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File this under things I never thought I’d type: now you can watch the cast of Star Trek: Discovery give RENT’s standard “Seasons of Love” a nerdy spin, as they sing on the starship bridge in full makeup and uniform.

The in-joke that kicks this thing off is that Anthony Rapp, who plays Stamets, was one of the original cast members of RENT. Rapp played the lead role of Mark Cohen, and Wilson Cruz, who plays Stamets’ lover Hugh Culber, was also on Broadway in RENT as Angel. The two men have been friends for more than twenty years; you may have caught that reference to “La Boheme” in the first season of Discovery, which was a tip of the hat to the actors’ time in RENT.

When I had the chance to speak with the cast of Discovery at NYCC, I jokingly asked Rapp and Cruz if we’d ever get to see them singing on the show—maybe there’d be a musical episode, or a holodeck-type situation that necessitated it? They confirmed that we might, in fact, have some onscreen singing eventually. But I didn’t think I’d get to see Discovery‘s stars belting out RENT, much less having so much winking fun with it.

In the clip posted to the official Star Trek Facebook video page, Anthony Rapp (Stamets) is joined by Sonequa Martin-Green (Michael Burnham), Doug Jones (Saru), and Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly) on Discovery‘s bridge. They sing a tongue-in-cheek Star Trek-themed version of “Seasons of Love,” anchored by Rapp:

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred reboots

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred Star Trek shows to explore

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred spin-offs

All boldly going where no one’s gone before

From Shatner, and Stewart, to Whoopi and Leonard Nimoy

From Nichols, to Pine, and don’t forget Takei,

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred Star Treks

And there’s one reason this franchise thrives

The answer is: nerds

Thanks to the nerds

Shout out to nerds

So many nerds

The cast is clearly having fun and self-identifying as nerds themselves; something about Doug Jones standing there and singing in full Saru makeup makes this even more surreal. Can we have a musical episode, um, yesterday?

(image: screengrab)

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• Chris Pratt swears that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will be made. “I promise there’ll be a third movie, I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, but I know everyone on board is just eager to give the fans what they want and wrap up a trilogy in a meaningful way,” Pratt said. “We’re still circling the city of Jericho, I like to say.”(via Newsarama)
• EW’s early Oscar predictions are in. What do you think of these choices? (via Entertainment Weekly)
• “A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions”—I just started reading this article, but I’m already hooked. (via The New Yorker)

What did you see out there today?

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Ridley Scott’s Alien fundamentally changed the course of sci- fi thanks in no small part to its iconic chestburster scene. So why does it still haunt us 40 years later? Dan travels to the Sundance Film Festival to sit down with director Alexandre O. Philippe and find out why on this Nerdist News Edition!

The post The New Documentary All About Alien’s Chestburster Scene (Nerdist News Edition) appeared first on Nerdist.

Almost a century before Barack Obama made history as the first African American to become president of the United States in 2008, a black man by the name of George Edwin Taylor set his eyes on the White House in 1904.

Born in 1857 as the son of a free woman and an African American slave, Taylor worked as a professional journalist before getting involved in politics. However, he discovered that neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party represented the interests of people of color.

In 1904, an all-black independent party called The National Liberty Party nominated Taylor to run for president on a third-party ticket. Taylor’s candidacy was largely ridiculed as a joke and his name was left off the ballot in most states. Nevertheless, Theodore Roosevelt was re-elected as president. Still, Taylor’s run symbolized the growth of political power that black Americans acquired following the Reconstruction Era.

According to Jacksonville.com, a few days after the election, Taylor explained in a newspaper interview why he decided to launch a presidential campaign.

“Yes, I know most white folks take me as a joke … but I want to tell you the colored man is beginning to see a lot of things that the white folks do not give him credit for seeing. He’s beginning to see that he has got to take care of his own interests, and what’s more, that he has the power to do it,” he told the paper.

Eight years later, Taylor moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in late 1912 and worked as the manager of the Promotion Publishing Co., which printed a newspaper aimed at the city’s black residents. Records also show that he worked as the editor of the “colored section” of the Florida Times-Union and later for the Florida Sentinel, a progressive newspaper. He died in 1925. Forty-seven years later, congresswoman Shirley Chisholm launched a presidential campaign under the Democratic ticket, becoming the first African American candidate for a major party.

The post Black History Month: The Son of a Slave Who Ran for President, George Edwin Taylor appeared first on Black Enterprise.