Insert Foot and the new tattoo. When my 13-year-old was about 3, she noticed I had a tattoo containing two of her sisters’ names in front of a couple roses on my right shoulder. I remember the withering, unimpressed look she gave me, with a hands out and up…

United Flight 93 memorial in Union City, Calif. Courtesy Union City. It was easily the most surreal day of my life. Journalists love anniversaries, so you’ve already heard more than enough about the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. It got boosted by the proximity of the recent U.S.…

Insert Foot vs. Iron Maiden lovers. I’m getting a lot of feedback (death threats) on my semi-negative review of the new Iron Maiden record, Senjutsu, which I’m not reading because I’m a coward. But I suspect I know what they’re saying, and it’s probably not pleasant. My fragile ego…

Iron Maiden and I are very dear, old friends. I loved Killers so much 40 years ago (or at least the cover) that 13-year-old me took the bus to another town to buy the T-shirt. They had nothing in my size, so I bought the small one into which…

Insert Foot tries his hand at online dating. Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF. LAFAYETTE, Calif. — The smokey skies are forest fire red and the air closer to Earth is full of rotten pandemic. Between fires and coronavirus it’s only fashionably safe outside to dress up like you’re about to rob…

Insert Foot vs. “Jeopardy!” When are we going to stop defaulting to “white male,” even when no one wants the white male but the white male? I may have shot myself in the foot when it comes to dating, but it’s true. Around the time Mike Richards was hiring himself…

Tony Hicks’ Insert Foot. Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF. I thought this was going to be my swan song, my big farewell column. But then I discovered the editor was having a week nearly as bad as mine (about which you’re not about to hear anything. Anyway. I literally, redefined Murphy’s…

Insert Foot vs. Ryan Adams and forgiveness. STAFF file photo. Ryan Adams wants our forgiveness. I want lots of things, being as talented as Ryan Adams would be a fine start. Adams wants fans–the people who, for more than two decades, have paid his bills–to set aside years of…

Travis Barker, Kourtney Kardashian and the Rainbow Bar & Grill in Los Angeles. Staff and Wikicommons composite. I was having dinner last weekend when I spotted my first Kardashian in the wild. To be fair, there’s lots of them, so the odds are pretty good you’ll see one on…

You know how sometimes you can’t unsee something, no matter how violently your eyes leap back into your brain, screaming? I just witnessed a clip of something from 1976 featuring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, posing as CHP officers, pulling Brian Wilson from bed and forcing him to surf…