November 28, 2023

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

Man, I ran everywhere when I was a kid. It definitely saved me a couple of times. For example:

When I was little, I lived in Brooklyn Heights on Montague street. I played with a group of kids. This was the mid 60’s. I guess you could call us a little gang. Anyway, we were playing on the back street in back of Montague when a pedophile tried to lure us into his apartment. He had a bunch of candy. One of the kids I was with said, “My Dad told me about people like you!” and we bolted. We ran to the closest police officer we could find. We took him back to the apartment and showed him. The cop called for back up. The next thing you know, they were roughing the guy up pretty good. They took him away in handcuffs and they had a couple of boxes too.

What really started my running career was this, I tried out for the soccer team in high school. The coach said, “Hey Nice! Come over here.” I went over to him. He said, “Brian, I’ve been coaching soccer for 25 years and in that time, you’re probably the worst soccer player I’ve ever seen, but you can run like the wind so go see that guy over there.” and he pointed to the track and field coach. That was the start of my running career.

Running also saved me from the following event. I was in the woods making out with a girl. Imagine that. Anyway, me and this girl saw a guy appear in the distance. The guy stopped. Looked at us, and started running toward us. I said, “Holy shit! Run!” Me and the girl started running as fast as we could. We ran out of the woods through a field and up to my parents house where we hid. I looked out the window, but never saw the guy, so yeah, running saved us.

I’ve got a bunch of running stories, but I’ll tell you one more. I was in Daytona Beach training for Track & Field. It was during spring break and it also happened to be Biker Week. Well, a group of us were running along the beach and we ran past some bikers. They yelled at us, “Hey you faggots.” So of course, I turned around and flipped them off. That wasn’t a good idea, because one of the bikers started running towards me and with one stride he took a knife out of his boot and started coming after me. Well, luckily I could run a 4 minute mile pace and the guy couldn’t catch me. The guy yelled in frustration and ran into the waves. He was definitely tripping on something. Thank god.

But actually, the best run of all was a run I did with eleven other guys. We ran for the Guinness Book of World Records and our school. We ran from Santa Monica, California to the east coast. We got the record. We were in the Guinness book of World Records. We ran 24/7 for 2 weeks. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. But you know what, all that running stuff got me ready for what I’m going through now. Running taught me to turn frustration into determination, to never give up, and to have patience.

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

November 21, 2023

Hi you guys. Welcome to the blog where I talk about the past.

I love it. My friend here reaches into one of my old suitcases and pulls out one of my old journals. I store all of my old journals in an old suitcase. Above is the page she opened up to. It’s about a new car I bought. I used to be obsessed with windsurfing. I bought this car to carry all my gear. I spent all of my down time windsurfing. That’s probably why I got divorced the first time.

This car was great though. I could take it anywhere. I often went onto the beach and I would launch from there. It’s amazing windsurfing in the ocean. You’re going so fast, everything else seems to be in slow motion. Like, the waves, people surfing. Plus, a ten foot wave does not seem so big, because it’s only four feet above your shoulders. When you’re surfing and lying down, a ten foot wave looks huge.

Anyway, this car was great. It also came in handy for photography. I could pack up all my gear and go onto the beach. It was also a great party car. It had a great sound system and held plenty of beer, but don’t tell anyone.

Anyway, that’s about it for this week.

Oh yeah, by the way, the car was a two door Chevy Tahoe. It was fit out with a huge engine. It was a lot of fun.

November 15, 2023

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

Build a bridge and get over it. That was a pillow my ex-wife gave me when I was building my house. You see, I bought a blank lot in Montauk NY. The only access was where the flagpole would be and it was over a ditch where some wetland plants had grown. It was kind of a nightmare. I bought this land, but the only way to get to it was by building a bridge. And the DEC would not allow you to build a bridge over wetlands. I guess, in hindsight, I should have hired a lawyer, but I resolved this problem for myself. Now, it’s kind of a complicated, but to cut a long story short, I’ll tell you what I did.

I spent a lot of time at the DEC on Long Island. Finally they agreed that I could build a bridge but only twelve feet wide. That was to allow wetland plants to grow. Now, the town said I could build a bridge, but it has to be at least 15 feet wide. I was at an impasse. The DEC and the Town did not like each other. In fact, they would not really communicate. I was going back and forth like a ping pong ball. One day, I thought. OK, that’s it. I can’t build a bridge or build a house. So my solution was to open a bottle of red and finish it. Well, at about 4 in the morning with my head on the table, I woke up and with piece of plain white paper I wrote 12 feet wide. Then I ripped the paper in half vertically, and separated the pieces. I made the piece of paper 15 feet wide. I put a 3 foot gap in between the two pieces of paper. I filled the gap with a grate that would allow daylight to go through. I went to the DEC first thing in the morning, with coffees in hand. I said, I’ve got a solution to our problem. They looked at me like I was an alien, but they said, you know what? That’s a good idea. And they gave it the go-ahead. I think this is one reason my brain exploded. Anyway, I made a pretty awesome bridge. It looked like a Japanese Bow Bridge. It was cool. It was made of steel, hardwood and concrete. It was indestructible. It will be there for thousands of years. Also longer than either of my marriages. It was a great project. I know how to build an awesome bridge now. I was there everyday for the construction. The DEC even uses it as an example of what to build. If anyone’s interested, I’ll give you a free tour. We’ll just have to sneak onto the property. It was expensive though. Man, for the price of that bridge, I could have bought a condo in Colorado,

Love and miss you guys. Love B. Nice

November 7, 2023

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

Oh man, I had a great client. We always shot at great locations. One of my favorite locations was in New Mexico. It was called Ghost Ranch, and it was Georgia O’Keefe’s old house. It was great. I think I went there about 5 times. The light was amazing, and the sky was incredible.

I was pretty lucky to be able to shoot at Ghost Ranch. Georgia O’Keefe was an amazing artist. A lot of her works were done around Ghost Ranch. The only problem was there were a lot of rattle snakes. I thoroughly enjoyed bringing a fake snake with me and hiding it in various locations around the set. The reaction from some people was priceless. And a whole polaroid book of expressions. It was great, but it got me in trouble. My favorite trick was to hide the rubber snake behind a toilet and pull it out on a fishing line I’d tied around its neck. You can only imagine the screams I heard. I believe I told you this before, but I got in trouble with the client because one of the models I scared had a phobia of snakes. She wouldn’t leave the location van nor would she let her feet touch the ground. The other model had to do all the scared model’s shots. Man, I got in trouble on that one.

Santa Fe was beautiful though. Did you know that that area used to be an inland sea? It did remind me of the ocean. I guess it’s all open space, that’s why. I miss it. I can’t go back there because of the elevation. I remember I still have one small malformation of veins within my brain stem. It’s ab inoperable situation. Something I’ll live with. I guess I’m a human altimeter guy because if I get too high in altitude, I start to feel dizzy. It could happen there in Los Alamos which is above Ghost Ranch.

Anyway, I highly recommend you check out that area. It’s beautiful. Some of my friends even moved there.

This one time I had was great. We were shooting in Hawaii, Mexico, New Mexico, Florida. They’re all big trips too, like 14 days. Another one of my favorite locations that we’d go to was Napa Valley. We always stayed at the Sonoma Mission Inn. It was great. We had fireplaces in our rooms. It was actually more like a suite. Also had a great restaurant. Speaking of food. I’m gonna go. I have to make my dinner. I think I’m gonna have an apple tonight. I miss the good old days.

Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice

October 31, 2023

Booo! Happy Halloween everybody! My friend here asked me if thre was any halloween that stood out, and my answer is YEs! I remember a halloween quite well.

My first wife and I were on our way to Australia. We had a layover in San Francisco. We decided to extend our layover and stay in San Fran for a day. I had a good friend there. We decided, since it was Halloween to enter a bar costume contest. Well, I was so excited to enter the contest that I forgot I didn’t have a costume. I thought, no problem. I went to the local hardware store and bought a whole bunch of tin foil and duct tape. We wrapped ourselves in tin foil and duct tape and decided we were aliens. And guess what! We won the contest. I don’t remember much, but I had a few drinks, but I do remember, for some reason, no cab would pick us up.

Good times and love, B. Nice