Ghost World (2001)

“Look at ol’ Discogs Steve,” I wrote in the little notebook my partner and I keep when we watch movies at the theater, little knowing that Steve Buscemi was a record collector who was absolutely going to be talking about the elusiveness of his record collection, his somewhat loose grading system, and his views on genre. I haven’t read Ghost World — comics like it are frequently a bit too acidic for my taste, for whatever reason — and 20 years of seeing the one screencap of Thora Birch in a latex mask could not prepare me for how long and how hard I was gonna be dragged through the ephemera-cluttered corners of my own life. That’s probably the effect this movie has on every dipshit who’s clerked a record store or comic book shop or spent high school (then one’s twenties, thirties, and beyond) mildly disgusted by the seeming normalcy of others, but how many of those dipshits waited until they were 37 to experience the relentless gaze of this film? Surely just me!