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The brawl fits into the timeline of the Seattle Mariners' sudden turnaround from afterthought to wild-card contender, a surge that includes the team's current 14-game win streak -- the longest ever for a team heading into the All-Star break and one short of the franchise record set in 2001. The Mariners' bench-clearing brawl with the Los Angeles Angels took place on June 26, and calling it epic might be a bit of hyperbole, but it certainly was one of the more contentious baseball fights in recent years, eventually resulting in 12 suspensions, including 10 games for Angels manager Phil Nevin. The Mariners actually lost that day, however, falling to 34-40, seven games out of the final wild-card spot. They lost the next day as well, as the Baltimore Orioles hammered them 9-2 in Seattle. Things were bleak. The team was struggling, injuries had decimated the lineup, and Seattle was about to lose Jesse Winker, J.P. Crawford and even Julio Rodriguez for one game each due to brawl

Early on in Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, one of the trio of lead characters gives a fictional interview to a very real video games publication. The troubled but passionate Samson Mazur tells the interviewer, “There is no more intimate act than play, even sex.” This is an explosive statement, but a perfect one in the context of a novel that treasures the act of play and holds it sacred. In some ways, this is a thesis statement for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow itself: the novel opening its heart, and showing you what it is truly about. Video games are seldom treated in literature as a site of emotion, but in Zevin’s work they are the very landscape that the full spectrum of relationships, grief, and love play out in. The world of video games is a surprisingly uncommon location for the modern commercial or literary novel, despite the fact that they have long since evolved from children’s toy or tech curio into a form of entertainment that is so mainstrea

It’s too early to say for sure but, judging by the reaction to the recently released Minions: The Rise of Gru, it’s definitely the latter. In fact, so many young people are attending Minions screenings in formalwear in order to honk full-volume gibberish at the screen that cinemas have started to turn people away. This might require some explanation. This weekend, as the movie hit cinemas, a few select TikTok users started filming themselves watching the film in their smartest outfits. These brave pioneers – Gentleminions, they call themselves – quickly sparked a rush of imitators. One user filmed a group of well-dressed Gentleminions applauding each other like wedding attendees as they left a screening. Another asked her entire family to dress up, on the pretence that she was taking them out for the night of their lives, only to then show them all sullenly sitting through the sequel to a spinoff of the Despicable Me films. You would think that this sort of behaviour would be like nect

Most lovers of 70s Hindi cinema would instantly recognise ‘uncle’ David, the endearing old man who was a constant fixture in every Hrishikesh Mukherjee film. But he was also an avid sports enthusiast, and he might have had something to do with Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film, Munich. Nobody talks about the sporting life of Indian film folk. In the checkered history of Indian cinema, many a singer, lyricist or actor has won medals and been in the Olympics. Manna Dey was a wrestler. Janki Das broke a few world records in cycling and was a member of the International Olympic Committee at the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Actor David Abraham Cheulkar, known widely for playing the endearing “uncle”, was president of the Maharashtra Weightlifting Federation and vice president of the Indian Weightlifting Federation and served on the Olympic Committee, representing India. David took interest in theatre since his days at St. Joseph’s School and Wilson College. Curiously, he was doing plays in French. A

Helmed by Nagesh Kukunoor, the show delivers plenty of screwball comedy and sentimentality, though not always with the desired level of conviction or consistency. Two months ago, we had the Mumbai edition of Modern Love that while working within the parameters of warm, feel-good stories around love and coming-of-age made a few unorthodox choices in its themes. Modern Love Hyderabad, on the other hand, seems relatively far more relaxed and limited in its aspirations - which turns out to be both its strength and undoing, depending on the segment we are seeing unfold. The good thing about Modern Love Hyderabad, written by Nagesh Kukunoor, Bahaish Kapoor, and Shashi Sudigala, is how not all of it necessarily conforms to our traditional ideas of ‘love stories,’ and attempts to explore other forms of relationships as well. The sad part is how very little of it seems integral to Hyderabad - the writers, besides keeping the lingo culturally rooted, make very little attempt to locate their narr