And then they realised they were no longer little Fall Out Boys. They were little Fall Out Men.

Pete Wentz announces the succesful launch of the Fall Out Boy: All Growed Up franchise:

He said: ''When we got on stage in Chicago, it was crazy. It was a rush, because we honestly didn't think people would care, and that's the truth. But it felt like we didn't miss a beat.

''It's so early in the process and things are happening so much faster than we thought; the first time you do things, there's no instruction book.

''It's not like 'Oh, OK, you shouldn't act like an idiot.' We're all more appreciative and we've all grown up a bit. It's cool to do Fall Out Boy as Fall Out Men.''

They honestly didn't think people would care, although they'd booked dates in three continents just in case.

Pete Wentz forms a new band

Pete Wentz has pulled together a new band. He's called it Bl4ck C4rds.

With '4's for 'a's.

Really, Pete? You don't think that's a bit like drawing a flower over the dots on each of the 'I's in a name?

Wentz and never again: Fall Out Boy split

Causing endless upset to untold thousands - admittedly, only amongst people trying to flog deodorant and cheap eyeliner to teenagers - comes the news that Fall Out Boy are calling it a day.

Or, as they put it:

"It's a break with an indefinite date when they're coming back," their spokesperson told NME.COM.

In other words "we'll see how long Wentz can live on the royalties."

Fall Out Boy need space

I know, you've been worried - all those rumours Fall Out Boy were about to split. It's disturbing. What if you had a product you needed to sell to preteen boys? How would you launch it without a Fall Out Boy video to place your goods into?

Relax, though, they're not splitting up:

"I think I fueled that [rumor] accidentally," Wentz said. "I think that when someone asked me if we were working on any new Fall Out Boy songs, I said, 'No, not right now.'

Wentz said doesn't think that there's an endless demand for FOB. "I don't know that the world has to be all Fall Out Boy, all the time. When I see stuff like that with other bands, it sort of drives me crazy."

Instead, the band is taking the time "to breathe" between albums, though they continue to tour together and work on other projects.

Ah, yes. Leave a space between albums. Relese them too closely together, and people might start to notice they're all much of a muchness.

Fall Out Boy through the Blender

Blender have wobbled from their usual format this month - instead of giving the cover story to a sexy young woman, they've slapped Fall Out Boy on the front instead. Trouble is, this means they've had to write a story to go with it. And Fall Out Boy are fuming, as they say it's been made up. Take, for example, the claim that drummer Andy Hurley punched a door frame in response to the Green Bay Packers doing poorly on the football:

"I never hit a door for 45 seconds. I may have been yelling, like all my friends and I do, but if I did anything that crazy, it was as a joke," Hurley wrote. "That is total bullsh--. I wound never slam my iPhone, and I never punched a metal door frame for any time. Yeah, I'm totally going to kill myself over a football game."

God forbid that anyone should portray the Boy as being overwrought and suicidey-grandstanders, eh? Actually, it seems that Hurley is more upset at the suggestion that the band might take sports seriously - presumably because that would mean that, rather than being the eye-linered sensitive souls they're marketed as, the group is nothing more than jocks wearing Cover Girl for employment purposes.

Patrick Stump, meanwhile, is fuming about being quoted out of context. Or rather, not quite:

"Did I quit the band? Did I say what appeared in the article? Of course. But followed immediately by it was something to the tune of this: I quit, until I started writing my solo songs and I realized how much I need him. My songs sucked without Pete and they were less fun to write," Stump wrote MTV News in an e-mail. "I love the guy, he's my best friend, and I realized that for all the decisions I'd ever gotten mad at him about, I likely would've done exactly the same in his position. I quit the band (as we all have, by the way, that's part of being in bands) and when I returned I resolved to keep doing this as long as all four of us were having fun."

So when Blender said that Stump quit the band, they're, erm, quoting him accurately? You can see how that would be upsetting. Perhaps the magazine took it as read that, since the band are doing an interview together for them, readers would be able to work out for themselves that Wentz unquit, and just maybe felt the "but he's my mate and I'm nothing without him" sounded like cheesy cant and was better snipped out.

If Blender made stuff up, that's unforgivable. But by editing out a large chunk of showbiz schmaltz (that, you'd be forced to conclude, is cover for 'the management pointed out we'd got contracts signed and we bloody well better get on') is more of a kindness to Stumpy. Magazines aren't obliged to print every single word of an interview. He could get a blog if Patrick wants unadulterated access to his people.

The band are also upset that Wentz is portrayed as a bit of a knob:

"As for the article, as I had hinted at before, I found it an objectively well-written (if plotless) thing ... It's an entertaining article that manages to take its hero from the heights of superstardom to the depths of narcissism," he wrote. "But it never redeems him and it does so at the cost of fact.

Surely if a person is a self-obsessed fool or some sort of sponsored-by-deodorant superhero is a matter of opinion, rather than an objective fact - and since when did a magazine piece have to have a redeeming conclusion? It's a profile, it's not a bloody rom-com.

Blender's response is best summarised as "wow - did they not realise it's a fawning puff-piece?"

Fall Out Boy: So many interviews, so little to say

The Guinness Book Of Records is going to find some space for Fall Out Boy, who have just broken the world record for most interviews in a 24 hour period. Wentz and Stump spoke to 74 different radio stations - presumably they'd have done more but simply ran out of interesting things to say.

Fall Out Boy pull album in case they appear to have an opinion

Fall Out Boy's Folie A Deux album has been dropped from its planned election week slot, because of, erm... well, let's let them explain:

Being from Chicago, we know "next years our year" all too well. 6 months ago we thought it would be a fun idea to release our album on election day but this is not the election to be cute. This is the most important election of our time and, as much as the record is a social commentary and the term "folie a deux" is relevant to the candidates, we felt as though rather than making a commentary we were only riding the wave of the election. This seemed less and less like what we intended to do and more of a gimmick.

While we have all individually expressed our positions on the candidates that we support we feel that many of the interviews and press for the record have skewed us into a partisan band. While it may be obvious where we stand. We never intended to be the band that shoved our ideas down peoples throats. We only hope people look at the bigger picture and investigate the issues further on their own.

It's not the election to be cute, huh? If the election is as serious as the band believe, then surely that makes it more important than ever to stand up and declare yourself, doesn't it? And yet here's the band, insisting that the election be treated so seriously it's not the time for them to release an album, and yet afraid that people might think they have, you know, a political opinion.

It's almost as if one might think that a band so reliant on sponsorship is really afraid some of its sugar daddy brands might not like to pump cash into a group that has declared its hand for one candidate.

Nokia nelly: Wentz Nokia knocking knocked off web

Could it be that Pete Wentz - who happily shoved cars and teenage deodorants into an earlier video - does have a line beyond which he won't cross?

A Fall Out Boy video for new single I Don't Care appeared on the web yesterday, chock-full of loving shots of Nokia phones. Wentz, it appears, was outraged, posting a grumpy blog:

“This will probably end up deleted either by me or someone else but the version of the video that we worked on night after night is not the version that aired. Yet somehow a cut full of glorious camera phone shots did. Just to let you know. It doesn’t make any sense to us. That bag of money is being donated straight to a cause far more worthy.”

The blog post, in its turn, disappeared.

Does it sound to anyone else as if Wentz had no problem with a deal in the first place, but only objected to the degree to which Nokia had taken control? Isn't that a little like going to orgy and complaining about the numbers?

Pete Wentz stands up to be counted. Asks not be counted.

It's great to see young people getting involved with politics. Normally.

Pete Wentz - the frontman for the Ax deodorant brand - is putting out a record on election day. So, then, it's a political record?

"The title of the new album is Folie à Deux. It means 'the shared madness of two' — thank you, Dictionary.com," FOB bassist Pete Wentz laughed. "It's not an overtly political record, but I'm not gonna say what it is."

"And I also wouldn't say it's not a political record, it's just one of those things," frontman Patrick Stump added. "We'll just let the record speak for itself, but it is coming out on Election Day."

Aha. "It's just one of those things" - well, there's a rallying cry for the masses. That noise? Oh, that was the ghost of Phil Ochs sicking his tear ducts up, that was.

We guess 'it's just one of those things' translates as 'you can say it's political providing it doesn't harm sales or the lucrative deals whereby our videos are used to flog products to the audience.'

Fall Out Boy release virus; lose control of it

Every sci-fi fan knows that if you think you can control the release of a virus, you're going to be very much mistaken. Pete Wentz, we have to conclude, isn't a sci-fi fan.

He (or, rather, the marketing team) had constructed a large-but-ultimately meaningless viral campaign for the next Fall Out Boy album. The virus, though, has been mutated by equally-uninspiring band Copeland, who set up a website with a typo URL to promote their next record, too.

Trouble is, Fall Out Boy fans don't take too kindly to people pointing out their deodorant-pushing hero might be less than perfect. Copeland, though, are denying they did anything malicious and reckon that Wentz would have done it if his people had had the idea:

"But, like I said, this wasn't done maliciously. And everything I've heard about Pete is that he's a marketing kind of guy; he's the king of making people talk and ruffling feathers, so he would've done the same thing if he could have. So if Fall Out Boy fans are mad about this whole thing, well, all I can say is that Pete would've done the same thing."

And Wentz? MTV asked him how he felt about his marketing campaign being hijacked. He was cross, but not at the hijacking:

"To me, this is not a marketing campaign. It is a way to cause excitement about your art and have people earn it and understand it. The campaign we began is not ultimately a record release or an announcement of a tour," he wrote in an e-mail. " '60---' [the name he's given the endeavor] has always been a project of a different nature. I don't believe the full campaign has begun, and I also believe people are taking over the ship in a truly viral way. It doesn't hurt anyone, and hopefully it tells the story of the project better and makes it more appreciated."

It's "not a marketing campaign", then. In the same way those calls carrying out a survey asking "if you could have your windows replaced for free how many would you have done" isn't a marketing campaign, either.

Wentz: harassaled by the fuzz

Hey, The Man - if that's really your name - why do you keep hassling Pete Wentz?

Oh, it turns out that it's because he draws attention to himself:

"I think I get profiled... because I drive a car that has black windows on it and it must look like I'm just doing bad things.

"My assistant got pulled over and they decided to make us roll down all the windows and we asked if we could drive to the studio and go behind a gated area because there's no law to stop the paparazzi from taking pictures as close as they want."

Really, Wentz? You think that driving around in a big car that, effectively, has the words "I'm probably up to no good" painted all over it.

It's amusing to see that Wenzt feels he's being "profiled" - we're sure the Muslims who get pulled over for extra security screening at the TSA will share your pain, Pete. It's not being profiled. It's being thought of as acting suspiciously because you're doing something which looks suspicious.

What a pity nobody thought to record the reaction of the cops when Wentz asked if they could drive somewhere else to investigate what he was up to. "Why, yes, sir, since we think you might be indulging in criminal or possibly even terrorist activities, we'll be more than happy to allow you to drive off on the promise that we can rendezvous elsewhere..."

It's a splendid view of where Wentz holds himself that he believes he should be allowed special treatment on account of the possibility of photographers behaving in a way that he admits isn't breaking any laws. "If you're not going to change the law, I must be given extra rights to compensate." Does anyone else think he might find himself getting pulled over a lot more frequently in the future?

Pete Wentz: Smells nice, but avoids pink

Pete Wentz, of course, would have you believe he's some sort of sensitive, alternative type. Why, he even wears eyeliner.

He'll be a laid-back parent, won't he?

No, of course:

"I'd like to know the sex of the baby. It would be a bummer if you bought a boy a bunch of pink stuff!"

Good lord, no. Can you imagine? That might lead the kid to grow up unlike everyone else. A bit different. And that would never do.

The hidden subtext is 'just send money'

Pete Wentz has just turned 29 - thereby making him twice the age of his oldest fans - but doesn't like the gifting involved:

"The truth is I hate my birthday. I don't like it at all. It's because I realized I'm bad at receiving presents."

"I'm really bad at receiving presents so I get really nervous around my birthday and I really don't want people to give me presents."

He hates his birthday because he is nervous about getting gifts? What, is he so inept the idea of unwrapping a box of his sponsor's male grooming products sends him into a fit of the vapours?

Perhaps he just knows that his Mum will send him off to write thank you notes straight after.

He does seem to enjoy presents, though:

"My wife gave me a motorcycle for Christmas, and that was pretty awesome. I haven¹t learned how to ride it really that well. For our wedding she gave me a Mickey Mouse Rolex, which was really hard to track down. So that¹s pretty cool."

We imagine he hasn't learned how to use the watch really that well yet, either, but we love the idea of him and Ashlee, poring over the instruction book, trying to work out how you can tell if Spongebob Squarepants is on.

Wentz and Mrs Wentz: The next generation

Having waited until after the wedding ("the first trimester"), Mr and Mrs Wentz have now announced publicly that Jennifer Jessica Simpson is to be an auntie:

"While many have speculated about this, we wanted to wait until after the first trimester to officially confirm that we are expecting our first child. This is truly the most joyous time in our lives and we are excited to share the happy news and start our family."

The baby is expected to have its mother's nose - although not until he or she old enough to consent to an operation.

Wentz and never again

We don't know what's more distressing: That MTV (in the US) is thinking of launching a programme which, you know, plays music videos; that it's only going to be on for an hour a week; or that it is doing so in response to a call from Pete Wentz.

This wedding sponsored by Axe deodorant

So, just a month after their betrothal, Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz have got married.

We thought it was only in badly-written soap operas that large weddings were arranged so quickly. Oh, hang on...

They're just reporting on NBC that the wedding theme was "Ash in Wonderland." We're not sure what Pete was in - high level talks with his PR team to work out how a teen-mope act can have a pop poppet wife and still pretend to be annoyed with life.

Wentz-Simpson: A union is announced

It's been confirmed that Pete Wentz, advertising shill from Fall Out Boy and Ashlee Simpson, off of Saturday Night Live's sketch about someone's sister accidentally being booked as a musical guest, are to be married:

She told People magazine: "Yes, we are thrilled to share that we are happily engaged.

"We know there has been a lot of speculation recently about Pete and I and we wanted our fans to be the first to know because you guys are the best."

Presumably, though, Simpson and Wentz's families knew beforehand? So who, exactly, are "the fans" finding out ahead of? "We want the fans to know before we sail off to the Andes to tell the indigent population of our plans - it's only right."

And while we're sure that Wentz's fans are "the best" in many ways, we suspect that what Simpson really means it "we wanted to tell the fans as you guys will have to tune in to watch the series about the wedding on MTV this fall."

Fall Out Boy pulls South Pole trip

Fall Out Boy had been going to play a gig in Antarctica because... well, we're sure there was a good reason. Perhaps it was to push some deodorant or something. Or maybe it was because floating a giant statue of yourself down the Thames has already been done.

It's not going to happen now, though: the weather's too bad. In Antarctica? Who'd have thought?

Pete Wentz cries for attention

We wouldn't wish suicide on anyone and wouldn't make light, even of Pete Wentz's shovelling down of anti-anxiety pills, which we are sure he's sharing with us because he feels the need to and not to try and shore up his emo image.

But exactly how much danger was his life in?

"I got in my car. I remember I was listening to Jeff Buckley doing Leonard Cohen's ‘Hallelujah’ and sat there and took a bunch of [anxiety pill brand] Ativan in a Best Buy parking lot.

“I called up my manager because I was, at that point, completely out of my head with Ativan. And I was talking to him and I was slurring my words, so he called my mom and my mom called me and she came and got me and we went to the hospital."

Ativan is a brand name of lorazepam, and tablets contain one milligram of active material. The fatal dose of lorazepam is 1.8 grammes. Or 1,800 tablets.

Wentz might certainly have overdosed, but unless he had swung by a Sam's Club en route to the car park, it's unlikely he would have been at any real risk.

The key question, though, is: why is Wentz telling MTV this?

The little girls understand Pete and Chester

Oh, how it must irk Pete Wentz and Chester Bennington and their grown-up banda, to find themselves being lauded by their actual target market: the Nickelodeon's kids choice awards. Yes, culturally, they're on a par with Alvin And The Chipmunks and Hannah Montana.

The nominees in full:

Movie: Alvin and the Chipmunks,Are We Done Yet?,The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End,The Transformers.
Male Movie Star: Ice Cube, Johnny Depp, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Eddie Murphy.
Animated Movie: Shrek The Third,Bee Movie,Ratatouille,The Simpsons Movie.
Female Movie Star: Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Kirsten Dunst, Keira Knightley.
Voice From an Animated Movie: Cameron Diaz, Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld.
Song: Beautiful Girls (Sean Kingston), Big Girls Don't Cry (Fergie), Don't Matter, (Akon), Girlfriend (Avril Lavigne.)
Male Singer: Bow Wow, Chris Brown, Soulja Boy, Justin Timberlake.
Music Group: Boys Like Girls, Fall Out Boy, Jonas Brothers, Linkin Park.
Female Singer: Beyonce, Fergie, Miley Cyrus, Alicia Keys.
TV Show: Drake & Josh,Hannah Montana,iCarly,The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
Reality Show: America's Next Top Model,American Idol,Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?,Deal or no Deal.
Television Actress: Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana ), Emma Roberts (Unfabulous ), Jamie Lynn Spears (Zoey 101 ), Raven-Symone (That's So Raven ).
Television Actor: Drake Bell (Drake & Josh ), Josh Peck (Drake & Josh ), Dylan Sprouse (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody ), Cole Sprouse (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody ).
Cartoon: Avatar: The Last Airbender,Ed, Edd and Eddy,The Simpsons,SpongeBob SquarePants.
Male Athlete: Tony Hawk, Shaquille O'Neal, Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods.
Female Athlete: Cheryl Ford, Danica Patrick, Serena Williams, Venus Williams.
Video Game: Dance Dance Revolution,Guitar Hero,High School Musical: Sing It!, Madden NFL '08.
Book: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume One: The Long Way Home,Diary of a Wimpy Kid,Harry Potter series,How to Eat Fried Worms.