Lance Bass may have spent the latter part of the '90s wearing puffy jackets, opening for Janet Jackson — later headlining his own tours — and tearin' up tweens' hearts as part of mega-boyband *NSYNC, but that doesn't mean he didn't knock back handfuls of Gushers and swig Capri Suns like the rest of us. (He just got mobbed in grocery stores when he tried to buy them. You know, just like the rest of us.)
Now that he's the host of '90s House on MTV, we put Bass to the test: How well does he really know the era that brought us such wonders like Crystal Pepsi and Dunkaroos? The singer gladly rose to the challenge, taking a blindfold taste test of some of the decade's hottest snacks and drinks. For every question he got right, he scored bragging rights for life. For every one he got wrong, well, we forced him to confront the more awkward side of nostalgia, answering a question every TRL-worshipping, '90s fangirl (or fanboy) wanted to know about the singer.
Over Pizza Lunchables and Capri Suns, the star got candid about the one *NSYNC song he wishes he'd never have to hear again, the diet that got him through his starving-artist years, and the cardinal sin you should never commit against a Pop-Tart.
His Diet Is A Complete 180 From His Boyband Beginnings.
"So many memories are coming back with these foods," he said, snacking on a frosting-covered Dunkaroos cookie. "When we first got together with *NSYNC in 1995, we all lived in a house together, and we had zero money. I lived off of hash browns made in a little Fry Daddy, and Pizza Bagel Bites. That's all I lived on for the first two years of our career."
These days, Bass has gone gourmand, starring in Fox's My Kitchen Rules earlier this year and making plans to open restaurants worldwide. As his cooking skills have evolved, so has his tastes: The star and his husband, Michael Turchin, had been adhering to a pescatarian diet for three months — until this shoot.
Because no one can resist a freshly baked tray of dinosaur nuggets. No one.
RELIVE THE '90s: *NSYNC by *NSYNC, $9.99; Amazon
He Dreamed Of Making This One Only-In-His-Wildest-Dreams Purchase.
As one-fifth of the band that held a 15-year-record for selling the most albums in a single week (that is, until Adele came along with 25), you might expect Bass to go HAM with his first major paycheck. What would he go for? A $100,000 dinner? A dinosaur skull, like Nic Cage? A 20-foot-tall statue of himself made out of Pringles?! Nah, he gets even wilder than that.
"I dreamt of a Toyota 4Runner. First, it was the Explorer, but then, when the 4Runner came out, oh yeah," he said. "I wanted a silver one, and boy, did I get one with that first paycheck — that finally came after 10 years. Thanks, Lou Pearlman." (He is, of course, referring to the band's former manager, who had been sentenced to 25 years in jail after being convicted of running a $500 million Ponzi scheme, according to Billboard.)
Fans Once Ripped His Clothes Off Him.
Bass has no shortage of surprising fan encounters, but the one that really caught him off-guard was when the band made its first visit to Madrid, Spain. "We got off the plane, and we had to go through a crowd of people, and they were just ripping everything off of you," he said, gesturing to his face and ears. "If you had an earring, it was gone. And then, when we got onto the plane, kids were jumping onto the luggage belts to get to the other side, where the plane was. Crazy."
There's One *NSYNC Song He Can't Escape.
And it's not what you'd think. May 1st may bring out all of the "It's Gonna Be May" memes, and "Bye Bye Bye" may be the band's most iconic song, but the one that continually gets stuck in Bass's head is from their earliest years.
"We experimented a lot with our music in the techno area, early on, and it was not so good. The one song that I could probably not hear again is 'Here We Go,'" he said. "Yes, yes, yes, here we go / *NSYNC has got the flow. I don't like when people namecheck themselves, I just don't."
As much as he tries to ignore it, that song tends to pop in his head all. The. Time.
"It is the only song I think of when I'm taking off on a plane. Every single time. Always. So it will not leave my life," he laughed.
He Was All About AOL's *NSYNC Fan Chat Room.
Of course, no trip down memory lane would be complete without a look back at one of the earliest forms of social media: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Sadly, the service is being shut down on Dec. 15, but in honor of the hours we spent crafting our away messages — ahem, ~ByE bYe BRB!~ — we had to know if Bass did, too.
"I had two," he confessed. "One was my email address, which I'm not going to give out, but I had one called IMPoofu — Instant Message Poofu, or I am Poofu — 'cause it was my first job. As a 14-year-old, I dressed up as Poofu the dog, this dalmatian that's kind of like Barney. I would go to malls and take pictures with kids, because he was this character in a book. That was my first job at Christmastime."
And yes, in case you're curious, he lurked in AOL chat rooms under that name all the time — especially the *NSYNC one. "That was how you talked to fans back then! That was the original social media," he said. "Of course we all did that. It was just us [in *NSYNC] — Britney, everyone in pop music did it back then."
He Believes There's Only One Correct Way To Heat A Pop-Tart.
"I lived off these things in the '90s. Are you kidding me?" Bass said, after instantly guessing not just that it was a Pop-Tart, but that it was a s'mores-flavored one (his favorite, apparently).
As much as he loved them, though, the pop star grew up in a house divided: He and his sister regularly fought over the right way to make one. "One of us would like to put it in the toaster, and the other wanted to microwave it," he explained. "It's all about the toaster. You don't microwave these things. Gross! It makes them soggy. Toaster, toaster, toaster."
Clearly, we know which side he was on.
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