March 4, 2025

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my present.

I’m presently a little jealous of my friend here. She just got back from Hawaii. I used to go there all the time to shoot. I’ll just go there in my memories because it’s far way and I can’t travel by air anymore.

Before I said that being like the way I am doesn’t really bother me, but man, sometimes it gets to you. It’s tough. The only way to really deal with it, I think, is through meditation. That, or excessive alcohol and drugs (just kidding). I mean - meditation not medication - is the way to go. Although, I do have medication for panic attacks. You know, if you kind of freak out. I never use it, but it’s good to know it’s there, just in case.

I mentioned it before, but you have to use your disadvantage as an advantage. For example: I can’t really hold a pencil, so I use water color pencil to try and make a mark. I do this over and over with different colors. The result is kind of cool. It looks very abstract. Then, I was on the phone with my friend. His mother has severe dementia. She does the same thing. She makes colorful marks over and over. She’s kind of like me. She sits in the garden and draws marks of color. It’s an interesting connection because both situations are neurological. Her paintings are beautiful.

I’m really not gonna blog anymore today. I’ll just think about Hawaii. It’s a cool place. The art director I worked with insisted we go there. We went there every February for about 6 years. Get there if you can.

Anyway, I’ll talk to you next week. Love B. Nice

February 18, 2025

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my present.

I’m gonna dedicate this blog to my friend Patricia. She said she follows the blog, so I’m gonna dedicate this one to her.

Man, when you’re like this, you’re definitely down. You gotta learn how to deal with other everyday things like funerals, statistics that make you sad. I’ll give you an example: so check this out - by the time a kid turns 18 you will have spent 92% of the time you’ll ever spend with the kid. Now, this bums me out because my kid just turned 18. The kid was taken from me when I was in intensive care, so you do the math. I haven’t spent much time with my kid and probably won’t from now on out. Statistics like this bum me out. Anyway, I gotta suck it up and roll with the punches, right?

On another note, I realize that I’m not doing so good in the coordination department. I lean to my right a lot and I’m totally uncoordinated in moving myself around. Then, a friend of mine asked me if I’ve been going to therapy and I said, “Actually, you’re right. I haven’t been going to therapy that much.” (This is due to lack of transportation and the cold weather.) The therapy I’ve been doing was almost like maintenance therapy. My friend is kind of right. I remember when I was a runner, if I didn’t constantly train, I would go backwards and not do as well. So I guess therapy is kind of the same. You’ve got to keep at it to get better or maintain yourself, and therapy at home (doing it yourself) doesn’t really work. You really need a physical therapist. Trying to get to therapy is like therapy itself.

Anyway, I’m gonna leave it at that. I also wanted to dedicate this blog to a family friend who is no longer with us. I just went to his memorial. The guy was a great guy and a good friend of my dad’s. I hired a physical therapist to get me there. You should have seen the guy trying to put me in the car. We looked like two drunk kangaroos. College day kangaroos. Anyway, it was worth hiring someone, and thank god I did.

That’s all for this week. Love and miss you all. Love, B. Nice

January 21, 2025

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my present.

I’m gonna dedicate this blog to me! Because it’s my birthday, as I’m 46 years old.Wait! I’m 64 years old. Old. That’s the word of the day. Old.

Man, I’m already tired and it’s only 3 o’clock. You see, I’ve been going through film I have from the past. It’s exhausting. When you look at each image, I automatically remember how it was lit, how it was reflected and so on. It’s tiring. I’m putting my old images together to form a new business for my daughter. I won’t go into the details, but it’s pretty cool.

I’m gonna keep this blog short, but I would like to talk about one thing. When you’re in a condition like I am, traumatic brain injury survivor. You have to remember, your job is to get better, so don’t think of yourself as not having a job because you do. And it’s a big job. You see, from the moment to the moment I go to bed, I’m working, and believe me it’s a full time job. I just wanted to share that with you.

Once again, I’d like to give a shout out to my friends who lost their homes and everything in the California fires. I kinda know what it means to lose everything so help them as best you can.

Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice

January 14, 2025

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about the present.

I’d like to dedicate this blog to all my friends who I know that lost their houses, and everything in the LA fires.

I really can’t help a bunch of people, but I can help one person. My friend Jenny lost everything. I’m pretty sure she has a go fund me site. Anyway, she lost everything. She’s lucky though. The’s gotten an apartment right away. I know this though. She has nothing on the walls. I’m therefore going to help her by sending her some black and white images for her walls. I know it’s not much, but I’m sure everything helps,

Whenever I’m in very stressful situations like my friend is, I often think of funny things from the past. I’ll give you an example:

I’m pretty sure I told you this story before, but I was shooting some lingerie for a famous NY department store. We were shooting in Miami. We were at the front part of the house. It was nice light and the day was going good. The owner of the house said she was going out to lunch. We could shoot anywhere but her bedroom. Well, of course, after she left, I went to the bedroom. There was great light so I said, let’s do a shot here. Well, I had to move the bed a little because it wasn’t quite right. But as I moved the bed, I heard Kerplunck, and some batteries rolled out, D batteries. I said to my assistant, What was that? And he said to me, you don’t want to know. And I looked down and there was a big dildo on the ground. I said to my assistant, Quick pick it up and put it back. He said No way man, I”m not touching that thing. I said, look under the kitchen sink with the cleaning supplies. I think I saw a pair of latex gloves. Well, we put everything back together and ran back to the front of the house. I took great amusement at throwing the gloves at my assistant’s face on a random schedule. He always screamed like a ten year old girl.

I used to shoot in a lot in lofts in NYC. One time I shot at a loft that was pretty cool. It had floor to ceiling windows and brick columns separating the windows. All rather industrial. Anyway I took a stroll around the studio to look for some good light. They had a darkroom there so I decided to check it out. It was a cool darkroom, but under the enlarger, there was a sawed off 12 gauge shotgun and a pair of little boy’s underwear. It was rather disturbing. Welcome to New York. I didn’t choose to shoot there after that. The place kind of gave me the creeps.

There was house in the Hamptons I used to always shoot in. It was very 1980’s. Early ‘80s. It had curved walls, big windows and it was all white. One day I was shooting there and I heard a scream coming from the changing room. There was a big commotions and the owner of the house was sheepishly walking around the pool. Apparently, the husband, the homeowner had cut a peep hole into the model’s changing room and one of the models found it. She was yelling at the guy. The wife had to intervene. The wife and the producer got into it. It was a short day. And I never went back there. Actually, I knew about this house from a photographer I worked for in the early 80’s. He also lost his house in the fires of LA.

That’s it for this week. Just thinking of all the people I know in LA. What a crazy world, right? Anyway, love and miss you all.

Love, B. NIce

January 7, 2025

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my present.

I’m gonna dedicate this blog to all the caregivers that look after me. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for them.

I truly believe that what I’ve gone through in the past has gotten me ready for what I’m going through now. I remember waking up from my first brain operation. It was tough man. I was totally paralyzed. I think if it weren’t for my training in running, I would have freaked out. You see, when you’re training to be a competitive runner, you have to learn how to be very patient. You also have to learn how to put up with a lot of pain. And competitive running, I lived minute by minute, and after surgery it was much the same. I truly lived minute by minute. Even now, I don’t think about what things will be like in a year, month or day. I literally live day by day. You kind of have to because you have to concentrate on achieving your goal of the day.

Another real important thing is to surround yourself with people that truly want to help out, like my friend here. You need to surround yourself with the right people. It’s tough man. I can’t even move a piece of paper from one point to another without destroying it. I have to constantly tell myself to sit up straight and I drool like a Saint Bernard. It’s a tough existence. But I’m lucky to exist.

One fun thing is to look back at what I used to do. I’m lucky enough to have an assistant to help me go through stuff. It’s fun.

Hey, so check it out: my filmmaker, or I should say, the award winning filmmaker, Julia Barrett Mitchell, has another project that she’s just gotten green lit for. So congratulations to Julia.

That’s about all for now. Love and miss you guys.

Love, B. Nice