The Truth May Be … Out There
My local radio talk-show pal Michael Graham questions whether its a hoax. How could anyone plan anything that would fly the way that did and attract the kind of attention that did? And what kind of gain could he possibly expect?
I dunno. The guy’s showing all the signs of being a full-throttle crackpot visionary. He claims he was trying to devise a way for commuters to fly over rush-hour traffic. Plotting a publicity grab doesn’t seem nearly as complicated.
(Gotta say I’m kind of with Balloon Dad on this one. YouTube: “Fake or Real? Is Hillary Clinton Reptillian?” Pretty strong crazy vibe, though. Sort of a psychotic stink.)
Cops are now initiating a hoax investigation, though they insist they think the Heenes are on the up-and-up. NYT’s The Lede. Not clear to me how any sober law enforcement personnel can spend as much time in this guy’s company as any casual Internet surfer or American TV viewer has and not report back “bat-shit crazy.” Surber’s on to something. Ron Paul voter.
Anyway, I don’t know if there was a publicity-grabbing hoax plotted, or if an opportunity was seized on the fly, or if it all innocently happened the way Balloon Dad says it did. But whatever happened yesterday, I have a sneaking suspicion the flying Jiffy Pop balloon was not originally conceived, built and being tested as an innovative commuting vehicle. Exhibit A:
The Heene 3DLAV in flight:
Here’s another, from when people were afraid little Falcon may have fallen from his perch. Ignore the highlighted falling thing. The kid was in the garage. We’re interested in the 3DLAV:
OK, now here’s some of your standard issue UFO photos:
It’s not for nothing Shepard Smith and everyone else was comparing that thing to a UFO yesterday. Maybe, like the Richard Dreyfuss character in ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Richard Heene was just strangely compelled to make his experimental 3DLAV commuting device look like a traditional Roswell-inspired flying saucer hoax. There is some evidence to suggest Heene has experienced a close encounter of … some kind. But there is nothing about the 3DLAV … seating, controls … to suggest it is designed for low-altitude manned flight, or atmospheric research for that matter, and there’s a lot about it that looks more like an off-the-shelf extraterrestial photo prop. At this point I don’t want to leap to a UFO hoax genesis to this thing, which after all clearly ended up following a different, very human-oriented storyline. Published reports in any case indicate Heene firmly believes humans are descended from aliens. Which doesn’t suggest “hoax” as much as “totally wacked.”
Topics: America, TV, UFOs, aircraft, ancient mysteries
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:59 am Comments (1) on Friday, October 16, 2009
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October 16th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
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