Michael Musto dishes with the NSync member about his new fashion line, Michael Jackson, and whether any of his bandmates are gay.
NO! You're KIDDING! One of them's GAY? JESUS CHRIS! Where have I been? It better not be that one hot blond guy, what's his name… With the weird eye thing. Because he comes off as really fucking straight to me.
The oldest and perhaps wisest NSync member, 29-year-old Chris Kirkpatrick, is savvy enough not to rest on his laurels as part of 2000's number 1 music act, whose new album Celebrity is due out July 24. The affable boy-grouper has turned entrepreneur with FuMan Skeeto, his line of t-shirts and sweatshirts influenced by skateboard culture and Japanese animation. Ain't no lie - so buy, buy, buy!
Poor Chris. Always introduced as "The old one". What do they say about JC? "The second-oldest and perhaps weirdest NSYNC member…" Do you think they'll ask where the FuMan name came from? I know my fingers are crossed. And maybe he'll explain No Strings Attached, too! Whoo!
Musto: So now you've got a fashion line. What are you, the new Puffy?
Musto is so Y2K. It's P Diddy, Mike. Just P Diddy.
Kirkpatrick: I don't think he's really designing that stuff. I know I'm not really designing mine. If you think I know what a woman's halter top feels like...
Are there men's halter tops, then?
M: I do!
It would seem so.
K: Exactly. You can give me some tips. But you might be different from the girls who buy it. "Michael says it's a little snug in the hips."
Chris thinks halter tops are worn around your hips? No wonder they don't let him design. "It's a Jean Furt! And it's, like, jeans, but you wear it on your arms!" "So it's a shirt." "No, no. It's a Jean Furt, I'm telling you! Like, just the sleeves!" "So it's a shrug." "No, no! Just the sleeves, people!"
M: Please, I'm a size 4! Anyway, are you branching out because you're a smart guy?
i.e. "Are you branching out because you have a bead on when this whole retarded pop thing is going to implode? Can you clue us in? Because I can't wait to hear some Nirvana being played on Z100, yo."
K: It seemed like something to do. I know what I like to wear. It makes sense that if I can do my own line, I should do it.
And they claim they haven't changed. I know what I like to wear. Do you see a line of KD Approved Apparel out there? All neutrals, all the time? I think not.
M: Do I smell a solo career in the making?
K: No, not really. We all have the group's best interests at heart. But I think my individuality's strong enough that I need a lot of different side things to fufill it.
Snarky! "They're boring me. I need… more. Also, they don't give me any fucking solos."
M: I know. I used to love that sort of Spacedog hairdo you once had.
K: It was some outlandish braidy thingy. It stuck us out a little bit. But I've moved on. I'm now into something more mature: purple hair.
Hey, yeah, let's bring up his braids. It was only, what, THREE YEARS AGO. Moving on.
M: All right, let's get down to business. How many NSyncers are gay? Four? Five?
And we get to the dirt. Let me say upfront that I'm surprised Chris answered this question at all. I firmly believed, until I read this, that people interviewing NSYNC were given a little sheet of questions they aren't allowed to ask, and that their sexual orientation was at the top of the list, followed directly by "How did you really get together? And do you all hate Joey or what?"
K: Honestly, I couldn't even answer that. I don't think any of them, but it's not something we talk about. "Good riff - are you gay?" If any of the guys are gay, that's their own personal thing. I don't make a big deal either way.
I can't believe he couldn't come up with something better than that. Wasn't Joey asked something like this on Stern? And didn't he give a similar answer? They're so scrupulous. They don't want to lie to us.
AHAHAHAHHA. Yeah.
M: Yay! So there still might be a potential husband in there for me?
K: Possibly. I wouldn't rule it out.
"Yeah, because JC wants to date someone who writes about women's issues, and he figured, you know, you come close. Plus, you're as unfunny as he is."
M: You have lots of gay male fans. Do they come up to you?
K: Like, hit on me?
M: No, just approach you.
K: Of course. We do meet-and-greets. We meet a lot of gay male fans, and they're cool. A lot of times they're more flamboyant [than the girls] and very funny.
You don't do meet-and-greets. Stop lying to me, Kirkpatrick. Nice stereotyping of the gay community there, as well. What about the painfully shy gay male NSYNC fans? He just ignores them completely! Sob. The injustice.
M: What do you think of gay stars who publicly come out?
Ah, the obligatory Ricky Martin question.
K: I'm not going to knock anybody for their sexuality or what they believe in. We're all just people trying to figure out what we're doing on this planet.
I wonder where he stole that line? You know their PR people give them little booklets of all-purpose evasive answers and they have to memorize them.
M: What are the Backstreet Boys doing on this planet? No, wait - how many of them are gay?
K: That's another one I couldn't answer. If I hung with them, I'd know, but I don't.
Let me get this straight. So, the deal is, people who aren't your friends, if you hung out with them, you'd know if they were gay. But people who are your friends, people you live on top of for years, you still have no clue if they like girls or boys. Uhuh. Makes perfect sense to me. And, Chris? Fire whomever fed you that line. Because it sucked.
Someone needs a media training brush-up. Or he could call me. I could teach him how to lie more effectively. "I swear I returned that fucking book last year, man!"
M: Like, oh my God. I thought the animosity was dying down.
K: I don't know if it's dying down, but they're always looking for controversy, and now they're kind of tired of it.
Hell, I'm tired of it. Can't they get into a fight with Creed instead? I would pay to see that. I would cheer NSYNC on as they beat the fucking bass player with his own instrument, chanting "THERE IS NO REASON TO WEAR YOUR BASS THAT FUCKING LOW" and then burned his leather pants. Yeah!
M: Don't you think the boyband market's way oversaturated already?
Musto is really starting to annoy me.
K: The only thing I had a problem with was O-Town - not them personally, but the whole setup, the way they made everything seem so hokey. I watched the marathon - for a second. Hokey! That show tried to make it look like this is how things really are.
Hokey! That's his new word of choice. Hokey! Ho-key. I bet Joey read the interview and thought it was a reference to, like, lubricant. "Geddit? Ho-key? A key for a ho? Geddit?" "Shut up, Fatone."
M: Speaking of heightened reality, I saw you on TV with Michael Jackson.
…that's a non sequitur if I've ever seen one. Reality and any member of the Jackson family are two things that do not belong in the same paragraph.
K: He said he can now call us his friends. I was freaking, because that's fucking Michael Jackson!
Hihihihi. Chris said a bad word.
M: Don't mention fucking Michael Jackson. Has he gotten a bad rap?
Yeah, let's talk about Wade! Do it!
K: The only bad rap he got was in 'Black or White' - Macaulay Culkin did that rap. Bad joke. Anyway, people want to point fingers, but he's just an eccentric person. He likes weird things. Michael's on a plane that nobody really gets. He's so up there that he's above people.
"He's like JC. Except MJ's just, you know, like that naturally, and JC needs chemical aid to get there."
M: Keep me off that plane! What's your take on the Elton John-Eminem lovefest?
K: To each his own. I don't know who came up with that [duet], or what they were trying to achieve, but hey, I'm a music fan - though I think Dido sounded better on the album.
How would you know? You didn't stay to see the performance. Hey, do you think they had an actual personal fight with Em between Larry King, where they all loved him to death, and the Grammy's, where everyone but Joey got up and left before the performance? Hmmm.
M: Your biggest controversy is probably that 'ain't no lie' is grammatically incorrect.
I'm like the only person in the world who didn't think that was hilarious. Sorry, Michael. Contrived jokes you've been working on late at night for months and months just don't appeal to me.
K: I don't think music is about grammar.
This is where CK started to get annoyed.
M: It ain't?
HAHAHA! That's just… not funny at all.
K: It would be funny if people said, "NSync is so awful - they have bad grammar, they stay up after their bedtimes and the ones over 21 drink alcohol." Yeah, we're evil, rotten to the core! Once I got a box of cereal and went straight for the prize - I didn't wait for it to fall into the bowl!
AHAHAHAHAHAH. Now that was funny.
M: You heathen! Bye bye bye!