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, Saporta’s phone number still got out.
“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. “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.”
Though Saporta’s number wasn’t shown on T.V., a leaked image of the shirt surfaced on the Internet.
“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,” Saporta said. “Guess what? I was wrong. I was dead wrong.”
Phone calls continued while Saporta and Cobra Starship were over in Europe. The high cost of international calls got to be so much of a problem that Saporta was finally forced to cancel his number and 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! $80 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.”
As promised, Saporta revealed Wentz’s e-mail address in Spanish live on stage during a break in Fall Out Boy’s set last week at Los Premios MTV ’09 awards. At the time, Wentz didn’t seem to realize what was happening, given he doesn’t speak Spanish. His e-mail account was positively crippled with messages shortly thereafter.
Wentz took notice of the prank and promised to continue the feud.
“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 in an e-mail. “Trust me, I have something up my sleeve for Mr. Saporta. It feels like we’re pranking each other like siblings. Imagine whose number I could give you to convince him of a Midtown reunion. Though I did call him a ‘puta’ from stage.”
To be continued…
