office into a wastebasket. Now she's in L.A., taking over for Billy Kimball as executive producer on the post-Dave show starring Kilborn, the former sportscaster and college basketball player who once led the Big Sky Conference in turnovers and was known by his teammates as "Vanilla Thunder."

In one of her early conversations with the host, Connelly was asked the trivia question Kilborn often likes to pose to his visitors: Name the six white NBA players since 1980 who had at least one season averaging more than 25 points a game.

"I got three out of six and Craig was impressed," Connelly told TV Barn in a phone interview. (For those of you playing along at home, the answers to Craig's quiz are here.)

Like many TV productions, the Letterman show has its ways of relieving stress behind the scenes. Mostly they are games of catch, though at times they escalate into free-wheeling tests of pitching velocity. Letterman in particular is known for chucking the ball, hard. Once, back in the NBC days, a staffer's fastball got away and sailed through one of the windows facing Sixth Avenue. The ball presumably landed nine stories below, though as Letterman later recounted, everyone was too terrified to look. Shortly thereafter, Dave had the windows covered over with a thick sheet of bulletproof plexiglass.

It was into this culture that Mary Connelly arrived in 1985 as a member of the "Late Night" production staff. Almost immediately she was pressed into on-air duty, as an audience member in a sketch. Two years later, she began a series of appearances as "Connie Plescoe," a "friend of the show" who stood by the famed blue exit doors, looking very pregnant. The joke was that Dave would always ask her to do various tasks, like getting up on a ladder to change a studio light or carrying off a huge TV set. Once, Connie showed up holding a baby — only she was still pregnant and this wasn't her baby.

At some point during 1990, Dave and Mary began tossing the pigskin around his office. Taking turns at the corner trashcan, Connelly consistently hit her mark with frightening accuracy. Letterman began talking about it on the show, and in short order a camera, and Connelly, were dispatched to his office so that all of America could see her throwing prowess.

A couple of months later, Letterman bet $5 he could beat Connelly in a throw-off. By the following spring, "Mary Connelly's Quarterback Challenge" had become New York's fastest-growing sports sensation. Giants quarterback Phil Simms tried, and failed, to go basket-for-basket with Connelly. The second, and final, victim was Bengals QB Boomer Esiason.

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but Connelly's career took off after the quarterback challenges. She was promoted from research coordinator to talent coordinator that spring, then segment producer the following year. She remained in that position for four years, making the move with Letterman to CBS, until "Mad About You" came calling. Connelly was a producer on that sitcom, and wrote two episodes. Then it was off to produce "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" for ABC.

From talk show to scripted show to improv show. Mary, compare and contrast.

"The fun part of doing a talk show is that you do it five nights a week and it really feels like live television," Connelly said. "You get an adrenaline rush walking through the door at work which lasts until you try to put yourself to sleep at night. Even walking around (the Kilborn set) these first few days, I think, 'Oh, yeah, that's what it feels like.' But after doing it for 11 years on the Letterman show, I was ready for scripted comedy ... Likewise, going to an improv show, instead of a 55-page script you just wrote, 'You're a duck,' and handed it one of the performers. That was its own form of delight.

"But I certainly cut my teeth on talk shows. If you've worked on a talk show, you're ready for just about any other job in television."

Within a day of arriving at Television City, where the "Late, Late Show" is taped, Connelly located the basketball court. She plans to go there when she's not shepherding Kilborn, in hopes of bringing him down a few notches with her famous hand-eye coordination.

"I'm going to spend the weekend at the hoop working on my shot," she said. "I'm ready when he's ready."

(Thanks as always to Don Giller for the stellar research.)

On this date...

in 1998, Bob Dole appears on "Late Show with David Letterman." Although no one enjoys a good turn of phrase more than Dave, at no point do the words "erectile dysfunction" come up. -- Tom Heald

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