When I first published this list in 2023, I assumed I’d revisit it annually, tweaking the rankings as new halftime shows entered the conversation. Instead, three Super Bowls passed without an update (Rihanna, Usher, and Kendrick Lamar) and the list stayed put more out of inertia than intention. Rihanna’s performance, for all its cultural significance and quiet power, ultimately didn’t quite crack the top tier for me. Usher’s show, meanwhile, was polished and enjoyable — smooth vocals, deep catalog, even a few minutes on roller skates — but felt more like a legacy affirmation than a performance that demanded a reshuffling of the list.

Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show changed that. It didn’t just invite comparison; it forced it. Watching that performance made it clear that the list hadn’t simply gone untouched, it had fallen slightly out of date. That felt like long enough to justify a proper rewatch, a rethink, and a small but meaningful structural change. The original list ranked 13 halftime shows. Honestly, I can’t recall why I picked 13. Thirteen is a strange number. It implies either superstition or procrastination, neither of which I’m prepared to defend. So this is no longer a Top 13. This is a Top 15, updated to account for the most recent halftime shows and to give a little more room to performances that deserve it.

Before we go there, however, it is important to understand how we got here. Suffice it to say, the Super Bowl halftime show wasn’t always the cultural referendum it has since become. During halftime of the first Super Bowl in 1967, the University of Arizona Symphonic Marching band performed “The Sound of Music” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” in the shape of the Liberty Bell. To be fair, the show, titled “Super Sounds from the Super Bowl,” also involved two guys flying around with jetpacks (how do we not all have these by now?) and a weirdly large number of pigeons. In subsequent years the halftime shows expanded, but were more quirky than star studded. One year, for example, had an Elvis Presley-impersonating magician named – obviously – Elvis Presto. 

That all changed in 1993, when Michael Jackson showed up, stood perfectly still for nearly a minute, and turned halftime into something you couldn’t look away from. From that moment on, the show was no longer an intermission. It was the event.

Since then, the halftime show has become its own cultural phenomenon. A referendum. A Rorschach test. And, inevitably, a ranking exercise.

So, without further ado, here are the 15 greatest Super Bowl halftime shows in history.

15. The Weeknd (Super Bowl LV 2021)

The Weeknd’s 2021 performance is the first real beneficiary of the expanded list. At the time, it was easy to dismiss the show as oddly constrained — a stylish performance unfolding under the strange limitations of a pandemic-era Super Bowl. But with some distance, it’s clear that this was one of the more thoughtfully constructed halftime shows of the modern era. The extended sequence inside the mirrored hallway, surrounded by identically dressed, face-bandaged dancers, was disorienting by design. The spinning camera work, the claustrophobic framing, the deliberate sense of imbalance, all felt closer to a short film than a traditional stadium spectacle.

That choice paid off in unexpected ways. The performance immediately launched a wave of memes, reaction clips, and internet parodies, which is often a sign that a halftime show has actually broken through. When the show finally spilled out onto the field, the scale arrived, but it was the earlier, stranger moments that lingered. The stadium never fully became a character, and the pacing still dips in the middle, but the ambition is undeniable. In a format that usually rewards familiarity and maximalism, The Weeknd committed to a visual concept, trusted it, and let the internet do the rest. That combination of artistic intention and cultural afterlife earns this performance its place on the list.

14. Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (Super Bowl LIV 2020)

In hindsight, this show now plays like a time capsule from a simpler moment. When Jennifer Lopez and Shakira took the stage in February 2020, we were mostly unaware (or at least unconcerned) that a virus was already spreading and would soon turn daily life upside down. We were still relatively carefree, and the performance reflected that mood completely. This was Miami doing Miami: global pop, relentless movement, Latin rhythms, and unapologetic heat. Shakira played the guitar. J.Lo rode in on a stripper pole. There was dancing, crowd surfing, a Led Zeppelin sample, a blast of horns, Bad Bunny, and a vibe that felt perfectly calibrated to the city hosting the game.

The main critique at the time was that the show was “too sexual” even though Adam Levine from Maroon 5 pretty much took off all of his clothes the year before. More than anything, the performance was exuberant. Seen now, especially when contrasted with the stripped-down, socially distanced halftime show that followed the next year, it feels like the last gasp of a certain kind of pre-pandemic spectacle. It didn’t redefine the halftime show, but it captured a moment and a place with absolute commitment.

13. Janet Jackson & Justin Timberlake (Super Bowl XXXVIII 2004) 

Without a doubt, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII remains one of the most memorable halftime shows in history — though far less for the performance itself than for the so-called “wardrobe malfunction” at the very end. Which is unfortunate, because the show was genuinely great. Janet and Justin were both excellent, and what’s often forgotten is how stacked the rest of the lineup was. Diddy emerged from a cloud of smoke, Nelly popped out of a tiny red car to perform “Hot in Here,” and most unexpectedly, Kid Rock absolutely tore through “Bawitdaba” and “Cowboy.” If you measure by time on stage alone, Kid Rock may have had the longest set of the night.

And yet, almost none of that is what people remember. Instead, the performance has been reduced to the final moments, when Timberlake “accidentally” ripped away part of Jackson’s costume as they closed the show. Whether it was truly accidental has been debated for years. FCC fines were levied and litigated endlessly, but the more lasting and uncomfortable conversation has been about why Janet bore the overwhelming share of the backlash while Justin’s career emerged largely unscathed. That imbalance has come to define the legacy of the performance. Which is a shame, because it deserves to be remembered as one of the strongest, most ambitious halftime shows of its era — not just for its final two seconds.

12. Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (Super Bowl XXXIII 1999)

I’ve always known the 1999 halftime show would be one of my more controversial picks, and in this updated version it has slid down a couple of spots. That movement isn’t a repudiation so much as a recalibration. When viewed alongside shows that followed just a few years later — particularly the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performance — the production here looks unmistakably dated. Even the broadcast itself feels closer to the 1970s than the 2000s. Expanding the list to fifteen also created more competition near the middle, and this one, fairly or not, feels more tethered to its moment than some of the performances now ranked above it.

And yet, I still love it precisely because it is so 1999. What could be more of that moment than opening with a ska-and-swing set from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy? From there we got a joyful medley of Stevie Wonder classics, capped by an athletic tap-dance showcase from Savion Glover, who even managed to pull Stevie into the fun. And because the Super Bowl was in Miami, Gloria Estefan emerged singing in Spanish, reminding everyone exactly where we were. This was a show that reflected its time — a moment when the country wasn’t at war, hadn’t yet been reshaped by 9/11, social media, or a global pandemic, and still felt free to be loud, playful, and uncomplicated. You really could have fun in 1999, and this halftime show captured that spirit perfectly.

11.     Paul McCartney (Super Bowl XXXIX 2005)

Paul McCartney’s halftime set the year following Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s performance was equally memorable, but almost the polar opposite in tone and presentation. In the wake of “nipplegate,” McCartney was widely viewed as a safe choice — a steady hand meant to calm the waters rather than push boundaries. And while his show lacked the spectacle and controversy of what came before it, that restraint turned out to be the point. What McCartney delivered instead was a reminder that sometimes the songs really are enough.

Those songs, in this case, were unimpeachable. On an X-shaped stage, the ex-Beatle kicked things off with “Drive My Car,” rolled seamlessly into “Get Back,” and then traded his guitar for the piano during a fireworks-laced rendition of Wings’ James Bond theme, “Live and Let Die.” He saved the emotional peak for last, closing with “Hey Jude” as the 84,000 fans at Jacksonville’s Alltel Stadium took over the iconic “na-na-na” refrain. It was nostalgic without feeling dusty, energetic without trying too hard, and it quietly signaled a shift — from contemporary pop stars dominating the halftime show to classic rock legends being welcomed as headliners in their own right.

10.     Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (Super Bowl XLIII, 2009)

At its core, Bruce Springsteen’s 2009 halftime show was essentially a Bruce Springsteen concert that happened to interrupt a football game which, to be clear, is a very good thing. One of the great pleasures of watching Springsteen is that no matter how many times he’s performed, he always looks like he’s having the most fun right now. That joy carried straight through the halftime show, even without much in the way of spectacle.

What the performance lacked in grand production it more than made up for in personality. It opened with Springsteen’s now-famous instructions to “step away from the guac” and “put the chicken fingers down.” He tore through “Born to Run” and “Glory Days,” but the most indelible moment came during “10th Avenue Freeze-Out,” when New Jersey’s favorite son slid crotch-first into a TV camera with reckless commitment. The finale only doubled down on the chaos: Springsteen flung his guitar over his shoulder, bantered with a fake referee, and closed by shouting, “I’m going to Disneyland.” It was loose, joyful, and entirely on brand — a reminder that sometimes the best halftime shows succeed simply by letting a great performer be exactly who they are.

9. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar & 50 Cent (Super Bowl LVI 2022)

SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, hosted Super Bowl LVI, and if you’re going to stage the halftime show in Inglewood, there was never a better or more obvious choice than Dr. Dre and company. This wasn’t just a performance; it was a homecoming. Dre curated the show like a victory lap for West Coast hip-hop, and the friends list was both extensive and impeccably chosen. Alongside announced performances from Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, and Eminem, the show delivered genuine surprises — most memorably 50 Cent rapping “In Da Club” upside down, and Anderson .Paak casually holding down the drums during “Lose Yourself.”

What made the performance resonate wasn’t just the star power, but the sequencing and confidence behind it. From Dre’s opening notes of “Still D.R.E.” to Mary J. Blige commanding the stage with “Family Affair,” to Kendrick tearing through a sharp, politically charged rendition of “Alright,” the show never felt rushed or overcrowded. It trusted the music and the legacy it represented. The result was the most universally praised halftime show in years — one that felt both celebratory and overdue. That acclaim was formalized when the performance won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (Live), the first time a Super Bowl halftime show had ever taken home the award. More than a nostalgic throwback, this was a statement: hip-hop had not only arrived on the Super Bowl stage, it had earned its place there. If this list were based purely on cultural impact and crowd approval, this performance would rank even higher.

8.     Michael Jackson (Super Bowl XXVII, 1993) 

Honestly, I have a hard time ranking Michael Jackson’s Super Bowl performance in 1993. From a historical perspective, it’s nearly untouchable. This was the moment the NFL realized it needed to keep people watching during halftime, and since the league doesn’t do anything halfway, it tapped the King of Pop to officially end the marching band era. The modern halftime show begins here. Every performance that followed exists because of this one.

And yet, the actual performance is strange. Like most Super Bowl sets, it runs only about twelve minutes, but it takes Jackson a surprisingly long time to get going. He appears on stage and stands perfectly still for nearly forty-five seconds, followed by another long stretch before the music truly kicks in. For an artist with a catalog as deep as his, the song choices are also puzzling. “Billie Jean” is an obvious highlight, but the set opens with “Jam,” moves through “Black or White,” touches on “We Are the World,” and closes with “Heal the World” as a giant globe inflates at midfield. It’s earnest, symbolic, and undeniably influential — and it also feels oddly restrained. Add in the heavy lip-synching, and the result is a performance that changed everything without fully capitalizing on its own potential. It belongs on this list because of what it started, even if it still feels like it could have been so much more.

7.     Katy Perry (Super Bowl XLIX, 2015) 

If you like spectacle in your halftime show, Katy Perry’s 2015 performance is hard to beat. She entered riding a giant tiger (or lion — taxonomy felt beside the point) and immediately announced her intentions by shouting, “Super Bowl, are you ready to roar!” Unlike with Michael Jackson’s song selection, Perry understood the assignment. She delivered a greatest-hits sprint that included “Roar,” “Dark Horse,” “I Kissed a Girl” alongside Lenny Kravitz, “Teenage Dream,” and “California Gurls,” never letting the energy dip or the crowd drift.

And then she kept going. Missy Elliott showed up to tear through “Get Your Freak On” and “Work It,” instantly elevating the middle of the show, before Perry closed things out strapped to a mechanical shooting star for “Firework.” Somewhere along the way, Left Shark happened — a background dancer whose delightfully off-kilter moves launched a thousand memes and briefly threatened to eclipse the rest of the performance. But that’s part of the charm. This was twelve minutes of lights, color, special effects, relentless movement, and pop confidence at full volume. It didn’t try to be subtle. It tried to be fun. And it absolutely succeeded.

6. Kendrick Lamar (Super Bowl LIX 2025)

Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show feels like the natural counterpoint to The Weeknd’s — less surreal, more declarative, but driven by the same refusal to default to spectacle for spectacle’s sake. Where many performers treat the Super Bowl as a greatest-hits sprint, Kendrick approached it as a statement, with a clear throughline and a sense of purpose that never wavered. The staging was restrained, the transitions deliberate, and the performance trusted silence, space, and lyrical weight in ways the halftime show rarely allows.

That trust paid off unevenly across audiences, and that’s part of what makes the performance so interesting. Some viewers wanted more bombast, more cameos, more obvious crowd-pleasing beats. But for a younger generation (particularly anyone under 25) this performance landed as something closer to definitive. It didn’t generate memes in the same way as The Weeknd’s mirrored maze, but it dominated conversation nonetheless, parsed and debated line by line across social feeds in the days that followed. Like The Weeknd’s show, Kendrick’s doesn’t fully conquer the stadium; the halftime show is still, at its core, a translation exercise. But in a format that usually rewards excess and familiarity, Kendrick delivered coherence, restraint, and intent, and in doing so, signaled where the halftime show may be headed next.

5.     Madonna (Super Bowl XLVI, 2012)

Once the Super Bowl fully committed to A-list artists, it was only a matter of time before Madonna made her appearance. If you prefer your halftime shows unapologetically over the top, this one was for you. Madonna arrived in Indianapolis dressed as a Greek goddess, seated on a throne carried by Spartan soldiers. From there, the spectacle kept escalating: a graphic-heavy stage, slackline stunts, Roman imagery, and a guest list that included Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., CeeLo Green, and LMFAO. At one point, Madonna even climbed onto one of LMFAO’s shoulders, which felt both completely unnecessary and completely on brand.

Crucially, the song choices justified the excess. She opened with the perennially perfect “Vogue,” then folded LMFAO into a surprisingly effective mash-up of “Party Rock Anthem,” “Sexy and I Know It,” and her own “Music.” There was brief controversy when M.I.A. flipped the bird during “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” but Madonna never lost control of the moment. She closed with a soaring, gospel-inflected “Like a Prayer,” backed by CeeLo and a massive robed choir, reminding everyone that beneath the costumes and choreography, she still knew exactly how to command a stadium. The result was maximalist without being messy — a halftime show that understood spectacle as both tool and weapon.

4.     Lady Gaga (Super Bowl LI, 2017) 

If anyone was going to match the anticipation of Madonna’s performance, it was Lady Gaga. Few artists arrive with as much expectation baked in. Gaga’s career has been defined by reinvention, provocation, and genre-hopping ambition, and the question heading into Super Bowl LI wasn’t whether she would surprise, but how. In the end, she played it more traditionally than expected, but that restraint turned out to be the point. What she delivered was one of the cleanest, most visually striking, and vocally impressive halftime shows in Super Bowl history.

She opened on the roof of the stadium with a medley of “God Bless America” and “This Land Is Your Land,” then quite literally launched herself from the heavens onto the field below. From there, the show became a perfectly paced sprint through her biggest hits: “Poker Face,” “Born This Way,” “Just Dance,” “Telephone,” and “Bad Romance,” all performed live and without a safety net. And then she ended it exactly right. A mic drop. A caught football. A silent leap off a staircase into nothingness. No bow. No wave. Just gone. In a format where so many performances struggle to stick the landing, Gaga delivered the best exit the halftime show has ever seen — a masterclass in control from start to finish.

3. Beyoncé & Destiny’s Child (Super Bowl XLVII, 2013)

I’ve moved Beyoncé’s 2013 halftime show up a few spots in this updated ranking, and on rewatch the reason is simple: it has aged spectacularly well. Beyoncé was already at the top of her game then and, somehow, still is now. The production was massive without being cluttered, precise without feeling cold. There were fireworks. At one point there was literally a guitar shooting fire. But none of it felt like compensation. It felt like amplification. She tore through a run of career-defining hits including “Crazy in Love,” “Love on Top,” and “Baby Boy,” and every moment landed with authority.

And that was before the floor opened up and Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams emerged for a long-awaited Destiny’s Child reunion. Together, the trio ripped through “Bootylicious,” “Single Ladies,” and “Independent Women” with the kind of ease most performers never reach at any stage of their careers. The show was so powerful, in fact, that it’s still remembered for briefly knocking out the lights at the Superdome, triggering a 33-minute blackout shortly after halftime. That wasn’t part of the plan, but it somehow felt fitting. Beyoncé didn’t just perform at the Super Bowl. She bent it around herself. On rewatch, that dominance is impossible to ignore, and it earns this performance its move up the list.

2.     U2 (Super Bowl XXXVI, 2002) 

U2’s Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show earns its place near the very top of this list not just because it was beautifully executed, but because it understood the moment with rare clarity. Less than five months after September 11, the country was still raw, unsettled, and unsure how to gather publicly without pretending everything was fine. The NFL originally had Janet Jackson slated for halftime, but in the aftermath of the attacks, it became clear that the moment called for something different. U2 brought the heart-shaped stage from their Elevation tour to New Orleans and approached the Super Bowl not as spectacle, but as a space for collective acknowledgment.

The band played just three songs — “Beautiful Day,” “MLK,” and “Where the Streets Have No Name” — and that restraint was the point. As Bono sang, the names of those killed on 9/11 scrolled silently across a massive screen behind the stage, transforming the halftime show into a memorial without ever tipping into melodrama. When Bono opened his jacket at the end of the performance to reveal an American flag sewn into the lining, it felt earned rather than performative. There were no fireworks, no guest appearances, no viral moments — just clarity, respect, and emotional precision. In Super Bowl terms, it was almost radically understated. And in that moment, it was exactly right.

1.     Prince (Super Bowl XLI, 2007)

Although “best of” lists like this are inherently subjective, it’s genuinely hard to argue against Prince’s 2007 performance as the greatest Super Bowl halftime show ever staged. It had everything, without ever feeling busy. Prince tore through his own classics — “1999,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” and “Baby I’m a Star” — with total command, then seamlessly folded in covers that somehow sounded even more Prince than the originals. Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” and Foo Fighters’ “Best of You” became raw material rather than homage. Backed by a full brass marching band and wielding his purple guitar like an extension of his body, Prince didn’t just perform songs; he bent them to his will.

And then there was the ending. Prince closed with “Purple Rain,” delivering what is still the definitive live version of his most iconic song. As the rain poured down — rain that, remarkably, had never fallen during a Super Bowl in the previous forty years — Prince leaned into it, stretching the guitar solo, letting the moment expand rather than rush toward a finish. The stadium sang along, the lights glistened off the field, and the weather itself became part of the arrangement. Prince didn’t need to enter on a mechanical animal or drop from the sky. Whether it was divine intervention or dumb luck, he didn’t react to the spectacle — he absorbed it. The Super Bowl didn’t elevate Prince. Prince elevated the Super Bowl. And no one since has quite managed to do it again.

Lists like this are meant to be argued with, and this one will almost certainly need revisiting again. New artists will come along. Tastes will shift. We’ll see new artists like Bad Bunny, this year’s performer, who reflect where popular music is actually heading, not just where it’s been. That’s the fun of it. But for all the movement, reshuffling, and generational change, one thing feels safely immutable. The top spot remains untouched. The rain still falls. The guitar still screams. Prince will still be Prince.

I was out to dinner a couple of weeks ago with my friend Maxie, who recently moved back to the Bay Area from Georgia. It wasn’t technically a holiday meal, but we are in that in-between stretch late in the year when the calendar quietly insists you take stock of things, whether you’re ready to or not. We were catching up the way you do with people you like and admire but don’t see all that often, when at some point in the conversation she said, “Remember that book you wrote about in your blog post about your brother?”

I did.

For those new to Pulitzer Schmulitzer, or those with understandably short memories, I wrote an essay about my brother Scott in January 2024, the day after he died. Near the end of that post, I told a small story about a book report I found that Scott had written when he was seven years old about a book called Roger Staubach – Running Cowboy. I also mentioned that I tried to find a copy of the book on Amazon but had no luck. At the time, that struck me as a little odd, but not odd enough to warrant more than a few minutes of curiosity. It didn’t feel urgent. Or maybe it felt safely non-urgent.

Well, Maxie, it turns out, did not feel the same way.

After reading the post, she went looking for the book herself. Like me, she initially came up empty. But instead of stopping there, she kept going. The name of the author was also included in Scott’s report, so she followed that thread and learned that he had written a number of sports books for Scholastic in the 1960s and 70s. One of those books it just so happens was called Great Quarterbacks of Pro Football. And sure enough, tucked inside that volume, she discovered, was a chapter titled “Roger Staubach – Running Cowboy.”

It wasn’t a book after all. It was a chapter.

And if I wasn’t already dumbfounded by this story, Maxie then reached down, pulled a manila envelope out of her bag, and handed it to me.

Inside was the book. Not a new copy. Not anything that had been reprinted or lovingly restored. A paperback from 1978. Slightly yellowed. Ordinary. The kind of book that would normally disappear without anyone noticing.

We drank a toast to innocence

Dan Fogelberg, Same Old Lang Syne

It was an unnecessary act in the best sense of the word. Maxie and I are friends, but this gesture didn’t come from shared history or obligation. She’d never met my brother, and I don’t think we’d ever had a conversation about him. There was nothing tying her to this story except that she read it, remembered it, and thought it might matter. It felt like the kind of gesture the holidays briefly give us permission to make, when curiosity and kindness outweigh efficiency, and doing something thoughtful doesn’t require a reason beyond this might matter to him.

Needless to say, I was emotional, even if I couldn’t quite name what the feeling was. My brother died just after New Year’s in 2024, close enough to the turn of the calendar that the season still carries an echo. The holidays don’t feel bad, but they do feel altered, like certain dates now carry more meaning than they used to, even if nothing outwardly marks the difference. And the emotion I felt wasn’t grief exactly, and it wasn’t closure either. It was something quieter. A reminder that loss doesn’t disappear, but that occasionally, through the unexpected care of other people, it softens just enough to let something back in.

People talking without speaking.

Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence

All of which brings us to James Agee’s A Death in the Family, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958, and is a deeply autobiographical novel about the sudden death of a husband and father and the quiet devastation that follows. Set in Knoxville, Tennessee, the book centers on the Follet family and unfolds largely through the perspective of Rufus, a six-year-old boy whose understanding of the world is irrevocably altered when his father, Jay, dies in a car accident. Agee moves fluidly between Rufus, his mother Mary, his younger sister, and various relatives, allowing the reader to experience grief not as a single event but as something refracted through different minds, temperaments, and beliefs.

What makes A Death in the Family so affecting is not the tragedy itself but the way Agee lingers in the aftermath. The novel spends most of its time in the hours and days following Jay’s death, when time resumes awkwardly and people begin to move around inside the space loss has opened up. Phone calls arrive too late. Relatives show up unsure of what to say. Children struggle to understand what “never coming back” actually means. Religion is present but offers little clarity, and explanations are given but fail to satisfy. Instead, Agee focuses on small moments. A walk. A song. A gift bought on a whim. People sitting together in rooms because there is nowhere else to be. Neighbors appear. Conversations stall. Small gestures take on outsized weight. No one fixes anything, but somehow the world doesn’t collapse either. The book resists resolution, choosing instead to show how grief travels quietly through rooms and routines, absorbed slowly, awkwardly, and imperfectly, through human presence rather than understanding.

What stayed with me most was how little interest Agee has in resolution. There is no lesson, no redemption arc, no moment where grief is conquered or explained. Instead, there are people who sit longer than is comfortable, who offer what they can even when they know it won’t be enough. The kindness in the book isn’t grand or efficient. It’s tentative, imperfect, and deeply human.

That same restraint, however, is also why A Death in the Family tends to land lower in my Pulitzer countdown than some of the more celebrated winners. The novel is almost aggressively uninterested in narrative momentum, and its refusal to offer emotional payoff can feel less like discipline and more like withholding. Agee lingers where other writers would move on, and depending on the reader, that patience can read as quiet profundity or quiet frustration. The book asks for attention without expectation, presence without resolution, and that’s a demanding trade. Not everyone will feel it’s worth the cost.

And yet, sitting there at dinner with the book Maxie had handed me, I wasn’t thinking about Agee’s restraint or where A Death in the Family landed in my rankings. I was thinking about how this other book had traveled. Not just from an author to a publisher, but from a seven-year-old boy’s book report, through decades and different hands, until it found its way back to me in the form of an unnecessary kindness.

There is also something fitting about the object itself. Not a pristine artifact rescued intact from the past, but a well-worn book that survived mostly by chance. Scott’s original book report was the same way. Asked to explain what the book was about, he quoted a passage he liked. Asked whether he enjoyed it and why, he answered, “Yes” and “I like football.” Literal. Unadorned. Perfectly himself. What mattered wasn’t a full understanding of Roger Staubach’s career, but that something in that chapter resonated with him enough to stick.

A long December and there’s reason to believe / Maybe this year will be better than the last

Counting Crows, Long December

The holidays have a way of sharpening these moments. They don’t fix grief. They don’t offer clean resets. What they do is slow us down just enough to notice who shows up, and how. They make space for gestures that would feel impractical or indulgent in March. A card sent late. A call returned without an agenda. A manila envelope slid across a table at dinner.

I’ve come to think this is how most of what matters survives. Not through systems, or archives, or algorithms, but through people paying attention. Through someone reading carefully. Through someone deciding that a small, forgotten thing is worth the trouble. Grief doesn’t end, but it does change shape, and sometimes it’s other people who help reshape it for us, whether they know they’re doing it or not.

The book is sitting in front of me as I write this and it reminds me of two things at once: who my brother was, and how unexpectedly generous the world can be if you’re lucky enough to cross paths with the right people at the right moment. Especially near the end of the year, when kindness feels both unnecessary and essential at the same time.

I’m on a boat! I’m on a boat!
Everybody look at me, ’cause I’m sailing on a boat!
— The Lonely Island (ft. T-Pain), “I’m on a Boat”

For years, it was an inside joke.

If anyone at dinner mentioned a boat, a beach, a cruise, or even a puddle, I knew what was coming: the Poop Cruise story. Parisa would describe a Carnival cruise she took where, on the way back to port, the ship’s engines caught on fire and they ended up drifting — turning a four-day vacation into a ten-day nightmare. She’d talk about the toilets not working, the biohazard bags, the tent cities on deck, and the general unraveling of civilization. She’d even describe how she spent days wearing a hotel bathrobe because they had no clean clothes left, a detail so iconic that it actually made The New York Times. (“Parisa Safarzadeh … packed mostly bikinis and sarongs,” the reporter wrote, “anticipating sunny Cozumel, Mexico. Instead, she found herself wrapped tightly in a bathrobe as night temperatures dropped below 40 degrees.”) It became one of her greatest hits, told with the same rhythm and detail every time. At this point, I’d heard the story so often I felt like an honorary survivor minus the trauma and the bathrobe.

Admittedly, I always thought it was strange that she called it the Poop Cruise. I figured it was just her nickname for the story. A little gross-out flourish added for dramatic effect. Then, this summer, the Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Poop Cruise dropped, and I realized everyone called it that. Apparently, “Poop Cruise” wasn’t her invention; it was the official, crowd-sourced title of the whole ordeal. Which, in hindsight, says a lot about both humanity and branding. Suddenly, it wasn’t just one of Parisa’s dinner-party stories; it was part of the national dialogue. Everyone was talking about it. Even Bill Simmons devoted a segment to it on The Rewatchables (“You couldn’t script this — it’s Titanic meets Survivor meets Jackass”). That’s when it hit me: she hadn’t been embellishing; she’d been under-selling it.

For those of you that didn’t watch the Netflix documentary, the story still boggles the mind. The Carnival Triumph left Galveston in February 2013 for a four-day pleasure cruise to Mexico. But when an engine fire knocked out the ship’s power, everything collapsed — air conditioning, plumbing, refrigeration, navigation. The vessel drifted for nearly a week, turning into a slow-motion sociology experiment: 4,200 people marooned in the Gulf of Mexico, improvising new rules for hygiene and sanity. The show captures it all: the gallows humor, the on-deck tent cities (no AC), and the Coast Guard patrolling the waters for submarine pirates. It’s grotesque and human and oddly moving.

For the inaugural watch party, we invited a dozen or so friends over for the viewing, and in honor of the occasion, everyone showed up wearing bathrobes and captain’s hats. It started as a bit — a kitschy watch party for the story I’d heard a hundred times — but within minutes I was riveted. And then, there was Parisa on the lido deck of the ship wearing the infamous bathrobe, hair blowing in the wind as she and the other passengers stared at the smoke billowing from the back of the ship. A reluctant extra in a real-life disaster movie. Her friend Nick, apparently the only person aboard with both foresight and a GoPro, had filmed everything once the power went out. His footage of the crowds camping on deck, the dark hallways, and the surreal camaraderie, became the backbone of the film. Which means the story I’d heard a hundred times was suddenly playing out on my TV, but this time, the ending came with closing credits.

We’re all in the same boat, stayin’ afloat, for the moment.
— Ben Harper, “Same Boat Now”

As we watched the chaos unfold, I realized there was a Pulitzer novel hiding in there somewhere. Not a Titanic-style tragedy, but something messier and more philosophical. Something like Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow’s 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner — a novel that begins with an artist’s death and unravels into a meditation on spiritual decay, ego, and the desperate human need to find meaning amid absurdity. It’s part satire, part elegy, and part existential meltdown which is, also, a fair description of the Poop Cruise.

At its core, Humboldt’s Gift follows Charlie Citrine, a middle-aged writer who’s somehow both successful and falling apart. His mentor, the brilliant but self-destructive poet Von Humboldt Fleisher, has died broke and bitter, leaving Charlie with a box of letters and a lifetime of guilt. Charlie’s rich from a Broadway play he wrote about Humboldt — the kind of commercial hit that would’ve made his old friend roll over in his grave — but he’s stuck in lawsuits, alimony battles, and a relationship with a girlfriend who treats affection like a business transaction. Meanwhile, a wannabe gangster named Cantabile keeps showing up, dragging Charlie into situations that would be funny if they weren’t also slightly terrifying. Through it all, Charlie can’t stop philosophizing about art, death, and the possibility of a soul, trying to find meaning while his life (and his checking account) steadily collapse around him.

Charlie wanders through this collapsing world with a kind of wounded idealism, trying to honor Humboldt’s belief that art could rescue civilization even as everything around him suggests otherwise. Bellow’s writing mirrors that tension and at times can be exasperating with long, restless paragraphs that bounce between humor, frustration, philosophy, and slapstick. Chicago in the mid-1970s becomes a carnival of lawsuits, hustlers, gangsters, and spiritual noise, and Charlie can’t decide whether to rise above it or sink into it. The novel jumps from metaphysics to mobsters, from art theory to alimony payments, all driven by the same underlying question: what if genius, beauty, and moral seriousness no longer matter in a world increasingly shaped by convenience and spectacle? It’s funny and exhausting and very American. Swap the Midwest for the Gulf of Mexico and you’ve got the Carnival Triumph: a floating microcosm of people trying to maintain dignity while the civilized world, quite literally, breaks down around them.

When the power died, the Triumph became a Bellowesque metaphor come to life — a luxury liner stripped to its existential core. The air stopped circulating, the toilets overflowed, and the hierarchy of comfort collapsed. The same people who had argued over dinner reservations on Day One were sharing cigarettes and rations by flashlight on Day Five. Civilization, it turns out, is mostly plumbing and Wi-Fi.

In Humboldt’s Gift, Bellow writes, “Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.” By that definition, it’s hard to argue that finding humor in the horror of the Poop Cruise — the actual event, not just the documentary — doesn’t qualify as art. It’s the instinct to impose meaning, to spin narrative, to salvage a little dignity from disaster. And as I often joke with my daughter Macy, that’s the beauty of art — the way it gives shape to the messy, the absurd, and the unmanageable. Nick’s GoPro footage is chaotic, gross, and occasionally beautiful, an unintentional masterpiece of American absurdity.

If Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries found grace in the quiet, ordinary patterns of life, Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift chases meaning through chaos — talking faster, thinking harder, and refusing to accept that “ordinary” might be enough. The Triumph may have lost power, but it generated the one thing Bellow believed would outlast decay: story.

By the time the credits rolled at the viewing party, we were laughing and a little awed. Not because the story was funny (though it is, in a dark, Kafka-at-sea sort of way) but because she’d lived through it and still told it with humor. And maybe that’s the real Humboldt’s Gift: the ability to stand ankle-deep in chaos, recognize the absurdity, and still find something worth writing down.

Because sometimes, the only thing separating tragedy from comedy — or art from sewage — is a GoPro and a good Wi-Fi signal.

We are young. Wandering the face of the Earth. Wondering what our dreams might be worth. Learning that we’re only immortal for a limited time.

Dreamline, by Rush

My younger brother, Scott Horton, passed away yesterday. We knew it was coming, he was surrounded by family and friends, it was peaceful, and he did it on his terms. I love all of that and I’m doing my best to keep that in mind, but today I can’t help but mourn for the loss of a great father, husband, brother, son, cousin, uncle, friend, neighbor, co-worker, concert-goer, sports enthusiast, artist, traveler, cat-lover, and overall human. (If you want to know why he’s a “Horton” and I’m an “Orta,” buy me a drink and I’ll tell you the story. I promise it will be worth your while.)

Scott and I were born only 20 months apart, so I don’t recall a time when he wasn’t around. Because we were so close in age, our childhood was filled with endless front yard football/basketball/baseball games, cap guns, model airplanes, green plastic army men, comic books and ninja throwing stars. We built bicycle ramps so that we could emulate Evil Knievel, waited in line to see all the Star Wars movies, and had “firework wars” where we would shoot roman candles and bottle rockets at each other. Thankfully, no one was (permanently) injured, but we did knock out a couple of teeth.

Come to think of it, a lot of the activities we did seemed completely normal in the 70s but would probably result in a call to Child Protective Services today. For example, it seemed that every kid in the neighborhood had a BB gun, the most popular choice being the Crossman air rifle that you could manually pump to build up air pressure. More pumps led to more pressure and more pressure led to faster BB velocity. So with that backdrop, we used to have BB gun wars where the rule was that you could only pump your rifle two times. Because we were 10-12 year old boys and said rule was only regulated by the honor system, it was inevitable that someone would get shot, it would hurt, they would scream “THAT WAS MORE THAN TWO PUMPS!” and a smallish scuffle would ensue. Good times.

Yet despite all of the things that we did together, we were polar opposites in many ways. He played the drums (loudly), I played the guitar (badly). (Note that neither of us wanted to play the piano, which was the instrument chosen by our parents.) While I ate whatever was put in front of me, Scott would eat only plain foods and his diet consisted primarily of hamburgers with no condiments, cheese pizza, pasta with no sauce, and grilled cheese sandwiches. (For the record, his taste palate increased significantly once he reached adulthood. Or maybe 30.)

We also could never agree on which sports team to support. He rooted for the Dodgers, while I rooted for the Reds. He rooted for the Dallas Cowboys, while I rooted for the Pittsburgh Steelers. (As an aside, this latter rivalry got so heated mid-game one year that he threw a pen at me tip first like a spear with such uncanny accuracy that it ended up in my ear. Don’t fret, no damage was done other than I flopped more than a Premier League soccer player in the penalty area which I recall resulted in a spanking and timeout for Scott. Sorry about that.) He loved to play hockey – both the ice and rollerblade variety – and I still don’t get it to this day.  

And in music, although we found some common ground mainly in the classics (Zeppelin, Stones), our tastes were not generally aligned. When I was listening to punk bands like TSOL, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, Social Distortion and X, Scott loved hard/progressive/jazz rock bands like Night Ranger, Steely Dan, Cheap Trick, Triumph, The Cult and Joe Satriani. But if you know Scott, you will also know that he loved one band above all others – Rush. I cannot stress this enough – he really, really loved Rush. 

I will choose a path that’s clear. I will choose free will.

Free Will from Permanent Waves by Rush (1980)

I’ve spent a lot of words here describing what Scott did, but it is a lot harder to describe who Scott was. Quiet individualist comes to mind, but I might be more successful in this endeavor if I simply told you a story that happened long ago, but that I only learned of very recently. The story takes place at church. At least that is what our Dad assumed.

Our mother died when I was 12 and Scott was 10. That is important for this story only because when we went to church on Sunday, Dad was now a single parent and had to play zone rather than man-to-man defense. Scott, recognizing this, began telling our dad that he preferred sitting in the balcony with the choir rather than on the main floor with us. In hindsight, this seems completely unbelievable. Nonetheless, the ruse appeared to work and before mass began, Scott would part ways with us and head up to the balcony. What 10 year old Scott failed to mention but 54 year old Scott fessed up to, however, was that as soon as the service started and we were all now facing forward, he would leave church, walk four blocks (across a major thoroughfare no less) to a local store/deli called AJ’s that served milk shakes and had a couple of video games, and then when he knew mass was ending, he’d head back just in time for the post-church donuts mixer.

When he told me this story – again, only recently – I was stunned, and not because (a) I never knew this story or (b) it seems inconceivable that 10 year olds in 1970s Phoenix could do this every week and not be murdered or have some other bad thing happen to them. No, what stunned me was how smart it was. Scott did the calculus: I hate church, I like video games, and I like donuts. Hence, what clearer path to choose than one he chose? I need to use the decision making framework more often. 

Why are we here? Because we’re here, roll the bones.

Roll the Bones by Rush (1991)

Although we obviously spent a ton of time together early on, as kids are prone to do, we grew up, went to college, settled in different cities, got jobs and had kids. If that wasn’t enough, Scott, the overachiever, got a Ph.D. at the age of 45. We spoke less not for any reason other than life is busy. Then, nearly three years ago, he called to tell me that he was diagnosed with what turned out to be a rare brain cancer. 

As crises often do, Scott’s diagnosis reminded us what – and who – is important in your life. From that moment until yesterday, we made the effort to spend a lot more time together. And from that moment until yesterday, I watched Scott battle cancer and battle it well. He had two surgeries, two rounds of radiation, one round of chemo, and countless doctor visits. Through it all, he remained both stoic and hopeful that he would ultimately prevail.

What is even more impressive than how he battled cancer, is how the kid who would walk from church to AJ’s and back for donuts lived his life when the cancer and associated treatments took a pause and he felt better. In the last year and a half alone he traveled to Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, the UK, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. He saw the sphere in Vegas and hiked in Zion. We saw The Cult while I was visiting Arizona. His will to live – to really live – consistently amazed me. Unfortunately, as it so often does, the cancer returned in August, and this time, there were no more treatments to be had.

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect; so hard to earn, so easily burned.

The Garden from Clockwork Angels (2012)

Between Thanksgiving and New Years as Scott’s condition began to worsen, I was lucky enough to spend a significant amount of time with Scott, his wife Carol, and their two incredible sons Deven and Ryan. Their support for Scott, and each other, throughout this ordeal never wavered. It was extraordinary yet I’ve been struggling today to write something that appropriately captured this love without sounding rote. Luckily for me, Deven did a far better job than I could ever do in this Instagram post.

I also got to witness the effect Scott had on the greater world. Every day seemed to bring another string of visitors to wish him well, most of whom I’d never met. Neighbors, co-workers, former students and friends, all came by with stories of how Scott had impacted their own journeys. And of this group, I was most impressed by the friends that he has known for a lifetime.

I’m fairly sociable, but of the people that I currently consider close friends, the earliest are probably from high school and most are people I met later in life. In this way, Scott and I also differ. Of his closest circle of friends, most have known Scott since he was 7 years old or younger. I was trying to figure out why and how this happened, and I think it is because Scott was always Scott. In his office at home, Scott showed me recently how over the years he had collected some of his favorite toys from childhood. At first I thought this was just nostalgia, but upon further reflection there was a simpler explanation: Scott has always known what he liked and who he liked (and who he didn’t like).  

And on that note, I’ll end with one more story to bring the point home. I found this book report he did when he was seven years old on Roger Staubach: Running Cowboy. I love this because he only had to answer two questions. First, “Tell what the book was about” to which Scott responded: “But he’s six-four and weighs 250, someone said. What would you do with him in [a] back alley. Listen said Roger, I’ve got four years of hand-to-hand combat I never got to use.” I searched for this book on Amazon, sadly to no avail. Regardless, I’m not totally sure he understood the question, I’m pretty sure that isn’t what the book was about, and I’m 100% sure that I love the fact that Scott thought that this passage was cool.

The second question was a two parter: “Did you like the story?” and “Why?” To which Scott responded: “Yes” and “I like football”. If only he had added “dumbass” to the end.

Nearly 38 years after Scott received an “OK” on this book report, his Ph.D. dissertation titled “High Fidelity Virtual Environments: Does Shader Quality or Higher Polygon Count Models Increase Presence and Learning” was approved and published. Although I’m 100% sure that I don’t understand this paper, it is clear that Scott had come a long way from his “I like football” days. But what is even more telling and touching and apropos is what Scott included on the “Acknowledgement” page:

“As I officially end my time in college and this chapter of my life, while moving on to bigger and better things, I’d like to quote Neal Peart of Rush in saying:

Why try? I know why

The feeling inside me says it’s time I was gone

Clear head, new life ahead

I want to be king now not just one more pawn… “

The last thing I told my brother yesterday was that I loved him and I’m grateful for that. At the risk of taking this Rush thing too far, Scott, I bid you farewell my extraordinary brother, a “Freewill” spirit, we celebrate your “Tom Sawyer” adventures, the “Closer to the Heart” moments that we shared, leaving us with “Time Stand Still” memories. And as you embark on the “Limelight” of eternity, know that you will forever be “The Spirit of the Radio” in our hearts. You were, and always will be, a king.