The free event was essentially a venue for Z100's deejays to stand on stage with microphones and taunt young girls with Jingle Ball tickets and meet-and-greet passes. The Backstreet Boys were also there and causing their fair share of mania, but nothing could compare to the J-Bros fervor perpetually rippling through the crowd. At one point I had to take a break from the heaving mosh pit of girls screaming for their chance to play Guess A Number Between 1 And 1000 To Win Jonas Brothers Meet-And-Greet Passes, so I headed towards the back of the theater and sat down on a ledge. Unfortunately, this ledge was the back of another stage where a deejay was presiding over a round of Scream Jonas Brothers Songs As Loud As You Can.

There was also an opportunity to have your picture taken with cardboard cutouts of the brothers, which I eventually decided was an invaluable souvenir.

Can you say "Jonas Brothers' older sister's creepy drunk friend"?

We were hard-pressed to find anyone who wasn't there for Jonas Brothers purposes, but luckily Alex spotted one of the girls from the Pete Wentz meet-and-greet video and some of her friends. These girls were by far the highlight of the afternoon. They were there on a mission to win Jingle Ball tickets so that they could see Fall Out Boy perform live for the 18th time, and Boys Like Girls for the 37th. And, not surprisingly, they were enthusiastic fanfic readers, though they adamantly insisted that they had never, nor would they ever deign to write it. I ran into them later on by the stage, where they were frantically trying to compete in the Win Jingle Ball Tickets Singing Bee; unfortunately not even their desperate, screechy rendition of "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" did them any good.

The event was, in general, a massive, gaping portal to Hell. Menudo—whose merch table was predictably inactive—apparently played a short set, which we somehow managed to miss, and performances by One Republic and Ashley Tisdale were at least an hour behind schedule, much to nobody's disappointment. Every ounce of energy in the room was channeled towards the opportunity to meet, greet, and potentially fondle the Jonas Brothers. Or else win tickets to the Jingle Ball, where one could at least gape at them from afar. Those Fall Out Boy fanatics were far and away the most genuine music fans in the entire place, which ought to tell you just about everything you need to know.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Said performances ranged from stadium-pro competent (Fall Out Boy) to so forgettable that even detailed notes wouldn't have helped (Boys Like Girls), but the show was invariably at its weakest when the girls in the stands exuded more pep than whoever happened to be on stage at the time (Avril Lavigne, we're looking at you), with Jordin Sparks resorting to a Christmas song (because even a spunky American Idol winner knows better than to bait a packed MSG with an album cut) and soft-rocking harridan Colbie Caillat mercifully only allotted the time to nervously strum through the excreable "Bubbly." (Her "backing band," especially the guy keeping time with the egg shaker, have the sweetest gigs that a lazy session guy could ask for at the moment.)

The grownups and the survivors, Alicia Keys and the warmly recieved Backstreet Boys (side note: when did AJ start looking like the emo Dave Attell?), unsurprisingly proved to be the only performers who had the biz-honed ability to command a crowd that size, but even with Timbaland interminably padding out three songs with the kind of between-song rambling that you'd expect from a pop genius with an entitlement complex bigger than his neck rolls, Jingle Ball still intermittently offered the rally-esque rush you get from the arena-sized pop show. During the hits, everyone sang. During the songs yet (or never) to be hits, everyone tapped out mash notes to the Jonas Brothers on their phones.

And at the end of the day, we were watching a Jonas Brothers show that just happened to feature some former (and current) Billboard chart-toppers as openers. There are all sorts of marketing and promotional reasons to help explain Disney's current chokehold on pop, and no svengalis will ever go broke banking on three nonthreatening, babyfaced cuties playing uptempo bubblegum. But the Jonas Brothers could have spent their set armpit-farting into their mics and the little girls still would have collapsed lungs and shredded vocal chords to show their approval. You could almost see the industry on its knees, thankful for another tweener bandage on hemorrhaging sales. There will come a point when even the well-scrubbed middle school idols can't control the bleeding, but based on Friday night's reception, the Jonas Brothers should keep the body from flatlining at least through 2008. So, um, hooray?

Jingle Ball 2007 [Z100]
[Photo: Getty]

Paul Lynde - "Kids" [YouTube]

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

2007 Jingle Ball [Z100]