Whodunit? Everyone!

I decided to watch School Spirits on Netflix because I was a little bored with Asian dramas, and managed to get through all eight episodes without giving up, although sometimes I was tempted. This is a somewhat odd high school drama with some merits: none of the actors are famous or especially attractive, the premise is not the usual high school nonsense, and the story does move along at an okay pace.

The series follows the sad tale of Maddie Nears, a teenage spirit who wakes up at her high school to discover she's disappeared in real life. She meets other ghosts who assure her that she's dead, and was probably murdered, although no one has found her body yet. The already dead spirits (which includes one earnest teacher who is trying to get everyone to accept their death and cross over) help Maddie investigate her murder. She's hindered by the fact that she can't leave the school premises and has too many suspects. A bonus turns out to be Maddie's best friend, Simon, who is the only living person who can see her.

I had a lot of problems with some of the excessively skewed storytelling choices, such as how every adult in the series is depicted as either criminal, idiotic, ineffectual or uncaring. Maddie is presented as the only adult, honestly. I know that's all done to cater to the kids, but if you want the grownups to take it seriously, a range of more realistic adults would be better.

Unhappily there are far, far too many red herrings and suspects. Two or three would have been standard, four a stretch but okay, but they went with five. I got tired of the suspicion shifts moving at lightning speed; not even the Kennedy assassination had so many conspiracies. The character of Maddie's single parent alcoholic mother is so over the top atrocious that in reality the kid would have been taken away from her and put in foster care long, long ago.

By the time I got to the last episode and got the solution to the puzzle (which wasn't a solution, because there will be a season two) I'd already decided I'd had enough. I'm not going to recommend this one unless you're a teen who hates all adults, in which case you will probably adore it.

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Stuff

After finding this Caron one pound skein of lovely peach yarn in my thrifted lot I raided my stash for two cakes of Mandala in Pegasus, which matches it perfectly. For practice and hand therapy I'm going to make another Worth Street Afghan with this free pattern , but this time I'll use the yarn that was recommended for it plus the one pound skein. I'm not quite ready to do the vintage/recycled linen quilt I had planned (still a bit too nervous about the idea), so I'm going to use some color therapy and make a quilt from these thrifted green fat quarters. I considered doing another Yellow Brick road patchwork pattern, but I might go with a split rail fence like this one.

Journal Find

This is a page from my 2010 poetry journal. My handwriting isn't the best, so I'll transcribe it: If my heart survives to tell all the secrets kept inside it will be an abalone shell in which the beauty did reside. But I think I will always be lost to the tides that rage in me . . . humbling and polishing . . . I don't write many self-portrait poems, but this one isn't too embarrassing. A bit overly dramatic, but the girl I was eleven years ago went through some tough times. I'm in a much more peaceful place today.

Watchable Farce

The k-drama Undercover High School is a series that brings a handsome spy to play a student at an elite private school where a legend about billions of gold hidden there persists. It's more silly slapstick comedy than anything, but has some surprising romantic and dramatic moments, too. Seo Kang-joon is one of my favorite Korean actors, and this is the first series he's made since finishing up his mandatory military service. He plays Jeong Hae-seong/ Jeong Si-hyun, an NIS agent who infiltrates a snobby elitist school to hunt down the gold. There are four urban legends connected to the treasure that he has to figure out, all under the too-watchful eye of his homeroom teacher, Oh Su-Ah (Jin Ki-joo) whom he eventually discovers was his elementary school love Oh Bong-ja (there's a lot of name changing in this series.) The hunt for the treasure is the highlight of this series, but the romance between the leads is cute, too (and not as taboo as you might think, given that...

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