By the end of last week—on Friday, Sept. 14—I didn't know if I wanted to watch anymore footage of our country devastated.

So I rented a DVD—"Memento"—got home, flipped on the TV, slid the disc into the player and...immediately turned it off. I flipped back to Peter Jennings. Had to. I felt guilty even thinking about watching anything else.

Felt guilty at the prospect of doing something I truly love—watching movies.

Guilt's funny that way. The things you love most are the things that are most painful when you go to them while so many people outside of your world are suffering.

I mean, with so many suffering, how can you do something you really love?

Guilt. So I watched Jennings and the devastation.

But on Sunday, my wife and I woke up to a beautiful pre-autumn day in the Midwest. If you've ever experienced pre-autumn in the Chicago area—you know what I mean. The sky was blue, a few puffed clouds rolled by.

In fact, it was downright idyllic.

I didn't want to stay in the house but I didn't feel like spending time outside either. What I wanted to do was go to the movies. But again, that old guilt thing welled up and I found myself asking my wife for permission.

In silence, we drove to the nearest megaplex and went to the first matinee showing of Terry Zwigoff's "Ghost World." We were the first in the theater and I wondered if anybody would show up at all.

Soon, a handful of people filed in. During the preview for Barry Levinson's upcoming "Bandits" the theater was like a morgue. Explosions, fireballs, gunplay were like salt rubbed in fresh wounds. No audience reaction, just total silence. Even clips to the saccharine "Serendipity" didn't elicit so much as a sigh.

I never realized there was such a thing as mass guilt...

I justified the almost empty theater to the film's elusiveness. "Ghost World" isn't exactly "American Pie 2," yet its main characters are teenagers. The difference is, "Ghost World," which is based on a comic book by Daniel Clowes, isn't built on masturbatory fantasies and stupid guys holing pies or gluing their jewels to their hands. It doesn't star Tom Green. Beetle Juice from the Howard Stern Show doesn't make a cameo. Jay and Silent Bob don't strike back.

"Ghost World" is about two recently graduated 18-year-old girls who find a bond with each other because they feel this necessity to fight off the insipid world around them. But, like everybody else, they're ghosts among all the characters that float hopelessly in life. Enid (Thora Birch) is too smart for her own good and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) just wants to jump-start her existence beyond high school.

Enid meets Seymour (Steve Buscemi), at first to make fun of his pathetic lifestyle (he's a compulsive collector of rare 78 records, can't connect with women, has a low-level job—a ghost, really), but she starts to actually like him.

And Seymour, who's probably around 45, knows he has no business hanging out with Enid but feels this connection and, even though he meets somebody his own age, decides Enid is for him. However, where Zwigoff could have accentuated the uncomfortable sexuality between Seymour and Enid, he instead provides Enid with an epiphany.

Yes, "Ghost World" is strange. Yes, it has moments of discomfort. But, it's a movie about epiphanies and isn't depressing at all. In fact, "Ghost World" is very funny between its moments of sadness, with Zwigoff ending the whole affair with a bittersweet and subtle joy.

My Enid was in the form of a lifeguard I knew during my early 20s when I happily worked in a health club while getting through those trippy first years of college. She was cynical, angry, funny as hell. She wore punked-out miniskirts and combat boots, wore her hair hippy-parted but short, wore thick Enid glasses—she was 18 and knew more about life than most of the adults I encountered at the time. And she tried so hard to be something—anything. But I digress...

I Walked out of the theater to a blinding bright blue sky and the world was back. But I could feel something that I hadn't felt during the past few days.

I...dare I say it?

...actually felt happy.