Posted by Samantha Martin on 01/28/2013 at 1:52 PM Birthdays, News

The Popdust Files: birthdays, joey fatone, nsync

We all know him as “The Goofy One” with the unfortunate and foreboding last name from NSYNC. Some may have watched him take home the silver in the forth season of Dancing with the Stars, or host NBC’s The Singing Bee (which produced this inexplicably hilarious clip).

What you may not have known (and if you did, what on earth led to that YouTube rabbit hole?), is that young, impressionable Joey Fatone (who turns 36 today) was once a contestant on the Nickelodeon game show Nick Arcade. In the show, though certainly a poor man’s Double Dare, two teams compete in rounds of trivia of video gaming, with the winning team competing in a final virtual reality maze.

Perhaps these images will jog your memory:

 

 

Look, if you’re still in the dark, it’s cool, and you probably don’t really care one way or the other about Mr. Fatone either. If you’re currently swimming in a pool of early ’90s nostalgia, then have we got a treat for you:

Don’t have 23 minutes to spare? We’ll break it down for you:

1. Joey goes by “Joseph.”

2. His teammate has laryngitis.

3. His male competitor enjoys “hanging with the fellas.”

4. He tells host Phil Moore that he sings “in chorus and in the shower.”

5. He wins the first round by besting his female competitor (who enjoys “talking with friends”) in a video game called Battle of the Bands, which has no musical element.

6. His hair is really lucious.

7. He correctly answers a trivia question about City Slickers, proving once and for all that he’s from Brooklyn.

8. He incorrectly answers a trivia question about politics, believing Abe Lincoln to be a democrat.

This fatal error cost the yellow team the game. Somehow, Fatone was able to bounce back from this devastating public humiliation and etch out a pretty solid career for himself. Still, I wouldn’t dare mention President Lincoln around him.

Happy Birthday, Joey!