Review: In Tampa, a reunited Blink-182 celebrates life with innuendos and tetchy-as-always anthems [PHOTOS]

If there was a world record for "most elephants in a room at one time," Blink-182 (stylized with a lowercase "b") would be shattering the shit out of it since officially reconvening at Coachella back in April.

In case you just got out of your coma, alien expert Tom DeLonge—the band’s original guitarist—is back in the fold after a nearly decade-long hiatus. Drummer Travis Barker married into the Kardashian clan last year, and is now expecting a child with Kourtney. He has also made even more of a name for himself as a solo artist, having collaborated with the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, and alt-rock superduo Girlfriends earlier in the decade.

And as for frontman Mark Hoppus? Well, let’s just say that in a worse, alternate universe, Tampa’s Amalie Arena lay barren on Monday night, and live shows from blink-182 are now a distant memory.

“A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma,” he recalled while introducing “Adam’s Song,” which covers previous battles with depression and suicidal thoughts. “I felt like I was dying, and sometimes, I felt like I wanted to die. Considered it.”

But Mark being Mark, he kept his head straight by leaning on his family and friends—including the 18,000 people packed into Amalie for the sold-out show. Within months, he was declared cancer-free, and despite yet another war with TicketMaster, he stood tall and healthy alongside his original brethren (but don't Davey Tiltwheel, who's also a member of Tampa band Too Many Daves), with a head full of spiky, grayish-brown hair, and a massive fire in his punk-rock belly.

Everyone knows that a grand reunion show can’t start without a barrage of opening acts, though. Cleveland-based pop-punk singer KennyHoopla—who we genuinely didn’t know was added to the Tampa bill—wowed the pit with his powerful vocals, a back flip or two, and the vast majority of his Survivors Guilt mixtape. He even brought Tampa resident Ric Flair and two of his grandchildren onstage for a brief minute. The wrestling legend made a comment about age differences, and of course, one of his trademark “woo’s” to go. No, really.

Baltimore-based rock outfit Turnstile has been with Blink since this tour began, and ran through a quick set of jams primarily from its most recent Glow On album. In between “Fly Again” and “Big Smile,” lead singer Brendan Yates—having spent all set spinning, jumping, and dancing like no one was watching—took a seat at the foot of the stage, and drummer Daniel Fang went to town on his purple-tinted drumheads in a four-minute solo. Like KennyHoopla’s own drummer, Amani, Fang was completely shirtless for the whole show. You’d think the two were honoring a drummer who never wears a shirt onstage, huh?

At 9:30 p.m on the dot, Mark, Tom, and Travis triumphantly walked onto their vibrant diamond stage, over “Also sprach Zarathustra” (the theme song from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” you dingus), which might just be the best walk-on song ever. Hoppus, wielding a green Fender jazz bass, pumped his fists a few times, DeLonge knelt down with his Fender Starcaster, and on Barker’s call, strummed out the opening to “Anthem, Part Two.” While Hoppus wandered around the stage with his bass, DeLonge was taking on the double-duty that was shredding and howling out the politically-driven rant that rings truer in Florida especially than ever. “If we’re fucked up, you’re to blame,” DeLonge sang.

Hoppus’ heavily voweled vocals would come into play during the next song, “Rock Show,” followed by “Family Reunion,” which many of us probably sing under our breath when someone doesn’t use their turn signal. A handful of older first-timers even left the venue once Hoppus got through one of the most obscene 27 seconds of the 96-minute show.

If you’ve never seen Blink live, and you think that it was the dirtiest moment of the night, you’d be dead wrong.

The banter that went on between Hoppus and DeLonge in between close to every song was that of what seventh-grade boys joke about during lunch, while under the impression that no one is listening.

“There is so much sexual tension up here,” Hoppus admitted. “Until you’ve toured in a van with the three of us, you’ll never understand our fucking connection up here.”

“I’ve seen Mark’s dick so many times, I kinda fucking like it,” DeLonge added.

Someone also threw a vape onstage, which fascinated Hoppus for a second, before realizing what it actually was. “I thought they were extra small condoms for me,” he sighed.

And, before DeLonge nailed the lead vocals for “Down,” we learned that the platform on which Barker’s drum kit sat was going to rise, and dangle about 25 feet in the air, which reminded his bandmates of one thing: “Sex dungeon time,” Hoppus declared. DeLonge quickly jumped in and promised to one day write about his own experiences in said setting. “The world’s not ready for the story of Tom in the sex dungeon in New York City, circa 1995,” DeLonge explained.

But between the seemingly boundary-free innuendos being exchanged came a few moments where the crowd’s inner emo kid got to emerge from the darkness.

The heartbreaking “Stay Together For The Kids” saw Hoppus singing the verses while DeLonge’s tenor took on the higher choruses. Before jumping in, Hoppus acknowledged that he understood how “at least 70% of the people in this room”—including all three members of Blink—come from broken homes, but even that 30% who came from more stable homes couldn’t help but shed a tear once the D major lament came about.

And yet, despite the divorces, diagnoses, and adversities in general, Mark, Tom, and Travis are managing to keep their reunion tour as true to the early-2000s as possible. There’s no backing band, hardly any backing tracks—with the exception of a brief piano bit on “Adam’s Song”—and the only other things accompanying the boys onstage were an inflatable ambulance (“Dumpweed”) and a blow-up, rabbit marionette, (“First Date”) both having popped out from the screens behind Barker.

But in true Florida fashion, during the band’s “Dammit” finale—which followed “All The Small Things,” which was probably one of the loudest sing-alongs in Amalie Arena history—a fan jumped onstage and pranced around the diamond before getting tackled by security. It ended up taking two guards to literally toss the guy offstage like a rug.

Leave it to Tampatown to establish a new elephant in the room forBlink-182. You never know: The incident could very well be a new core memory for DeLonge, and we might be reminded of it when him and the boys come back.