Fall Out Boy bassist and Ashlee Simpson accessory Pete Wentz recently revealed his struggles with depression, anxiety and even a suicide attempt. Wentz spoke out about his problems to bring awareness to a growing suicide rate among teens and young adults in the U.S.

Fall Out Boy bassist (and Ashlee Simpson beau) Pete Wentz has revealed that he once was so “completely lost and out of control” he tried to take his own life.

Wentz, 28, says he had seen several doctors who gave him prescription drugs but things worsened around the time his band had finished recording their major label record a few years ago.

“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 drug] Ativan in a Best Buy parking lot,” Wentz says in a video for MTV’s college channel MTVU.

“And 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.”

Wentz — who is promoting Jed Foundation’s Half Of Us campaign (aimed at cutting student suicide rates) — says he decided to tell his story to help encourage young people seek out professional help.

“It’s not really about keeping your head above water, it’s about feeling all right and feeling safe in your own skin,” Wentz says. “It’s not about keeping your head above water and barely keep going.”

[From Us Weekly]

Not to make light of Pete’s problems, but could that suicide attempt be any more unoriginal? Killing yourself to Jeff Buckley? That’s like seducing a girl to “Let’s Get it On” – it’s been done to the point of silliness. On the other hand, teen girls (and boys) seem to love this kid, so good for him for bringing this issue to light.

Update by Celebitchy: Thanks to commentor Elisha for noting that Pete Wentz gave a different account of the music playing during his suicide attempt in a January, 2006 interview with Rolling Stone. There’s no doubt he’s referring to the same instance with Ativan in a Best Buy parking lot, but in that interview he wasn’t so sure about the music that was playing on his stereo and has since revised the story for maximum impact:

In 2005, you OD’d on Ativan and nearly died while sitting in a car in a Best Buy parking lot. Were you listening to music?

Not a good experience at all. At the time I was really into Frou Frou, but I was in my sister’s Escort, so I was probably listening to Q101 in Chicago. So it was whatever new-metal band that was big then. Probably Trapt. It was a bum-out.

[From Rollingstone.com, thanks to Elisha]

Maybe he honestly thinks “Hallelujah” was playing at the time and it’s something that kind of wormed its way into his conscious memory, and helps him make sense of a very painful event. We are not pointing this out to take a jab at Pete, and suicide is a tragic and desperate measure. He deserves credit for speaking out about it and bringing awareness to this important issue. [Thanks to Syko for mentioning that.]

Pete Wentz is shown at the DCMA Collective store opening on 3/14/08 and at LAX Nightclub on 2/23/08, thanks to PRPhotos.

There seems to very little drama in Fall Out Boy frontman Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson’s relationship apart from a rocky start, so we may as well report this minor story. Pete is said to have moved out of Ashlee’s LA mansion – not because they’re having trouble or anything, but because he was too much of a slob for her and she didn’t want him messing up her house any more. Ashlee is said to be a “neat freak” while Pete just leaves his stuff around, especially in the bathroom.

Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson have been joined at the hip since hooking up last March. But the lovers are no longer sharing an address. Star has learned that the 28-year-old Fall Out Boy bassist moved out of Ashlee’s $4.7 million mansion in LA’s Benedict Canyon because he was too much of a slob!

“Ashlee loves Pete, but she just can’t seem to live with him,” explains a pal of the pop star. “Her house is a mess when he’s there, and that drives her insane.”

While Pete seems born to be sloppy, 23-year-old Ashlee is a neat freak and one of her pet peevs is Pete turning her bathroom into a mascara-caked disaster zone – while putting on his makeup! “Pete is in touch with his feminine side but he’s just a slob,” reveals Ashlee’s friend.

[From Star Magazine, print edition, January 14, 2008]

There was a story right before Christmas that Ashlee’s over-protective father, Joe, didn’t like Pete because of his admission that he likes to kiss guys and said he didn’t want Pete showing up at the holidays. Pete has denied that this is true, and says he gets along well with Joe.

It sounds believable that Pete might be getting out on his own for a while because Ashlee’s annoyed that he’s not cleaning up after himself. My husband is very helpful around the house, he’ll clean up and do the laundry and he’s like that joke book “Porn for Women,” (link SFW and funny). But he does leave his stuff around and that drives me crazy. I’m not the neatest person either, and I do this too but conveniently only notice when it’s his stuff. It’s just something you learn to live with and pick up when you love someone and you’re married.

If you’re single and rich, though, you can hire a maid, take a break and live separately for a while. I can’t see Ashlee and Pete breaking up over this. They might not be engaged as was rumored, but they seem really into each other.

Ashlee and Pete are shown on South Beach with Ashlee wearing her publicity-seeking non engagement ring on 1/1/08. Thanks to PRPhotos.

Last time I counted, I had ten fingers I could put stuff on. I’m under the general impression that this rule of thumb (haha) holds true for most people. Last time I inspected Ashlee Simpson’s hands (which was about two weeks ago when she came over for TV dinners and girl talk) she had all her fingers. So you’d think that if she really wanted to wear a sparkly ring, she could pick one of the nine digits that doesn’t cause the flutter of a million gossip columnists’ hearts. But why do that when you can cause a big ‘ol scene by shoving some knockoff bauble from Claire’s on the ring finger on your left hand? Poor Ashlee Simpson’s rep has been working overtime since she wore what appeared to be an engagement ring on her left hand on New Year’s Eve. But it’s all just a happy coincidence/mistake/ classic case of a Simpson girl forgetting the difference between left and right.

Ashlee Simpson and Fall Out Boy rocker Pete Wentz are not getting hitched, their reps tell Usmagazine.com.

Talk of their engagement started after the singer rocked a ring on her left finger while celebrating the new year at Miami’s Shore Club with Wentz.

But her rep tells Us, “Ashlee is not engaged” – a denial confirmed by Wentz’s rep.

This isn’t the first time engagement rumors have surrounded the long-time couple. In July, Simpson’s rep denied reports they were on the way to the altar.”

[From Us Weekly]

I’m sure the timing of the accidental ring placement was totally coincidental. Entertainemntwise mentioned that, “Ashlee herself helped the speculation along when she used her ring finger to flip the paps as she took a stroll along Miami beach with the Fall Out Boy rocker.” I’m sure that was purely accidental. Just like the ring placement. It most certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Ashlee seems to think she’s not getting enough attention of late. Agent Bedhead noted that Ashlee was supposedly pretty pissed that no one paid attention to her new video last week, due to the fiasco caused by Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy. Well if you don’t want to get knocked up, a fake engagement is probably the next-best thing. Stay tuned next week when Ashlee will no doubt debut a little bit of bloating, after which her people will anonymously call Us Weekly with fake pregnancy rumors.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz are shown in South Beach, Miami on 1/1/08, thanks to PRPhotos.

Fall Out Boy has apologized to author Maurice Sendak for using images based on his famous children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” in visuals for their “Young Wild Things” tour. They have removed all the infringing images from their tour visuals, but their website is still up with the old Wild Things style. The header image features a photo of a room that looks like the enchanted boy’s room of the book, complete with the night sky and a tree.

As you may have seen in our most recent concerts, we’ve changed the staging and visuals. We were using Where The Wild Things Are and, unintentionally, infringed on the rights of Maurice Sendak, the author of this timeless classic. We have great respect and affection for his book and it was our intent only to pay homage to it, not to infringe any rights. FOB sincerely apologizes to Maurice Sendak for using images from Where The Wild Things Are in our concerts and elsewhere without authorization.

[From Fall Out Boy's blog via Rolling Stone]

Ads for their tour show a kid in bed with a monster under it, tentacles reaching out. There are no octopus-like monsters in “Where the Wild Things Are,” they’re more like bear-like beasts with claws and horns, although some have scales. It looks like they were paying homage more than blatantly ripping off the book since the imagery is similar, but not close enough to be the same.

Rolling Stone notes that the visuals used on tour were potentially infringing on author Sendak’s rights, as they showed Fall Out Boy members as characters from the book:

Each night of the tour, fans saw graphics depicting Pete Wentz and Co. as characters from the book — Wentz as main character Max, and Patrick Stump, Andy Hurley and Joe Trohman as the imaginary creatures Max envisions within the story. The graphics were also used on T-shirts and other tour promo, some of which still appears on Fall Out Boy’s site.

[From Rolling Stone]

They might not get sued since they were quick to apologize, but they should have realized that it was illegal before they built their entire tour around the book. 79 year-old author Sendak might be particularly sensitive to copyright infringements because his brand is about to blow up thanks to the upcoming film version of Where The Wild Things Are. It’s directed by Spike Jonze and is due out in October, 2008. It looks cool as hell from the still that’s been released.

Thanks to I Watch Stuff for this image

Fallout Boy’s fifth album is due out in three to six months, according to MTV’s buzzworthy blog.

Oh and there’s a “Pete Wentz sex tape,” according to Perez, but it’s really just a segment from a short film called Goodnight Moon starring Pete. I think it’s pretty hot, I wouldn’t mind smacking that guy:

A new article in Vanity Fair features profiles and interviews with some of the guys made famous for dating the tabloid darlings – Paris, Nicole, Britney, Lohan and Mischa. Their small Hollywood circle of debauchery and wasted opportunity is frequently referred to as a high school clique, in which Paris serves as the unofficial head Heather.

Titled “I’m With Her,” the article isn’t about the celebrities’ boyfriends so much as a recap of the shenanigans that we’ve publicly witnessed in the last few event-filled months. Not much was news to me, but it was fun to read a somewhat scholarly take on the fast pace of gossip.

The author, Nancy Jo Sales, details the way that dating a star can skyrocket a guy to fame – with a cost. The guys become known for banging the stars and not for their own maybe-talent. We all know what people said about kept man crap-rapper K-Fed, but he did seem to deserve the jokes at his expense, and he’s recovered nicely now that Britney’s gone down the shitter.

Cisco Adler, Mischa Barton’s goofy looking big-balled ex, is interviewed and comes off as a rather level-headed guy who isn’t too affected by all the talk about him. He says that he didn’t date Mischa because she was famous, and that he was just awed by her beauty. Cisco tells a sweet story about how he used to look at Mischa when she woke up in the morning. He says that his relationship with Mischa was the first time he didn’t cheat on a girlfriend, and that it was all the external factors that go along with fame that broke them up. Cisco also uses the old “they’re young and it’s hard to deal with fame” excuse to explain LohitneyParis’ bad behavior. His ex, Mischa Barton, doesn’t seem to have followed suit, though:

“I’m not some serial star-dater,” he protests. “Mischa’s the most beautiful girl on the planet. Sometimes I would wake up and see her on the pillow next to me and be like, Oooh, there she is …

“It wasn’t us that broke us up, it was all the other shit…”

Cisco says, “Look, they’re young, these girls, and they’re thrown this bucket of shit, and it makes them act kind of weird. If they were all locked in a room together they’d come out the best of friends.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Well maybe,” he says, “if they lived.”

It isn’t easy being a boyfriend of one of these much-sought-after starlets, Cisco says. “There’s no privacy. We were literally running away from paparazzi. They would camp outside my house.” When he’d finally had enough, he ended it, he says. “My dog died of pet-food poisoning, I broke up with my girlfriend, and this picture of my balls turns up on the Internet—that was the cherry on top.” Or maybe cherries.

He wistfully admits he misses Mischa. “I used to be a horrible cheater; in this last relationship I didn’t cheat once, I changed. Sometimes I used to cheat and go back and make love with my girlfriend on the same day! I used to get off on that. I used to think I was so dope.”

[From VanityFair.com]

Other famous boyfriends interviewed include rockers Joel Madden and Pete Wentz, who didn’t acknowledge at the time (the interview was conducted a few months ago) that he was with Ashlee Simpson. He just repeated the claim that he doesn’t think anyone is fully heterosexual or homosexual, and said he was dating a woman and that she was famous.

The interview saves the most famous star-f*$#er for last, K-Fed. At that point he wasn’t the standout parent in his estranged relationship with Britney, and was just emerging as less of a douchebag. They repeat the story where K-Fed was at a party and asked his next baby-momma to step up. There’s not much original printed from his phone interview, just the fact that he asserts he’s a playa:

“My moms used to call me ‘the Womanizer’ when I was younger. That says it all,” an amiable Federline tells me on the phone from his home in L.A. “I love women. I mean, I love women, you know?”

Maybe K-Fed should talk to Pete Wentz, who has a legitimate music career and is not so quick to assert his heterosexuality. Not that there’s any connection between the two, it’s just kind of jr. high when guys talk about how much they like getting laid.

Interestingly enough none of Lohan’s exes are interviewed, although many of her hookups including Pink Taco CEO Harry Morton and British reality star Calum Best are mentioned. Morton enjoyed a lot of free publicity for his food chain from his very public dalliance with Lindsay. He seems to have got the hell out of there in time to keep his sanity too. That seems to be key to dating one of the three disgraces effectively.

Thanks for Vanity Fair for the header photo, taken by Lohan’s ex, director Brett Ratner, in his disco basement.

Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz admitted in an interview with British Q Magazine that he suffers from manic depression and has been on medication for the disorder since he was 18. He says he had a lot of emotional problems after his parents divorced while he was 6:

He says, “I have manic depression. I obsess over everything. When I am depressed, I can’t get out of bed. But right now, it’s sunny and 65 in my head, so it’s OK!”

Wentz, 28, goes on to reveal he has been on medication for depression and anxiety problems since he was 18, revealing the trauma of his parents’ separation on his sixth birthday left him emotionally scarred and unable to express his feelings.

He adds, “I turned my emotions off like a faucet.

[From SFGate]

You have to admire the guy for coming out with the news that he suffers from a stigmatizing mental illness. That takes a lot of courage. I used to think Wentz was a douche but I have a lot of respect that he was able to open up like this.

In February, 2005, Wentz had a possible suicide attempt after overdosing on Ativan, an anxiety drug. He spent a week in the hospital and moved in with his parents afterwards. Of the incident, Pete said “I was isolating myself further and further, and the more I isolated myself, the more isolated I’d feel. I wasn’t sleeping. I just wanted my head to shut off, like, I just wanted to completely stop thinking about anything at all.” [Details from Wikipedia]

When celebrities talk about their struggle with mental illness and other personal problems, it helps the rest of us realize that we’re not alone and that there’s no shame in what we go though.

I didn’t publish anything other than a link yesterday about Thandie Newton admitting that she suffered from bulimia, although the story really moved me. That was something that hit a little too close to home for me, and even my family doesn’t know about it. They probably do now.

Pete Wentz is shown with his girlfriend Ashlee Simpson at Kanye West’s 30th birthday on 6/7/07. Thandie Newton is shown on 7/11/07 at the summer party for Serpentine Gallery in London. Thanks to PR Photos.

Nope, not really. Rumours have been circulating that Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy got down on bended knee at the LiveEarth concert, prompted by Ashlee’s rumoured pregnancy, and Ashlee happily accepted.

But, while Ashlee may not seem as high maintenance as her sister Jessica, I still think she’d like to be proposed to in a more romantic setting. Somewhere significantly more private, not thirty seconds before her boyfriend is going on stage with his band. Maybe when he’s in front of the LiveEarth TV audience, but definitely not backstage next to the rider full of pringles and beer.

Ashlee actually describes herself as single in the June 2007 issue of Cosmopolitan, so maybe she are Pete are more a couple of the f&*# buddy variety. After all, she hasn’t made a public vow of virginity. Still, I can just see papa Joe Simpson rubbing his palms together in glee at the concept of another Simpson baby to exploit and contribute to his bank balance.