Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

right,” Spencer said. “It was sentimental and muddled. But it was the first true thing I’d ever done. That painting is here in Seattle. I’d love to show it to you.”
    “I want to see it!” Timby said.
    “Read a book.”
    “Listen to me!” Spencer smacked his forehead. “I promised I’d make it short. So I came out, became a junkie, got these tattoos, cleaned up, and, well, you know about the past twelve years.”
    “I do?”
    “Yale School of Art, group show at White Columns, Jack Wolgin Prize, Venice Biennale, blah-blah-blah.”
    My eyes closed; my face scrunched; my head shook a thousand tiny times. “Huh?”
    “I thought you knew about me,” Spencer said. To Timby: “Your mom—”
    But Timby had become absorbed in one of Spencer’s books.
    Spencer turned back to me. “That’s why I crave you, Eleanor. You have a way of frying my motherboard when I need it the most.”
    “It’s not intentional!” I said. “I promise.”
    “The contemporary art world is so insular. We think our sky-high prices make us the center of the universe when of course only about eight people are paying attention. And they’re just gallery owners and art consultants.” Spencer joined his hands and lowered his chest in a slight bow. “I honor you.”
    “That’s you?” I said, still gaga. “Yale, Venice?”
    “I’m having a solo show at the Seattle Art Museum,” he said. “They asked me to do some stuff at the sculpture park too. There are banners all over town. Of course I just presumed you saw my name flapping in the breeze everywhere you went. But here you are again, holding up the mirror.”
    This toadying wannabe, this sweaty ass-kisser, this fraudulent quasi-minority, now he was somebody? Now he was the shit? He’d turned everything topsy-turvy and instead of rubbing my face in it, instead of serving revenge cold, he was nothing but hugs and two-hundred-dollar pens and pervy gratitude and—
    “Mom?” It was Timby.
    He held up what he’d been reading, from Spencer’s bag, a fancy magazine or catalog… It took me a second to even recognize it.
    THE MINERVA PRIZE
    From my Looper Wash days. It was a prize (now defunct) for graphic novelists. I’d been nominated for one in 2003 by Dan Clowes.
    That year’s Minerva Prize winner was going to be announced at a dinner at the Odeon. We were in the middle of production on Looper Wash and I intended to blow off the ceremony. But at the last minute, I grabbed the gang and walked over. We were horribly underdressed and seated at a good table. Across the expertly lit orchid centerpiece, the wife of the arts commissioner looked askance at our rowdiness and dirty jokes. (Ask anyone: being in production on a TV show turns you feral.) I didn’t expect to win, and didn’t. We each came back with a swag bag: POM Wonderful, a Murakami thumb drive, a mug with the Bear Stearns motto: Ahead of the Curve (!).
    And that program.
    “I wasn’t invited to the ceremony, of course,” Spencer was telling Timby. “But the next morning I fished a program out of the trash. The other day I was doing some spring cleaning and came across it. I thought your mom might want it.”
    Something terrible was occurring to me…
    “What?” asked Spencer.
    … that program, the one Timby had in his hands. It had profiles of each nominee and their work… which meant my work, all twelve illustrations.
    “Hey,” I said to Timby, reaching across. “Gimme that.”
    He yanked it away. “Who are the Flood Girls?”

Eleanor Flood
    The Flood Girls
    Nominated
    by
    Daniel Clowes
    I first met Eleanor Flood in 1995, back in the olden days of what we once called the San Diego Con (to differentiate it from Dallas Con, Sac Con, Leper Con), a few years before it was gentrified by Hollywood, and comics were still the main focus. Off in the indie/alternative/underground ghetto corner it was me, Peter Bagge, Joe Matt, the Hernandez brothers, Ivan Brunetti; the usual gang of idiots. We’d sit at tables