It turns out that Richard Heene, the father of the kid that the media has dubbed “Ballon Boy” (and that we have re-dubbed “Hot Air Boy”), was well-known to many of the comedians who reside in Los Angeles.

According to our sources, Heene and his wife, Mayumi, put together reels for comedians– editing, sweetening the audience response, that kind of thing– throughout much of the 90s via a production company known as My You Me (a play on the wife’s name). That company is now known as Alternate Reality Productions.

Gossip website Gawker just purchased and published the story of “25-year-old researcher Richard Thomas.” Thomas partnered with Heene and says that Heene had theories about shape-shifting aliens running the U.S. government. He said that Heene was convinced that:

Somehow a secret government has covered all this up since the U.S. was established, and the only way to get the truth out there was to use the mainstream media to raise Richard to a status of celebrity, so he could communicate with the masses.

As the weeks progressed, his theories got more and more extreme and paranoid.

A video of Heene is ricocheting around the internet– Heene, on his couch with his dog, theorizing that Hillary Clinton is a shape-shifter.

Screwy stuff! But, until we read the Gawker account (and until we got some anonymous info about Heene over our transom), we thought it was just harmless, if somewhat self-indulgent, drivel from an attention whore.

What did we get over our transom?

Our sources theorize that Falcon (aka Balloon Boy/Hot Air Boy) didn’t hide in the attic because he got caught screwing with his dad’s balloon. No, Falcon was hiding because he didn’t want Richard to launch him in the thing.

Richard, it is said, is always using the kids to do crazy shit. Falcon, it’s said, is a real nervous kid who can’t keep still. Hiding for five hours in a box in the attic of the garage might indicate some extraordinary fear. What kind of fear would keep him still for five hours? Fear of being strapped to a balloon and launched to the moon is what our sources speculate.

No wonder the kid threw up on national television!

Usually kids who hide when the cops are called do so out of fear of getting into trouble, of being yelled at. We’re told that Falcon had no such fear, as the Heene family “yells constantly” and are allegedly a “loud bunch.”

It all sounds plausible.

Heene is described as “a nut” and that is a characterization that would be corroborated by any comic in L.A. that has had contact with him. Some go so far as to cynically speculate that he gave birth to his kids “so he’d have guinea pigs!”

We first heard the story when we were cruising through the desert on the way to Vegas from Phoenix. Something– everything– smelled about the story from the first dispatches. Who saw the child crawl into the box? Why wasn’t the presence of the child in the box verified? Why wasn’t the child in the box when it landed? What was someone doing with a balloon filled with helium in the first place? Dad was a weather chaser? Who names his kid Falcon?

This is going to get much better before it fades from the public consciousness.