NBC ruins the opening of the Beijing 2008 Olympics

It is a rare moment in my life when I make a connection with a work of art. So rare, that it has only happened three times in my 29 year existence. This is why it was so tragic last night when I came so close time and again to this elusive experience while watching the Chinese performers during the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony. Their skills, precision, emotion and humanity is exactly what we relish from Olympic athletes. Every time I felt the connection nearing Bob Costas or Matt Lauer would rudely interrupt with some obvious comment or detailed factoid that could have been explained after the performance. Thank you NBC for ruining what could have been such a memorable connection that I could have shared between my fellow Americans, the Chinese people and the whole of humanity. I should have turned off the TV the second the commenter began with, "we are about to get under way with a countdown."

For you to gain some perspective on the severity of this tragedy, let me detail the three previous experiences. My first was with one of nature's most majestic masterpieces, the Grand Canyon. After hiking through this living art, which portrays such a colorful history, the Grand Canyon helped carve a future path for me for which I am forever grateful. On the same trip I just happened to be reading Hazen's and Trefil's, "Science Matters" , which somehow opened my mind to science, where countless others have fallen short. These two events stirred my curiosity such that when I took James Benbrook's Modern Physics class, I was compelled to switch my major from Computer Science to Physics to gain a better understanding of how the amazing universe works. From, that point on, I have never known boredom.

The information age can make it hard to feel the raw emotions evoked by a work of art. Even as I write this, I have been interrupted twice by telemarketers. So I must also give a big thanks to Comcast, who wanted to charge me $5 dollars a month for an unlisted number. This is why a recent experience watching PBS took me by surprise. As I tuned in to the New York Philharmonic, performing in North Korea I was moved by such an uncommon attempt at diplomacy. For that brief performance, I felt a connection with the North Korean people, made possible not only through the surprising selection of music like 'Arirang', a Korean folk song, but also through the visual images like the American, North Korean flags and the faces of the audience. Note, that while performing, PBS had the decency to let the music speak for itself, so shame on NBC for destroying one of the rarest emotions in my life. It is sad that they interject words into a performance that transcends words connecting groups of people that is almost never achieved. Could you imagine if the PBS commentator came in interrupting the flute solo to tell you how many people were performing. The NBC commentators, not only did this, but they had the gall to also inject political rubbish throughout the performance.

My third and final experience reminds me of how envious I am of the 90,000 or so people that had the privilege of attending the opening ceremony. On what seemed to be a rather normal afternoon with my parents attending the Houston symphony, I was treated to a complete surprise that I can only liken to what a person must have felt when they listened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on Friday, May 7, 1824, IF they had never heard of Beethoven. I am not one to read about a performance, whether a movie or song before I experience it, so during the standing ovation after one of the works, I was completely stunned by its beauty and wonderful strings that I thought surely it must be one of Beethoven's work, but no, it was Christopher Theofanidis' debut of "Rainbow Body." The sad reality is that I have downloaded "Rainbow Body" in Itunes and it will just never compare to the live experience of bathing in the acoustic vibrations.