Monthly Archives: April 2008

Breaking news: The killergreat pond hockey movie my buddy Nick has been working on for years is finally finished. It’s premiering at the MPLS International Film Fest this week. It is going to be so boss. Everyone should go. Literally everyone. This means you. Go go go.
I sent him a few questions. He sent back answers. It went like this:
Remind me again who you guys are and what this movie is all about?
My name is Nick Deutsch. Some friends and I from the Minneapolis area have been making independent films for about 7 years. We are all hockey players/fans and we were interested in making a documentary, so, back in 2006, we set out to capture the greatness of playing outdoor hockey. We started by filming the inaugural US Pond Hockey championships and the next thing we knew we were talking to Wayne Gretzky and Neal Broten. The stories and themes emerged and we cut them up into 80 minutes of hockey bliss.
A pond hockey movie? That sounds awesome! Exactly how much ass does it kick?
It kicks enough ass to actually move pond hockey fanatics to tears and the non-hockey fan will certainly be intrigued by us crazy northerners.
What don’t I know about the pond hockey scene?
You, being a Minnesota hockey fan, probably know most of it… which means you also know how sweet it is. One of the big things we discovered is fewer people are playing outside these days. That surprised us, so we explore that angle a bit.
How much of what you shot is local? Where’s the rest from?
The majority of the filming is done in the Twin Cities area and up on the Iron Range. The crew also made trips the Chicago, out east to NY and NJ, and to Canada, specifically Nova Scotia the birth place of hockey as we know it.
Loft or no loft? Goalies or no goalies?
That’s the beauty of the pond, you make up your own rules.
Where can we see it? Or better yet, how can I buy it?
It’s showing 3 times at the Minneapolis/St Paul International Film Festival: April 24th, 25th, and 30th. We plan to take it on the road to other film festivals and possibly do a regional theatrical release early next winter. The DVDs are on sale now on our website. However, we won’t be shipping them until Nov 1st.
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Pond Hockey Movie [pondhockeymovie]
Minneapolis/St Paul International Film Festival [mspfilmfest]
GO GO GO

Haven’t done one of these in a while. 4 bullets from the weekend bang bang.

• Saturday was my first soccer game after a 4 week between-season hiatus and it went about like you’d expect. Which is to say we lost, but we still managed to qualify for what we losers like to call a ‘moral victory’. And to those of you who say “there are no moral victories” I say “stfu, this league is insanely competitive”. Seriously, we play in the B-division or whatever, and the team we played on Saturday was wall to wall 25-year old former DII college player types. A couple of them ran track at the U. And I’m supposed to compete with that how, exactly? Speed? Moves? (My best move is to distract them with jokey smalltalk during their corner kicks. It works amazingly well. This week I was all up in one of their girls business about how tan she was and how she must have been in Cancun for spring break and she was all “I was in Florida!!” and the ball went sailing past WHOOPS!) So moral victory? You damn right.
• Dim Sum at Jun Bo on Sunday morning. (Pictured above.) I like this place, especially when you go with a mob of people and you order a ton of different stuff and you get to try a lot different things. (As opposed to when you go with one other person and you get 3 things and you share them and then you go home and you ask yourself what the big deal is.) My main regret after dim sum – and it happens every time – is that I don’t learn anything. I go, I pig out, I leave, I have no idea what I ate and/or if I should have eaten something different. But it’s fun and it’s good so maybe it doesn’t matter. Feels like it should, though.
• Minivan shopping. Went to two places: Honda and Chrysler/Dodge. Both very excited to offer me hot chocolate from one of those loud whirring gas station hot chocolate machines. I don’t really get that. Like I’m gonna base my buy decision on which dealer has the better hot chocolate? Um, no. Nor will I be basing it on which salesman had more Axe body spray on. Though if I were, it would totally be the Dodge guy. In other news: they are basically giving away minivans these days. Thank you shitty economy!
• Stupid Wild. I went over and bellied-up to the bar at Bunny’s and watched because they have cable and beer and my house only offers half of that package. There was quite a bit of cursing when COL scored that early shorthanded goal, but I said I was sorry and they let me stay if I promised to settle down. I still left before the 2nd ended. Maybe next year.

This is Matt. Matt is the barista at Ambrosia Coffee’s downtown Minneapolis location over in the lobby of the Kickernick Building in the Warehouse District. For my money, Matt makes the best latte in town. He also does that latte art stuff. I have no idea how it works – other than it has something to do with a substance called ‘microfoam’ – but it sure looks cool. And I guess it’s way harder than I think it is. Though after watching like 45 hours worth of youtube latte art videos, I’m starting to feel I’ve got the hang of it.
The Ambrosia space has turned over and changed names a bunch of times but Matt has hung around. The new owners seem to do a pretty nice job. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood.
Ambrosia Coffee [ambrosiaexpresso]