I've finally edited through all the AVP Long Beach 2007 photos. Enjoy!

Men's: http://www.fatspike.com/gallery/3178328

Women's: http://www.fatspike.com/gallery/3178317

The Scene: http://www.fatspike.com/gallery/3178324

My ass got cooked like bacon in the hot sun today. I napped afterwards until about 10:30PM, then went to eat out at a concrete-ish village of chain restaurants in downtown Long Beach. While I scarfed CPK, a dude got shot less than a block away, and the whole street got shut down. Nice!

Misty/Kerri won the women's final. Kind of a given these days, I suppose. They're simply a league above.

Earlier, I watched Wacholder-Turner drop EY-Branagh after those two kinda self-destructed. Seen it before: Branagh seems to lose focus and pass like crap, and EY just gets craaaazy. Screaming and such. Yikes.

On the men's side, Medel-Souza put up a great fight against Gibb-Rosenthal. They should have won, but they started making silly errors, and lost their lead.

Couple few photos uploaded from today. Sleep now.

You don't see this every day. Lambert and Metzger tried to put up a double block on Phil Dalhausser during a melee on the main court.

The Thin Beast sill got it past them, and Phil and Todd went on to win.

So I rolled down to Long Beach today (Friday) for the AVP tournament. God, traffic sucked. I guess it always sucks in LA. Eh.

I managed to only catch two matches, the newly-minted Tom-DeNecochea vs. Dodd-Minello, and the reunited Holdren-Scott vs. Lucens-Wiliams, yet another recent mash-up.

Holdren and Scott looked like they hadn't missed a beat since last year. Lucena-Williams looked pretty good, too, even though they lost.

So I realized who Lucena looks like: the baby alien that pops out of the guy's chest in Alien. I'm going to refer to him as Baby Alien from now on. Feel free to join me.

=

Logan Tom and DeNecochea seemed pretty solid for a new team, though they lost to the Lindquist sisters, whose no-block defense suddenly started working for them and got them into the semis. Tom and Dianne are both big girls, though, and not terribly quick. They rocked at the net, but they struggled with scoops. Should be interesting to see how this works out.

Is it alarming to just me that they chose Rio de Janiero for the Pan American Games? Anyone seen City of God?

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6266770.stm

Apparently, the AVP and tennis (whatever their league is) are the only sports to pay men and women equal prize money.

Considering the women probably draw more spectators than the men (in both sports), you'd think they'd get paid more, too. But, hey, equality is cool.

Link: Equal pay in sports isn't about the money

NBC will be airing five live AVP events, which is the bomb diggity.

I have nothing against FSN, but I can't imagine there are many people watching when the finals finally air on Sunday, 8PM PST. Not that there will be tons of people watching 1:30-3:00PM on Sunday (I'll probably be out at East Beach around then), but maybe the time slot is good for East Coast exposure, being 4:30-6:00 PM.

In any case, AVP on a prime network channel is a good thing. And does this mean it will be in HD?!

Schedule:

Long Beach	Women's	Sat, July 21	4:30 - 6 p.m. ET/1:30 - 3 p.m. PT
Long Beach	Men's	Sun, July	4:30 - 6 p.m. ET/1:30 - 3 p.m. PT
Chicago	Men's	Sat, Aug. 4	4:30 - 6 p.m. ET/1:30 - 3 p.m. PT
Chicago	Women's	Sun, Aug. 5	4:30 - 6 p.m. ET/1:30 - 3 p.m. PT
Manhattan Beach	Women's	Sat, Aug. 11	4:30 - 6 p.m. ET/1:30 - 3 p.m. PT
Manhattan Beach	Men's	Sun, Aug. 12	4:30 - 6 p.m. ET/1:30 - 3 p.m. PT
Boston	Men/Women	Sun, Aug. 19	12 - 2 p.m. ET/9-12 p.m. PT
Brooklyn	Women's	Sat, Aug. 25	2:30-4 p.m. ET/11:30 - 1 p.m. PT
Brooklyn	Men's	Sun, Aug. 26	2:30-4 p.m. ET/11:30 - 1 p.m. PT

Article: http://www.avp.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070717&contentid=29850