Salon.com > Falcon Heene

Balloon boy’s parents sentenced

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:01:00 +0000

They desired attention, and they got it all right. When Richard and Mayumi Heene, those storm-chasing, "Wife Swap"-appearing gluttons for celebrity, reported their son Falcon missing and possibly adrift in a silver balloon that fateful day in October, they perhaps imagned themselves surrounded by television cameras. They may not, however, have envsioned themselves standing before the judge who was sending them to jail.

For what court documents described as instructing their three children "to lie to authorities as well as the media regarding this hoax" in order to "make the Heene family more marketable for future media interests," Richard Heene pleaded guilty last month to the felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant, while his wife Mayumi pleaded guilty to the Class 3 misdemeanor of false reporting to authorities. They also, as Mayumi's own lawyer told a Colorado judge today, "have reached the top ten lists of blunders of the decade."

A nation of attention whores

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:17:00 +0000

On last night’s season premiere of "30 Rock," a character uttered the soon-to-be immortal phrase “drunk on attention.” If indeed we can consider attention an intoxicant, we are right now in the midst of the mother of all spring breaks.

In the last day alone, Meghan McCain flaunted her cleavage and Jon Gosselin was sued by TLC for breach of contract for his downright promiscuous media appearances. But most notably, the son of a former "Wife Swap" contestant went missing, bumped virtually every other news story out of the headlines, turned up in his attic, and then said on CNN that he “did it for the show.”

Balloon dad’s blatant misogyny

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:16:00 +0000

I have no words to describe the relief of discovering that 6-year-old Falcon Heene is safe after watching in horror Thursday afternoon as the homemade aircraft he was said to be inside hurtled over Colorado farmland and crashed into a dirt field. I'll tell you what I do have words for, though, especially now that we know the boy is safe: The misogyny exhibited by the boy's storm-chasing father, Richard Heene, during the family's two appearances on "Wife Swap" and in his numerous YouTube videos.

Women are the subject of a handful of videos on the family's YouTube page. In one clip, the Heene patriarch shouts at the camera: "One thing that gets me is women and makeup. You don't see men wearing makeup! To me, it's a kind of clown face. It's just so fake. Why would a good-looking woman want to put on makeup? Wouldn't, like, some ugly chick wanna put on makeup to look like the good-lucking woman?" He continues: "The other complaint I have is women take, like, an hour, two hours, to put on make up!" This pet peeve got him thinking about a solution: "Why don't they invent a sheet, like, some wax paper you stick on your face?" What do you know, Heene came up with a prototype, a sheet of wax paper with blush, lipstick and eyeliner heavily painted on it, which he proceeds to press to his face. Voila! The mask is removed and he looks made up like a clown.

The boy and the balloon

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:16:00 +0000

In a media spectacle of nightmarish dimensions, stunned viewers nationwide watched on Thursday afternoon as an experimental storm-chasing balloon floated around in strong winds 400 feet above Fort Collins, Colo., thinking that a 6-year-old boy was still inside. The balloon was tethered in his storm-chaser parents' backyard; his sibling reported seeing the boy crawl in before the balloon blew away. Eventually, the boy was found in a box in his attic, according to CNN. But who could know that would happen as the heart-stopping story unfolded?

It began mid-afternoon, and we watched for almost an hour as this silver thing buffeted around in the wind. Viewers gasped as the balloon landed, slowly, maybe slowly enough that a kid inside might still be alive.

But then, the rescue workers gathered around it didn't approach the balloon quickly to see if there was a child inside. Finally, they tied the balloon to the ground and then poked holes in it, but there was no sign of the kid.

"According to police, there is no one inside that balloon," a CNN anchor finally told us. So we began to wonder: When did the kid fall out? Is he alive? Is this all a hoax? Did this couple, who appeared on "Wife Swap," do this to get attention?

Balloon boy saga: Strange family videos

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:16:00 +0000

The 6-year-old boy who was thought to be stuck in an experimental aircraft floating over Colorado is reportedly Falcon Heene, the son of Richard and Mayumi Heene. (The aircraft has landed, and no one was inside.) Little is known about Falcon's father Richard Heene, beyond the fact that he's known as a "storm chaser," and his family twice appeared on the show "Wife Swap," which is more like "Mom Swap," because the show thrives on switching up very different styles of mothers and throwing them into each other's home. Earlier, we posted a clip of the father's rather disturbing appearance on the show, but the video was quickly yanked down from YouTube, so we've removed it as well.

The clip of Richard Heene on "Wife Swap" was from Joel McHale's "The Soup," where it landed thanks to the screaming match that erupted between Heene and his reality-show "wife," who isn't identified in the clip. But apparently the gimmick of the show was putting a safety-conscious mom into the home of a storm chaser, and McHale introduces the fight by noting that "the storm-chaser dad couldn't handle the safety mom's nagging."