Pete Wentz
Photo: MTV News

It all started with a single tweet, written — and subsequently deleted — by drummer Andy Hurley. In it, he said the band was on "hiatus," touching off a wave of panic among FOB fans, most of whom were already skittish that their favorite band was calling it quits.

The problem was the word itself. "Hiatus" has a rather nasty and permanent connotation these days, it seems. So when MTV News caught up with Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz at the opening of American Eagle's Times Square store in New York, he took it upon himself to set the record straight ... again.

"It's weird because, if you look it up in the dictionary, 'hiatus' is a synonym for 'a break.' We're on a break that doesn't have a definite ending. There's no ending date," Wentz said. "We've been doing this for eight years straight, where it was pre-recording, record, promo, tour, tour, pre-recording, record, tour, tour, and our band was going to imminently implode."

So, while yes, Fall Out Boy are on a "hiatus," it's not of the nasty, this-is-forever variety (something Wentz tried to explain on his own Twitter account earlier this month). It's of the ... well, perhaps there's no good way to put it, which is why Wentz decided to coin a brand-new term for his band's break.

"I don't think I would use the word 'hiatus' because I think that word has gotten a dirty name, especially if you say 'indefinite hiatus,' " he explained. "I wouldn't use the word 'breakup' because that's not true. It's a break — we're decompressing. I'm making a new term for it: we're decompressing right now."

• Leighton Meester, Pete Wentz Help Launch American Eagle In Times Square

• Fall Out Boy

Rick Ross
Photo: Michael Loccisano/ Getty Images

The list of nominees reads like an iPod party mix, so naturally, the 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards have lined up an eclectic list of performers and presenters too.

Passion Pit and the Clipse — featuring Cam'ron and Rick Ross — have just been confirmed to perform at the sixth-annual Woodies, joining already-announced acts Death Cab for Cutie, the Dead Weather and Matt & Kim. Breakout Woodie nominees Passion Pit will be performing their breakout single "The Reeling," while the Clipse will take on a pair of tracks, teaming with Cam on "Popular Demand (Popeye's)" and Ross for "I'm Good." Genre-blurring DJ/producer Diplo, who lately has been spending time as one half of Major Lazer, has also been announced as the house DJ for the night.

But all the onstage action won't just be of the performance variety. On Monday (November 16), the Woodies also announced a slate of big-name presenters, including Pete Wentz, Zooey Deschanel, 3OH!3, Mary-Louise Parker, David Cross, Janelle Monáe, and Woodie of the Year nominee Asher Roth.

The 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards will take place this Wednesday at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. The show will then premiere Friday, December 4, at 10 p.m. ET on mtvU, MTV, MTV2 and Palladia.

Winners in all Woodies categories — like Woodie of the Year, the Breaking Woodie and the Left Field Woodie, to name just a few — are determined by you, the college music fan. Voting is still open through Monday over at Woodies.MTV.com.

• Woodie Awards 2009 Performers And Presenters
• Woodie Awards 2009 Nominees

• Rick Ross (Hip-Hop)
• Cam'ron
• Clipse
• Passion Pit
• Fall Out Boy

Pete Wentz's tattoo
Photo: http://twitpic.com/n8mqc

Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz isn't just a friend to Cobra Starship frontman Gabe Saporta — he's also his label boss and friendly rival. As a result, the two have been maintaining a prank war for the past few months, culminating in a recent victory for Saporta.

Paying up on a bet he made a few months ago, Wentz got a new tattoo on his leg — a tattoo of Saporta's face.

"Well, I promised Gabe if 'Good Girls Go Bad' went platinum, I would let him pick a tattoo to put on me," Wentz said in a statement. "A man with such humble beginnings, of course, chose a self-portrait." As a result, there is now a permanent mark on Wentz's calf that features Saporta's face and the inscription "Gabey Baby Made Me Go Bad."

This is merely the latest shot in the public prank war that has been going on between Wentz and Saporta for months. Last month at the MTV Video Music Awards, Wentz wore a T-shirt that revealed Saporta's phone number, and while he was unable to reveal all the digits on the live broadcast, Saporta's number still got out there, forcing him to change it.

Saporta struck back a few weeks ago at Los Premios MTV, where he announced Wentz's e-mail address (in Spanish!) during the broadcast.

For those keeping score at home, Saporta is definitely in the lead, though according to Wentz, there may still be more to come. "I held through with the bet," Wentz said. "But let's see if Gabe holds through with his end of the bet if Hot Mess goes gold."

• Fall Out Boy
• Cobra Starship

Pete Wentz
Photo: Frazer Harrison/ Getty Images

With Halloween only a few days away, Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz has a limited amount of time to head out to his local costume shop and pick something up for Bronx Mowgli, his 11-month-old son with wife Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. But he already has a pretty good idea for a costume.

"Bronx is real big on SpongeBob [SquarePants], so I figure I can't be SpongeBob — so I'll go as [SpongeBob's starfish sidekick] Patrick," Wentz told MTV News. "I'll go as Patrick, which will be weird, because Patrick [Stump]'s in Fall Out Boy. So it would be weird to be Patrick for a day. But it will be cool."

Wentz knows just what advice the FOB frontman would have for dressing up as him. "It would be self-deprecating of some kind," Wentz said. "That's how he talks about himself."

Wentz also reminisced about his best Halloween memory of all time. It was the year he was an urban pirate and went trick-or-treating.

"[The costume] included a green Uzi — Uzis were real big whatever age that was — and an eye patch and bandana," Wentz remembered. "And I trick-or-treated on the way home from school. I was a little old to be doing that, but I did it anyway."

It's Halloween Week, the spookiest time of the year and also the most fun. So as the leaves fall and it gets a bit colder, we here at MTV News decided to pay homage to the holiday by rounding up some of your favorite celebrities' Halloween memories and costume ideas — some even offer advice on how to dress up like them this year. So brace yourselves: You're in for one horrifying week!

• Fall Out Boy

Cobra Starship's Gabe Saporta and Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz onstage at Los Premios on October 15, 2009 in Universal City, California
Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

Last month at the MTV Video Music Awards, Pete Wentz decided to play a joke on his pal Cobra Starship frontman Gabe Saporta by revealing his phone number live on the show.

Luckily for Saporta, MTV producers intervened, and Wentz was never able to complete the prank. Unluckily for him, things didn't end there: Saporta's phone number still got out, but Wentz had nothing to do with it (a vindictive T-shirt printer did).

"So basically this year for the VMAs, MTV was very nice to allow me and Pete to present an award together. Little did I know that Pete had a little practical [joke] planned, where he had my phone number printed on the front of a shirt," Saporta told MTV News on the set of Cobra Starship's "Hot Mess" video. "But MTV was like, 'You know, we're not super-kosher with that, you've got to tape it up.' But still, he took his jacket off and started pulling the tape off to reveal my number.

"My number never got out, but here's the catch: That shirt was professionally printed at some T-shirt place, and of course, someone at the T-shirt factory leaked an image of my shirt on the Internet," he continued. "So I would get, like, 20 calls a day, kids pranking me, singing me songs, whatever. I thought it was funny for a while, and I thought that if I neither confirmed nor denied it, it would go eventually away. Guess what? I was wrong. I was dead wrong."

It seems that the phone calls continued while Saporta and Cobra Starship were over in Europe, and, well, international phone calls are expensive. It got to be so much of a problem that Saporta was finally forced to cancel his number ... and to swear revenge on Wentz.

"In Europe, every call that comes in is a dollar. So if you let it go to voicemail, that's another dollar, so I'm getting 40 calls a day at $2 each ... that's $80 a day, man! I mean, I have a hit single, but I haven't seen a dime from it yet, man! Eighty dollars is a lot of money," Saporta laughed. "So I canceled my old phone number, got a new number, and I made sure that my new phone number has '666' in it, that way no one will mess with me ever — including you, Pete Wentz! By the way, Pete, I know your e-mail address."

And he wasn't kidding: Because last week at the Los Premios MTV '09 awards in Los Angeles, Saporta revealed Wentz's e-mail address live onstage, as he was translating Wentz's between-song banter during Fall Out Boy's set (Saporta is Uruguayan). At the time, Wentz didn't seem to realize what was happening — yet another peril of not speaking Spanish — but he sure did later, when his e-mail account was positively crippled with messages. It seems Saporta had gotten his revenge.

Wentz responded to MTV News' e-mail about Saporta's stunt — and from the sound of things, the prank war between the two sides has only just begun.

"Gabe is a 'Hot Mess' in more ways that one. ... He tried to give my e-mail address away when he was translating my banter into Spanish for fans. E-mail addresses are like nuclear weapons, and the other side only has a moment to react," Wentz wrote. "Trust me, I have something up my sleeve for Mr. Saporta. It feels like we're pranking on each other like siblings. Imagine whose number I could give you (friend/family of Gabe) to convince him of a Midtown reunion [Saporta's former band]. Though I did call him a 'puta' from stage."

To be continued, we're sure ...

• Cobra Starship
• Fall Out Boy

Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz
Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images

When Fall Out Boy began planning to release a greatest-hits album, there was one sticking point: They never thought they'd be the kind of band that would release a greatest hits album, because most greatest-hits albums are kind of lame.

So how did they finally reconcile those doubts? Well, for starters, they stopped referring to the project as a "greatest-hits album."

"I don't think about it those terms," FOB bassist Pete Wentz told MTV News on Tuesday (October 13). "Something I wanted to explain to people is that we put out a record that essentially is every song we ever made a video for, and certainly a song off our [2003] record Evening Out With Your Girlfriend isn't a greatest hit in terms of, like, a greatest hits [album]."

Instead, Wentz and Co. look at the album — which is called Believers Never Die and hits stores on November 17 — as a sort of scrapbook, a look back at their rise from scrappy Midwestern kids to platinum-selling, celebrity-marrying pop punks ... with a glimpse into the future, too. And, despite what you may have heard, they're not putting it out as a way of exiting their contract with Island Records, although the band is taking a bit of a break.

"A lot of people think it's just the label contract, pushing it out, but we're putting two new songs on there, one that a lot of people liked off the [CitizensFOB: Welcome to the New Administration] mixtape we made, then we're including two bonus tracks," Wentz said. "One is a remixed version of a song off Evening Out, and the other is 'You'll Shoot Your Eye Out,' which is a Christmas song that no one has had the chance to own a physical copy of. And there's DVD commentary on all our videos, then there's gonna be a lot of secret messages to our fans in the artwork. It's not just some straightforward thing."

And one of those new songs on Believers is "Alpha Dog," which appeared on the Citizens mixtape in demo form, and has since been fleshed out into a full, funky version. It premiered Monday on FOB's official site and quickly became a much-blogged sensation. And, as Wentz said, though it's been around for a while, the band felt it was too good to linger on as a lowly mixtape demo.

"We really like that one a lot. We worked on it a bunch," he said. "We're the kind of band that likes to believe that if the stuff we make is good enough, then fans will want to hear it."

Wentz went out of his way to assure everyone that FOB made the album with the best of intentions, and that there's something for everyone on it.

"To me, calling it a greatest hits [means] if you're not an avid Fall Out Boy fan, it's an easy way to get all the songs, to take a dip in the water," he laughed. "But if you are a Fall Out Boy fan, you can just go buy those two [new] songs off iTunes, or you can buy the package, because you will find some stuff in there that you'll think is cool."

• Fall Out Boy

Blink-182's Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge perform on Sunday
Photo: Cory Schwartz/ Getty Images

Earlier this year, Jay-Z sounded the death knell for Auto-Tune. And on Sunday, Pete Wentz declared the death of the Emo Swoosh. In a move of great historical significance, Wentz was shorn of his infamous spiky/swooshy "Emo" hair onstage during Fall Out Boy's set at Madison Square Garden, bringing to a close his near five-year reign as the poster boy for the decade's most maligned and abused hairstyles.

	See Blink-182 And Fall Out Boy Rip up MSG

"So you guys know Jay-Z's 'Death of Auto-Tune'?" Wentz asked the Garden crowd. "This is the death of the Emo haircut."

With that, Wentz took a seat, and as the audience squealed with delight — and perhaps even horror — he beckoned Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus over, and the head shaving began. Meanwhile, Wentz's FOB bandmates, recognizing the heft of the moment, launched into "Saturday," from their 2003 Take This to Your Grave album (which, it should be noted, was the last album Wentz recorded with normal hair).

As for the parties involved? Well, they seemed determined to downplay the sheer enormity of the moment. The freshly shorn Wentz leapt from his chair and sang backing vocals on the song, while Hoppus gathered up his gear and exited stage left.

After the show, Wentz summed up the experience with a one-sentence tweet ("I am more aerodynamic"), and Hoppus called the MSG show "amazing" and then attempted to start a Wentz-themed Trending Topic.

The Madison Square Garden show was originally scheduled to be the final stop on Blink-182's massive summer (and, really, fall) tour — which probably explains the head-shaving shenanigans — but the band canceled a handful of shows due to DJ AM's death in August. Those shows were rescheduled throughout the tour, with the last two taking place on October 6 and 7 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia. As a result, Blink added even more dates, and their tour is now finally scheduled to wrap on October 12 in Santa Barbara, California.

No word on who they'll shave at that show.

• Blink-182 And Fall Out Boy Heat Up Madison Square Garden

• Fall Out Boy
• blink-182

Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz
Photo: Jeff Fusco/ Getty Images

It started back in July, with a treasure chest delivered to a hotel room in China. It continued with a message and a golden turtle in Korea and a pill bottle in Mexico. And it's apparently still going on right now, which probably explains why Pete Wentz has been seen wandering around Los Angeles wearing a gold mask and clutching a mysterious manila envelope.

It's what Fall Out Boy fans are calling "Pregunta Deleon," a viral campaign that involves time travel, continent-hopping messengers, a faux Bible, inscrutable Web sites, a shady doctor, some medication, the MTV Video Music Awards and — most notably — Wentz and the Cab frontman Alex Deleon (despite the fact that, until very recently, neither had any idea they were participating at all).

It just might be the most involved viral scheme of all time, an ingenious (and sorta creepy) game that's seemingly taken on a life of its own. And it's the handiwork of one guy, a 25-year old student/musician named Brian Lee, who just wanted Wentz to listen to demos of his band, Ashbury. And yes, he has was way too much time on his hands.

"Pete and Alex had nothing to do with this at all. It's all based on a story that a buddy of mine had come up with, and we wanted to get Pete Wentz's attention, so we figured this was the best way," Lee told MTV News late Wednesday from his home in Las Vegas. "A lot of this was based on pure luck. I mean, I have a bunch of friends from Vegas that moved to China, because they opened a Venetian [Hotel] out there, and Fall Out Boy just happened to be staying at the Venetian when they played in China. So that's where we started.

"We had a chest that we got from Hong Kong — like an old treasure chest — and we put a letter inside of it, and I had my friends deliver it to his hotel room," Lee continued. "The letter was kind of the foundation of the whole thing; we introduced characters in the story and some of the passwords for the Web site. And on the chest, we wrote 'Pregunta Deleon,' which means 'Ask Deleon' in Spanish, because we were going to send the key to the chest to Alex, and we knew Pete would see him eventually. And then we just had to wait and see if Pete would play along with us."

And Wentz did. Rather than wait for Deleon, he pried the chest open himself, then posted photos of the letter — and the other contents — on his blog. Wentz figured that Deleon was playing some sort of prank on him, and he swore revenge. Of course, Deleon had no idea what was happening, and since he never got the key, Lee and his bandmates were forced to put two plans into action — one at a hotel in Mexico and the other in Korea.

"We've known Alex and the Cab for a while, since we're all from Vegas, so it was kind of easy to get him something. I talked to him, like all innocently, 'Oh, you guys are going to Mexico to write the new album? Where you staying out there?' and he sent me the Web site to their hotel, so I was able to send him a package there," Lee added. "What we sent him, instead of the key to the chest, was the final piece of the whole puzzle: a prescription bottle, with a gel-cap pill inside, and inside that pill was a piece of paper with the final password for the Web site. And on the pill bottle was an address for our Web site: WelcomeToTheNewHate.com.

"Meanwhile, we knew Fall Out Boy were playing in Korea after they played in China. And we had a friend that lived there, too, so we had him stand outside their hotel room with a huge banner that said 'Pregunta Deleon' on it, and he stood there until the band noticed him," Lee continued. "One of their people approached him, because I think they were starting to get freaked out, and my friend gave them this golden turtle, and when you removed the shell from the turtle, there was a thumb drive, and it had pictures on it and a recording of someone counting backwards, urging Pete to count with us. So Pete got onstage, and he told the crowd his name was '10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,' which was his way of telling us he was playing along."

And while Wentz was onstage, a bewildered Deleon posted a video on his blog, in which he read out the New Hate Web address, and just like that, everything went nuts. FOB fans flooded the site — which featured a box where passwords could be typed — and began entering basically every phrase from the letter Wentz had posted on his site, and clues began to emerge.

Entering "Pete Wentz" brought up an image of Wentz's "Time Travel" passport from September 2029, while entering "Escapist Manifesto" revealed the between characters named "Ian" and "Jason." And, we figure now is about as good a time as any to have Lee explain just what the heck is going on.

"The basic story is this: There's a man named Ian Hinden, and Ian is crazy. And he's crazy because he's been cursed by this man, HateFilledBox. And Ian can't feel happiness, so he's obsessed with finding HateFilledBox to get revenge, because HateFilledBox took his happiness away," Lee explained. "And so he has a series of interviews with this doctor, Jason Tezanos, about going out and finding HateFilledBox. And Jason has found the first version of the Bible, which is called 'The Escapist Manifesto,' and it's all written in musical form. And since Jason is a cynic, he gives the manifesto to Ian, in the hopes it will help him find HateFilledBox.

"Anyway, so we decided to incorporate Pete into the story, like, our characters were dead in the future, but a future version of Pete came across all their stuff, and there's recordings and journals, and Pete felt we could change the world," Lee continued. "So he went back in time to get his younger self to find us and get this stuff out to people so we can change the world. Basically, that stuff was my band's music."

And to that end, once Wentz and Deleon finally met (at the MTV Video Music Awards, incidentally), Deleon gave Wentz the pill — and inside, on a folded piece of paper, was the phrase "prosopagnosia." When it was entered into the New Hate Web site, it took visitors to a fake, futuristic version of Wentz's blog, in which a pair of Ashbury MP3s could be heard. And that, for all intents and purposes, was it.

Only, you know, it wasn't. Wentz — who put up a lengthy blog post about the whole viral campaign — has seemingly picked up the game and run with it. Earlier this week, he was photographed walking around Los Angeles, wearing a gold mask ("prosopagnosia" is the clinical name for a disorder of face perception, where the ability to recognize faces is impaired) and holding a manila envelop with a message written from a mysterious doctor.

Lee swears he has no idea what's happening now — after all, his goal with this whole campaign was "to get Pete's attention and work with Decaydence" — and Wentz isn't offering many clues, either. When asked about his involvement in the game, Wentz responded with an e-mail that read, simply, "More to come." Later, when asked what the end goal of the campaign was, he wrote, "The ultimate goal of all campaigns from here on out is to f--- with [Cobra Starship frontman] Gabe [Saporta]," then later posted a photo of him wearing the gold mask that linked to a picture of Saporta leaping into the air.

And so, the mystery continues. Which, given the scope of this entire thing, seems somewhat fitting.

• Fall Out Boy

Pete Wentz
Photo: MTV News

On September 9, "The Beatles: Rock Band" will hit stores around the world, thrilling not just gamers, but hard-core Fab Four fans too.

And one guy who fits into both of those categories pretty nicely is Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz (though, to be honest, he prefers video games of the 8-bit variety). Don't let the tattoos fool you — he's been a die-hard Beatles fan for as long as he can remember.

"I remember listening to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' and I didn't know it was a Beatles song at all; I just liked the song a lot when I was a little dude," he told MTV News. "I missed out on it in my teen years, when I was really too 'punk rock' to be listening to the Beatles ... and got into it later. 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun' is probably my favorite Beatles song ever."

And though, musically, the work of Lennon and McCartney (and Harrison and Starr too) has always inspired him, what most amazes him about the Beatles is just how massive they were — and how massive they continue to be.

"Obviously, that's one of those bands that will never be around again. There will never be a band like that, where all four guys could be frontmen," he said. "A thing that [Fall Out Boy lead singer] Patrick [Stump] said to me — that I totally agree with — is that there are a few artists, like the Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson and now Kanye West, I think, where you're forced to react to them. Love them or hate them, they made such a huge impact on pop culture that you're forced to have a reaction."

For more on "The Beatles: Rock Band" check out Multiplayer.MTV.com.

• "The Beatles: Rock Band"

• The Beatles
• Fall Out Boy

Patrick Stump
Photo: Scott Gries/ Getty Images

Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump has now officially done hard time. Four hours of it!

Late Tuesday night, Stump was arrested in West Hollywood, California, after a Beverly Hills court issued a traffic warrant for his arrest. He had been driving without a valid license, a misdemeanor offense in the state of California that Britney Spears was charged with in 2007, though she argued her primary residence was Louisiana. Her case was eventually declared a mistrial.

According to TMZ.com, Stump was taken to the West Hollywood Sherriff's station, where he had his mug shot taken He was released at around 4:30 a.m. after posting $15,000 bail.

So, what did Stump learn from his brush with the law? Well, as it turns out, plenty.

"All I really have to say is ignorance of the law isn't innocence," Stump told MTV News approximately 90 minutes after he posted bail. "I didn't want to give up my Illinois driver's license and was unaware that was a crime. It is, by the way, in the state of California. Lesson learned. I technically broke a law, so technically I deserve whatever I get. But man, is my mom gonna be pissed."

If convicted of the misdemeanor charge, Stump could face a maximum of six months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine. At press time, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department had yet to assign an arraignment date for the singer's case.

He also could possibly be grounded by his mom.

• Fall Out Boy

Leighton Meester, Pete Wentz Help Launch American Eagle In Times Square

• Leighton Meester
• Fall Out Boy

Blink-182 And Fall Out Boy Heat Up Madison Square Garden

• blink-182
• Fall Out Boy

Woodie Awards Biggest and Brightest Moments

• Moby
• Emmanuel Jal
• Debbie Harry
• Mark Hoppus
• Q-Tip

Woodie Awards 2007 Red Carpet

• Gym Class Heroes
• Fall Out Boy
• The Academy Is...
• Rilo Kiley
• Tokyo Police Club

Woodie Awards 2007 Performers

• Fall Out Boy
• Lupe Fiasco
• The Academy Is...
• Rilo Kiley
• Tokyo Police Club

Woodie Awards 2007 Winners and Presenters

• Annie Lennox
• Q-Tip
• Fall Out Boy
• Talib Kweli
• Motion City Soundtrack

Lady Gaga, Perez Hilton, Kristin Cavallari Hit Up The 2009 Video Music Awards Afterparties

• Lady Gaga
• Katy Perry
• Soulja Boy Tell'em
• Diddy
• Akon

Blink-182, Fall Out Boy And Panic! At The Disco Rock Out In Cincinnati, Ohio

• Panic at the Disco
• Fall Out Boy
• blink-182

2009 VMA Nominees

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Green Day
• Kings Of Leon
• Paramore
• Fall Out Boy

Fall Out Boy On The Set Of 'What A Catch, Donnie'

• Fall Out Boy