Remember that whole balloon boy hoax, wherein a terrible man exploited his family to achieve fleeting notoriety through national panic before being fined and jailed? I try not too every day. But Richard Heene is back, scummier than ever.
Remember Balloon Boy and his fame-seeking, hoax-creating family? Turns out that despite the criminal charges, fines, and humiliation, their story has a happy ending: They're getting their balloon back.
The grand total cost of pulling off a national hoax is whatever balloon-making supplies go for, $42,000 in fines, and 30 days of jail time. Richard "Balloon Dad" Heene probably considers that a bargain in the world of attention-whoring.
Ah, Balloon Boy. It happened barely two months ago, yet it already seems ready to show up on an I Love the 00s nostalgia-fest. Anyway, Balloon Boy's a-hole parents just got hit with a $42,000 bill for the stunt.
Auto-tuned science was fun, but an auto-tuned retelling of the year's more ridiculous news events such as the Balloon Boy hoax is fantastic-yet-oh-so-terrible. So fantastic-yet-oh-so-horrible, in fact, that I'm crying because I can't get the beat out of my head.
According to court records made public today, Mayumi Heene, Balloon Boy's mom, has admitted that the whole incident was orchestrated to make the Heene family more "marketable for future media interest." Nice parenting.
Many were shocked when it was revealed that Falcon Heene's fictitious balloon ride was nothing more than a fame-grabbing hoax, but this is hardly the first time that a fake tale of a high-flying balloon captured people's imaginations. In 1844, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a detailed piece about famed balloonist Monck Mason's…
Wondering why anyone would want to trick the world into thinking their 6-year-old was flying away in a gigantic party balloon? Well, it turns out that the Heenes were developing a reality show with the Wife Swap production company. And as we all know, the best way to get a deal made in Hollywood is to commandeer the…
After a thrilling chase sequence, Balloon Boy was found...to have never been in the balloon in the first place. We're glad he's safe, but now the question comes: Who's to blame for this whole catastrophe?
World-class Jeopardy loser Wolf Blitzer got an exclusive interview with Balloon Boy and his family, and not surprisingly, BB himself (AKA Falcon Heene) fails to shed much light on his motivations. Check out the video (with bonus fart) post-jump.
Wonderful news! Falcon Heene has been found alive and at home. He was never in the balloon. We are overjoyed. But urge everyone with experimental science projects PLEASE — safety first. [MSNBC]
While authorities still search for Colorado's Falcon Heene, and we dearly hope he turns up unharmed, we wondered why the Heenes constructed this contraption in the first place — and uncovered Mr. Heene's attempt to prove there's life on Mars.
Police in Fort Collins, Colorado are desperately attempting to save a 6-year-old boy who floated away in a 20-foot homemade balloon. Officials are figuring out how to remove the boy, stranded in the sky, without "ripping the balloon to shreds."
