Heene Sense of Reality

The Balloon Boy hoax captured the hearts and ire of the world as Richard Heene and his fame- hungry family made everyone watch CNN for an entire day, while an empty balloon spiraled out of control across the scenic Colorado landscape.  Fortunately, his vomiting son Falcon helped tip off media outlets that his parents’ conspiratorial actions were really just an excuse to turn the 24-hour news cycle into one big reality show audition.

Now the Heene patriarch is learning the hard way, that life is the most challenging reality show of all.  Richard Heene will spend the next 90 days doing reasonably hard time in the slammer, where we imagine he’ll have plenty of time to pretend that this whole ordeal is one big reality show challenge. We’re not sure exactly which show the Heene Family hoped to be on, but in order to make it through his trying time in captivity, we think Mr. Heene should imagine he’s on the following shows just to make these next 3 months more bearable.

Wife Swap- We know the Heenes have been on this reality show before, but this time there’s a new twist. Richard is the wife!  After a touching shower ceremony– in which Richard is betrothed to a male twice his size who is guilty of countless violent offenses– Richard’s new husband is stabbed with a shiv in the shower.  Richard is now forced to be the prison wife of his former husband’s assailant.  How’s that for a “Wife Swap?”

Iron Chef- If Heene fancies himself a foodie of discerning taste, he might pretend he’s a judge on Iron Chef critiquing the culinary variations on bread, water, and gruel the mess hall cook has prepared.

Extreme Makeover: Cell Edition- Poor Richard has the misfortune of having to move from his family home to a small, drab room in a penitentiary. Richard could pretend the packages he receives from his wife and other family members are actually from Ty Pennington and use their contents to spruce up his living space.

The Apprentice- Richard’s bound to learn the license plate-making ropes from a wily and successful prison veteran who will ultimately decide whether or not he stays on at that job or is “fired” and forced to do laundry duty.  Trust me, you don’t want to be on prison laundry duty.

So You Think You Can Dance- If we’ve learned anything about prison from youtube videos, it’s that prisoners love big dance numbers.  If Mr. Heene shows off his dance prowess in the early going he may avoid all of the dangerous stuff and end up rehearsing the “Thriller” dance with a bevy of talented convicts.

The Heene family may have essentially punk’d America, but if we’ve learned anything from the way this whole reality TV thing works, it’s that eventually the more absurd families reap the rewards of the system. There is light at the end of the prison tunnel, Heene family.  Odds are that light is emanating from a bulb screwed onto the top of an HD camera. Get ready for your closeup.  You’ll eventually get it.

Related Articles

• Balloon Boy’s Dad Is Back And Wants To Sell You A Plank Of Wood! (mediaite.com)
• Video: Balloon Dad Richard Heenes’ Latest Creation Is The Bear Scratch (crunchgear.com)
• Father of Balloon Boy creates infomerical of back scratcher on YouTube (pbpulse.com)
• Balloon boy family moves to Florida from Colorado (msnbc.msn.com)
• Balloon boy family moves to Florida from Colorado (omg.yahoo.com)

Laura Bush Flexes Conservative Muscle

President Obama inherited a lot of undesirable elements from the previous presidential administration: two wars; a flailing economy; and a sizeable debt– to name just a few.  While Dubya (a.k.a. he of the frequent comically inept quote) has yet to offer so much as a whimper of an apology for putting the next President into such a politically precarious situation, The Decider’s legacy as a generally crappy decision maker has been overshadowed by his party’s quest to vilify any and all suggestions the current President makes in the attempt to get us out of this mess.

Granted, not all of President Obama’s decisions have been golden eggs, but the dude is trying.  Unfortunately, partisan politics seems to follow him at every turn, whether he’s being labeled “the great indoctrinator” for trying to merely tell kids to stay in school or a “socialist” for his attempt to (gasp) get people cheaper health care.  As the President continues to dodge slanderous projectiles from the extreme right and even extreme left, he’s finally found himself some conservative support from the unlikeliest of places–the wife of the man who got us into a good deal of this mess. 

Laura Bush–stepping out of her Stepford mansion and onto the small screen– has come out with more than a few kind words in support of the current president.  In a recent interview with CNN, Mrs. Decider offered up her opinion of her husband’s successor, saying that she thought Obama was doing a good job under the circumstances (which may or may not be code for George says, “my bad”).  She also went on to criticize the partisan nature of Washington, defending the President’s speech to schoolchildren, suggesting that parents should learn from his example and “encourage their own children to stay in school and to study hard and to try to achieve the dream that they have.”

Now if we could only get the rest of the President’s detractors to agree with the controversial statement that “staying in school and getting an education is important”, then we might finally be onto something.  Keep up the good work Laura, you continue plugging literacy and we’ll keep reading and writing.

Related Articles

• Laura Bush Lends Support to Bullied Gay Teens (abcnews.go.com)
• 4 Reasons Sarah Palin Is Making The Media Miss Laura Bush Already [Nonstalgia] (gawker.com)
• Bumped for Bush!! (emerylee.wordpress.com)
• Dubya, Kanye Take ‘Bromance’ to SNL (newser.com)
• ‘And Then President Bush Said’…Dubious ‘Quotes’ Attributed to Dubya (politicsdaily.com)

MJ Memorial to Heal the World

Image by cattias.photos via Flickr

The world is at a standstill today and Los Angeles is it’s epicenter as close to a billion people worldwide have stopped in their tracks and glued themselves to their television sets or to chairs at the Staples Center to remember one of the great artists of all time with a memorial tribute to Michael Jackson.  Such a momentous occasion is this celebration of the life of The King of Pop that even MTV has got in on the act,  putting a halt to it’s regularly scheduled programming consisting of teenagers getting drunk and trying to hook up with each other indiscriminantly, to join more respectable entertainment outletssuch as CNN and BET to cover the heart-wrenching, celebrity-ridden tribute from the eloquent perspective of Sway.

News coverage has been vigilant to say the least, following everything via helicopter from the private service at Forest Lawn Cemetery to an OJ-style aerial shot of the hearse transporting the body of MJ to the event. It’s pandemonium on a Princess Di level and truly a fitting tribute for a guy who we called a King that was prone to dressing like some sort of Civil War Admiral.

Today, we truly are the world, and we are the children of the music of Michael Jackson. And when this whole damn star- studded thing is over, we’ll have to get back to our normal lives with the knowledge that none of us are “Invincible”, but also
that we must do our part to heal the world and make it a better place– because that’s what Michael would want us to do.

Related Articles

• Will.i.am Explains His “Disgust” With New MJ Album (perezhilton.com)
• Michael Jackson’s Michael: A Track-By-Track Preview (mtv.com)
• Michael Jackson & Akon: The Complete “Hold My Hand” Music Video (thehollywoodgossip.com)
• M.J.’s first posthumous music video precedes album (top10queen.wordpress.com)
• Michael Jackson: ‘Hold My Hand’ Video Premiere with Akon! (justjared.buzznet.com)

Poll Positions

In times of Presidential Election it seems as though every media outlet has a poll. I wouldn’t exactly consider this here website a media outlet, though I am semi-technically Jewish…so I guess it officially qualifies as one. That being said, I have been discussing politics a lot lately, and I don’t necessarily trust CNN, CBS, Gallup, FoxNews or Quinnipiac University results because of that pesky “margin of error” thing. Therefore I figured should host my own Presidential Poll, because I think if there’s a truly diverse sample of Americans it’s the people who read this site. Also, WordPress just added the option of putting a poll on my blog, so I decided to make use of it.

So without any further ado:

The Sarah Palin Diet

This post is not about an actual food diet consisting of moose meat and six-packs. Over the last couple of weeks, the main target of my disdain has been Sarah Palin.  The complete media saturation of the Vice Presidential nominee has started to weigh me down, filling me with anger towards the political process and an ever decreasing amount of faith in the American people.  I know Barack Obama has begun to build a lead and for that I am thankful, but I am sick of the overflow of stories about how people feel about Ms. Palin.

The last straw was a CNN piece I saw today while at the gym interviewing actual hockey moms during the debate.  The press is going at this from every absurdly obvious angle making it completely vomit-worthy.  In any case, I’ve decided to go cold turkey on the GOP VP.  For the next few days I will be steering clear of all media stories, discussion, photos, and even fun internet games involving the Alaska Governor in the hopes that my disposition will turn from damp and downtrodden to bright and sunny.

Seeing as I’m so attached to the internet and media it will be difficult, like keeping a ten year old away from a candy store in the mall or telling a cheetah he can’t eat any more wildebeast, but I will try my best.  My best shot is by watching nothing but sports and movies and reading books, though I may accidentally be fed two to three servings of Palin a day, via news promos and commercials.  I’m giving myself a pass for the 2nd debate on Tuesday, but we’ll see how it’s going by then, if I haven’t already given into binging on MSNBC, CNN, The Daily Show, and Colbert Report.  Wish me luck.  If it works out maybe I’ll end up writing a book as successful as the South Beach Diet.