October 29, 2024

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where Italk about my past.

Knock knock; Who’s there?; Boo. Boo, Who? - Don’t cry yet, it’s not Halloween YET! Pretty bad, right? Anyway, Happy Halloween.

This blog is dedicated to my friend D. He was my party pal and my running mate. We always had fun. At the bottom is a photo from a Halloween contest we were in. We were walking past a bar and the banner on the bar said, “Halloween Costume Contest - Winner wins a free night of drinking.” Well, of course, I said we gotta go to that! And my friend said, we have no costume. I said, no problem, so I ran down to the corner market and bought a few rolls of tin foil and a few rolls of duct tape. We went to the bar and guess what! We won the contest! The announcer called me on stage and said, What are you? I said, I have no idea, but I feel great. It was a great night, but let me tell you, a tin foil costume and alcohol don’t mix.

Another time, we were driving around Boston. I saw a great party as we drove past it. I said to my friend D, that was a great party. He looked at me and we both said in unison, “Let’s go!” We did a high speed U turn and went to the party. It was great. At one stage, I remember leaning against the wall drinking a beer, talking to a girl and telling her our story. She said, You don’t know anybody here? I said, no, but I know you. It was a great night.

Another time, we went to a bar. We ended up closing the place. Well, we were pretty lit, so we both decided it would be a bad idea to drive. We had a pickup. My friend slept in the back. I slept in the cab. Well, I woke up to a police officer shining a light in my face. He said, Hey, what’s going on? I said, we were too wasted to drive, so we just slept here. He said, Good, I’m glad you didn’t drive, but you can’t fill the entire parking lot with your empty beer cans. I looked back and my friend D was fast asleep in his sleeping bag and the whole parking lot was full of empty beer cans. I guess he wasn’t comfortable sleeping with a bunch of empty cans.

I’ve got many many stories, but they all seem to revolve around bars or running. Or was it running to bar?. I can’t remember. But the best thing we did together was with 10 other guys. We ran across the country. The run was brutal, but it landed us in the Guinness book of World Records. The race was a relay, 24/7. The most sleep you got was about 2 hours. And the race lasted about 2 weeks. It was crazy. We started in Santa Monica and finished in Annapolis, MD. Our record was beaten the next year, but it was still an amazing thing to do. Oh man, that van smelled so bad. Imagine 12 guys in a small Winnebago for 12 weeks. If a reporter wanted to do a story on us, we’d invite him into the van. The reaction on their face was priceless. It was quite the accomplishment.

Hey we’re gonna share a few cartoons below. Enjoy the cartoons. I miss drawing. I guess the only thing I can do now is tell stories.

Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice

October 22, 2024

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

I’m blogging to you at my house, outside, on a beautiful October day. It’s unusually warm, but it’s beautiful. My friend here reminded me, she said, “Remember when we were kids? It’ll be freezing next week. It’s always cold on Halloween.”

I’m gonna dedicate this blog to a photographer I worked for in NYC. The guy was like a 70’s rock star with boundless energy. It always amazed me how much energy this guy had. I learned a lot from him. But the guy was kind of like a wild animal.

Now, speaking of animals, I’d like to tell you about wild animals from my photoshoots. The first story is about a cat. I was in Mexico on a photoshoot. We were in an amazing house. The house came with a cat. It was a cool cat and my art director loved it. So my photo assistant thought it would be wise to put a piece of tape on the cats tail. Well, the cat was running all over the house. It was freaked out. The art director was not amused, so the next day the art director got some cat food and crackers. She served it to us and said to us, “Would you like some pate and crackers?” My assistant, who was always hungry, said “Thank you,” and took a bite. He said, “Oh man Brian, this is bad pate. Don’t have any.” I guess that was her revenge.

The second story is about a horse. I was on a photoshoot in Napa Valley, CA. We were shooting at a fancy horse farm. We were shooting inside at the stables. We took a break after a few shots. While everyone was in the location van getting ready, my assistant decided to have some pistachio nuts. A horse at the stable was curious so my assistant decided to give the horse a pistachio nut. Well the horse looked like something out of the show “Mr. Ed” - a famous ‘60s black and white show where a horse talks like a human thanks to peanut butter. The horse made a choking noise, stretched out his neck and quivered his lips. The horse’s eyes went back and his ears went back. I said to my assistant, “Great! You just killed a $2M horse.” The assistant freaked out, but the horse was fine. He recovered and after, we gave him a beer. Just kidding. The horse was fine.

A third story is about a llama. Well, I should clarify what I said. I said llama, but it was really a spitting llama. I won’t repeat what the model said when she stood next to the llama. It was all pretty funny. Feel free to use your imagination.

The fourth story is about a parrot. I would always shoot at a resort in the Bahamas. The resort had a parrot at the front desk. I think the bird always recognized me. Anyway, we thought it’d be fun to teach the bird how to swear. We were gonna be there for two weeks. Well, we finally got the bird to say “Shit.” He was screaming “Shit” every time he saw us. That was pretty funny.

The fifth story is about a cow. Now, whatever you do, never feed a cow potato flakes. You see, I used to use potato flakes to imitate snow. I once decorated my entire set with potato flakes to imitate snow. Well, a cow got into it, actually a few cows. It got indigestion from the potato flakes. I won’t go into it, but the set was pretty nasty when we showed up the next day. Yeah, potato flakes give cows diarrhea.

And the final story is about a dog. It’s actually about my dog. I used to bring my dog with me all the time. I told you this story before, but I had to shoot a cover for a bridal magazine. The stylist had a Harry Winston necklace brought to the set. The necklace came with an armed guard. It was very expensive. While the model was very happy to be wearing the necklace, I took it off her and put the necklace on my dog and photographed her and my dog for the cover. The model was not very happy. And my friend here, just asked if they used the picture - and yes, they used the picture of my dog wearing the necklace for the cover.

I’ve got so many more stories about animals in my shoots. One story is about an angry aggressive baracuda, another story is about a big ass shark, another story is about a baby and mother whale in Mexico. There are many more, but I won’t go into it. I’m gonna enjoy this nice fall day here, with my friend.

Check out these photos from the past. We’ll put them in gallery form.

Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice

October 15, 2024

Hi everybody, welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

I said this before, but I’ll say it again: Life isn’t really that short. We just live in the present. Been blogging here with my friend for over 15 years and I’ve done a lot. What I’ve told you is only a scratch on the surface. So, life isn’t really very short. Anyway, that’s my philosophical thought of the day, and this blog is dedicated to my friend here whose helped me remember a few things.

I was the artist's son. I think that’s why a lot of the locals here didn’t like me. You see, I had long blonde hair, a puka shell necklace, and some blue jeans that were red white and blue striped bell bottoms. No wonder why the locals tried to beat me up all the time. Actually, they even chased me off the baseball field when I tried out for little league. It’s ironic. The house I’m living in now probably housed the people that tried to chase me off the field. We bought this house from an old family, old meaning they were old in this area. Anyway, back to my look. I was like your basic surfer. If you looked up surfer in the dictionary, my picture would have been there. I looked like your classic surfer. Recently, you know, because my hair was long, when I’d fly on the airplanes, the flight attendants would always address me like, “Ma’am, would you like another drink?” I’d look up and they’d say, “Oh, sorry.” In Australia I had a client I worked with all the time. I had to pick her up at the airport. Well, the day before, I kind of got into a little road rage incident. I got away, but the guy I had the altercation with found my car. On the hood of the car was written CUNT - and the T had been scratched into my hood. Well I didn’t have time to clean up my car, so I picked up my client with the car as it was. We got in the car and there was an awkward moment of silence and my client said, “Is that for me?” So, yeah, I got hassled a lot when I had long hair. It’s short now, but it was long for a long time.

That’s about it for this week. I’m gonna share with you some images I did when I was normal. I always carried the camera with me. This is from when I hung out with a bunch of ranch hands. It was fun. It was in Texas. It was actually my ex-wife’s idea. I give her a hard time a lot, but she did have a good eye for doing stuff like this.

I’m gonna tell you a quick story: I was sitting with the ranch hands having lunch. It tasted like veal. I said, man, this is good veal, where’d you guys get veal? One of the ranch hands looked at me and said, “Boy, this aint veal” and I said, “Well what is it?” and the ranch hand said, “What the hell you think we been doing all day boy? We’ve been castrating and branding all the calves all day.” I’d been eating Rocky Mountain Prairie Oysters!

September 24, 2024

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

A friend of mine moved to Montauk where I used to live so it inspired me to put these photos up, photos of what I used to do. Now, I’m gonna tell a few stories about my past. A few of the worst jobs I’ve ever had:

The first job I ever had turned out to be a pretty bad job. I cut lawns when I was in grade school. I found out that yellow jackets nests are underground. I found out the hard way. Have you ever seen a grade school kid running for his life screaming? That was me.

In high school,I had a pretty bad job flipping burgers. l worked at the local state park. Now, the park was filled with people that came up from New York City. They were usually people from the slums. Well, at lunch a lot came to get a burger. The place was crazy crowded, full of music, hot and humid. The crowd was separated from us cooks by wire. Well, one of the cooks there completely lost it. He stood up next to the grill, said something about mother truckers, I think, or something like that. He then pissed all over the grill. The steam was like tear gas. It drifted into the crowd. The whole place went nuts. I never saw that guy again, but I got moved down to the boat rental shed. That was a cool job except I would have to fish out the dead bodies from the lake. The state police always recruited us and not the fire department. Nice summer job, right? Oh yeah, I did save a kid from drowning. That was cool.

College was pretty cool. But I had a job working as a driver at a local hotel. I looked like I was about 12, wearing a suit and a hat. Anyway, I was assigned to bring this Kodak executive to the airport. I was so nervous. Now, I used to have a manual stick drive car. When the RPM’s got up high, I would shift. Well, the RPM’s got up high on the limo and I went to shift, you know press the clutch. The only problem was this was an automatic and what I thought was the clutch was the power break. The Kodak executive and all his papers ended up in the front seat. We got to the airport and the guy gathered all his papers like a Peter Sellars movie and ran away. I yelled to him, “Where’s my tip?” Funny, I never worked there again.

I did end up working as a bartender and that was pretty cool. Then I went on to be this international fashion photographer. That was cool. I got paid very well and hung out with some cool people. It was like a 30 year vacation. Then my head exploded. That was not fun.

I’ve got lots of stories about jobs, but just enjoy these photos from my past.

Love, B. Nice