Balloon Heads

It is not often that we are blessed with the opportunity to laugh, guilt-free, at someone else's problems. That said, when the aforementioned Mr. Someone Else created all of his own problems, and has a hilariously bad haircut to boot, feel free to yuk it up. Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Heene!

Yes, when Balloon Boy's father was first suspected of maybe kinda sorta not really being all that surprised to find his son hiding in the attic, he asked the press to leave his family alone via the nontraditional isolationist approach of holding a press conference and dragging his suddenly cheered up family onto Larry King Live. Besides needing to be reminded to hug his son on TV, Heene seemed fantastically prepared for prime time. As for Falcon, or "Balloon Boy" as he will be known by his classmates, not so much. As you've seen by now, Falcon spilled the beans about the family's TV aspirations, the sheriff called them out, and finally today Balloon Mom came clean with the hoax.

So where does this leave disillusioned, jaded America? If the Balloon Boy incident of 2009 was a fake, who else is lying to us?!?! Not Anderson Cooper, that's for sure. Richard Henne's TV theme really is catchy.

What's that? Oh yes, Balloon Dad has a theme song. Please have yourself a merry little guffaw:

Alternately, just stare at Erica Hill and pretend that she'd rather flirt with you than Anderson Cooper. Or her husband.

So now that his dreams of "Richard Heene: Psyience Detective" (sic) are deflated (thank you, tip your waitresses!), we get the pleasure of having a good point-and-laugh over this buffoon. It's always okay to lie to people, you know, like police officers and eh... your own kids, as long as you get a TV show out of it. Personally, I'm proud of him for not settling for a mere appearance on Wife Swap (I wouldn't mind settling for Erica Hill, but that's neither here nor wherever Falcon is today). His family should be on TV, dammit. Just because they run the wrong way when they see a storm, are we going to call their nerdy, fringe science endeavors stupid?

Yes, yes we are. You're a douche, Richard Heene, and 300 million Americans know it. You got called out by the AP. Ouch. Hell, even Octomom can probably see how desperate for attention you are. Reality TV is slowly choking humanity, and even those bottom-feeders wouldn't sink low enough to follow your kinda weird family around. Your lack of self-perception is as staggering as your choice in hairstyle. Seriously though, 1997 called. No, that's not a TV station, calm down.