WHEN: January 8, 2005 WHERE: House of Blues, Orlando, Florida WHO: Jimmy Eat World, with supporting bands Elefant and Reuben's Accomplice MORE INFO: www.jimmyeatworld.com

Who knew I would get kicked out of a concert at House of Blues? The opening acts Reuben's Accomplice and Elfant were satisfactory, nothing special. The lead singer of Elefant, in a moment of I-think-I'm-Elvis-or-Jimi-Hendrix, threw his sweaty towel into the audience. Luckily it only went to the first or second row; we were standing about five or six rows of people back. When Jimmy Eat World arrived on the stage, the crowd went wild. Sweaty teeny boppers surrounded our college-aged group so that got a bit annoying. One couple that looked about 14 kept making out in between songs for some reason. But other than that, things were going great.  Jimmy Eat World played mostly favorites, such as "Bleed American," "The Middle" and "Authority Song," which is a particularly rockin song live. Girls kept asking me to prop them up to crowd surf, and I helped a few onto the top of the crowd; I even helped one girl do it twice, since House of Blues is not that strict in regards to crowd surfing. House of Blues Orlando has an open floor, which is where we were, surrounded by two levels, sort of a like a C-Shape. In the middle of one of the songs, a water bottle shoots from the second floor, half full of water, which splashes a bunch of people as it hits the floor beside us. My adrenaline was pumping. Instead of just ignoring the now-almost-empty container, I got it and threw it right back to the second floor balcony area where it was thrown. Bad idea. House of Blues Orlando has more security guards than any other live venue I have seen. There are dozens of them all watching, waiting for someone to throw something. Some of them have earpieces, and I guess one of these Gestapo saw me and had one of the presumably steroid-popping guards kicked me out of the venue. As he took me out the back some girl told me to just run, which would be impossible at the moment. For some reason, they got my driver's license information, I guess for repeat offenders. "Is this the balloon guy?" one of the bodybuilders asks the dude-in-charge as Hans writes down my information. I still don't know what he meant by the balloon guy, perhaps there was someone with an illegal balloon in audience? Outside, I meet two girls who were also kicked out, but for a different reason--they let a 20-year-old friend eat some ice from their cup that used to have beer in it. We chatted about the show, and how we missed the last few songs including the encore. I sold them my tickets to the Masquerede show since they missed most of this show and didn't see any Jimmy Eat World because they got kicked out way earlier. Fun concert, even if a few songs were missed. Apparently they played "Bleed American" for the encore anyway, which they had already played; I've never seen a band play the same song twice in a show. But they were rockin' for a few songs. I look forward to their next Florida show.