Sandra Harris Writes

HEATWAVE 2013 OR, THE SHINING PART TWO, WITH APOLOGIES TO STEPHEN KING... A POEM BY SANDRA HARRIS. © The sun came to stay for a while in July 2013, Bringing with him an alarming mountain of luggage, Enough for several weeks, surely...? We weren't expecting him and so we weren't as prepared As we might otherwise have been. There was a bit of a rush to clear out the spare room, To air the sheets and towels and stick fresh flowers in the vase on the night-stand To make the place a bit welcoming. “What would you like to do today, then?” we asked him on his first full day. He shrugged. “I think I'll just shine for a bit,” he said. He was as good as his word.  He shone every day for three whole weeks. “Are you sure you wouldn't like to do something different for a change?” we'd ask him Every morning. “Drive down to Glendalough, maybe, or over to see the Cliffs Of Moher? They're meant to be lovely, they are, at this time of the year...?” ...

WE’RE HAVING A HEATWAVE… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I know I’m going to come across as grumpy and ungrateful now but I’m really not enjoying this heatwave. Ah, don’t be such an auld buzzkill, you might say. Surely be to God you’re happy for the first daycent (Oirish pronunciation) bit of sunshine we’ve had all year, you might say. Surely you don’t begrudge people a bit of relief from the unrelenting misery that’s been 2026 so far, with constant wars, spiralling grocery and electricity prices and the general breakdown of society that seemed to start with bloody COVID and will surely end with an apocalyptic style flood/earthquake/tsunami that sets us back about a bazillion years and forces us all into a hard reset for mankind, you might say. Well, of course I don’t begrudge people a bit of relief from the unrelenting misery that’s been 2026 so far, etc., etc. I know kids have been having a ball with their paddling pools, ice-creams and spontaneous, unscheduled trips to the beach instead...

  HOT GIRLS WANTED: TURNED ON. (2017) A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES. PRODUCED BY JILL BAUER, RONNA GRADUS AND RASHIDA JONES. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. I literally couldn't wait to sit down and write this review, even though I'm nearly a decade late to the party and the show has been on Netflix for several years. This documentary series is a follow-up to the 2015 documentary film, Hot Girls Wanted, in which several young girls/women are interviewed about their lives as amateur porn actresses. They all live in a grotty bungalow with twenty-three-year-old Riley Reynolds, a porn agent, in North Miami Beach. Yes, they go to casting calls and shoot amateur porn movies, but there's an awful lot of sitting around bored on their phones in Riley's house and overall the life isn't as glamorous as it sounds. Riley, though not abusive, reminds me of nothing so much as a douche-baggy pimp, and his words (paraphrased by me as I remember them) live rent-free in my head: '...