. . . And then there's angst

If you're lucky, you made it all the way through high school as one of the in-group, one of the "normal" kids. The next least-bad fate was to not fit in, but remain convinced that somehow you could. Harder still was to know that you were never going to fit in and to forge an identity out of this rejection: deadhead, nerd, gun-freak, sensitive folk singer, perpetually outraged minority.

Yet the lowest level of hell is reserved for those who are intelligent -- and cynical -- enough to realize that plugging into a preformed counter-culture is just another form of conformity, an anti-clique. Here awaits total isolation, where "normality" may as well be a dimension away. Welcome to "Ghost World."

That's the title of director Terry "Crumb" Zwigoff's new film, and it's one that throws a lot of people as it suggests an SFX blockbuster sort of thing. But the ghosts here are its loner characters, misfits like Seymour, a 78-rpm record otaku and recluse played by Steve Buscemi, or Enid and Becca, the funky, sullen teen outcasts played by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson.