We had a couple of huge storms over the weekend – thunder, lightening, hail, gale-force winds. The works.

BTW, when I have to stop and think of the words for thunder and lightning in German, my first thought is “Santa’s Elves”, which eventually prompts my memory that the words I’m looking for are Donner and Blitzen.  I guess they were the German reindeer in Santa’s crew.

But I digress.

The weekend storms have left the Neckar river a muddy mess. However, today the river managed to perk itself up to at least be a photogenic, if still muddy mess:

A muddy “Postcard Shot” on the Neckar River, Tübingen, July 5, 2012

Another muddy “Postcard Shot” on the Neckar River, Tübingen, July 5, 2012

Punting on the muddy Neckar, Tübingen, July 5, 2012

Each time I’ve caught sight of the river in this state, I’ve been humming a tune to myself called, Muddy Water, from a musical that I don’t remember much about other than that song. The show, Big River,  is a musical version of the book Huckleberry Finn, and so the song is about the Mississippi River. I found a clip of the musical on YouTube that was apparently filmed as a commercial for the  original Broadway version of that show. Although, you’ll note that the setting in the clip doesn’t look anything like a Broadway stage. Then again, the musical did win for set design that year…

BTW, this musical version of a Mark Twain book is not to be confused with the musical adaptation of Tom Sawyer,  the first musical I ever performed in way back when. In the version I was in — when I was 10 or 11 — the character of Huckleberry Finn was played by my classmate Kevin Chamberlin. I’m not sure if that was his first musical, but  Kevin has gone on to become a Broadway star: he’s a 3-time Tony Award nominee! Very cool.  You can check him out in this snippet from the Addams Family Musical; one of Kevin’s Tony nominations came from his role as Uncle Fester in that show. You can also see him performing with the entire original Broadway cast in the opening number from the same show here.

Whoops, I have digressed yet again. What can I say. It’s just amazing how far the muddy waters of the Neckar can take you in a single blog post.