South Buffalo's Own Balloon Boy

Brian Higgin's Rubber Stamp- Erie County Legislator Tim Kennedy

Original Balloon Boy

We all know last week's story of balloon brat was a hoax perpetrated by his equally annoying father. We're learning today that Richard Heene, AKA father of balloon boy, is also a former TV weatherman. That explains a lot.

Here is the story of "Lawn chair" Larry Walters. He was way ahead of balloon boy. Walters was the California guy that strapped his lawn chair to 42 helium balloons and flew up to 16,000 feet into the sky. He went up with a BB gun to shoot out the balloons so he could land. For some reason, the story doesn't start until about 30 seconds into this clip. Walters sold the rights to his story and is rumored to become a millionaire.Listen to the sound of his girlfriend's screeching voice and you have to wonder if, despite this, he's still happy to have survived the flight.

Balloon Brat

This little punk should be grounded. The story of the six year old Denver boy and his runaway balloon should end today, but now it will take on a life of it's own. Thanks to 24 hour tabloid news, we'll be hearing about the balloon boy until he heads off to college. Keep your eye on this little brat's father. He already appeared on the show Wife Swap and he's a self professed 'storm chaser'. I don't even know what that means and I'll probably have to look it up. The father's hobbies include looking for extraterrestrials and building flying saucers. Looks like dad likes to be the center of attention so expect him to try and capitalize on his 15 minutes. My first impression is that he looks like a creep. Hey idiot. Stop looking for ET and try watching your kids?

The story does have a surreal Wizard of Oz quality to it, though. We all remember the balloon scene from the land of Oz. When you woke up today, I'll bet the last thing you thought people would be talking about was a story about kid and a weather balloon (and one that didn't even involve Michael Jackson). This story is a nice segway to an 80s classic. I think we'll go with the English version over the German one:


6-year-old Colorado boy found alive after setting balloon adrift - CNN.com*