Ha ha ha

Normally, I like to wait until the week is over before I award the coveted Jackass Of The Week Trophy to some deserving gozzlehead, but I don't see how anyone this week will be able to edge past James Potok this week, and he faced some very stiff competition down in Washington D.C.

Potok calls himself an artist.  His "art," such as it is, consists of making videos and posting them on YouTube.

I have an issue about this "artist" designation anyway. You will notice that just about everyone is an "artist" at what they do. Some guy who slices prosciutto at the deli is an artist and the sandwiches he makes you are "artisan" sandwiches. Subway even calls the kid who slaps ham and cheese on your roll a "sandwich artist" to make you feel a little more special about the experience. Not to knock the people at Subway, but there is a bit of difference between sculpting a statue out of bronze or whittling a duck decoy and slicing a roll and placing salami in it.

Back to this jackanapes from Canada, Potok (who performs under the nom de gag Potok Philippe, an apparent joke about the luxury watch brand Patek Phillippe, whose timepieces cost in the $200,000+ range - this man is a laugh factory!) found humor in the idea of forcing a plane to make an emergency landing by claiming that he might have the deadly coronavirus.

But doggone it, don't get all mad at him! He says he only wanted to make a viral video based on a virus.  And he has apologized and everything.

It happened this past Monday when WestJet Flight 2702 took off from Toronto, bound for Montego Bay, Jamaica.  Two hours into the flight, funnyman Phillippe stood up and said, "I just came back from Hunan province, the capital of the coronavirus…I'm not feeling too well. Thank you."

And the plane turned around and returned to Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

Jim Carrey is a funny Canadian. So is Howie Mandel. This jerk is now.

He didn't even have the location right. This coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, not Hunan. At that, hundreds of people in Wuhan have died from it, and millions are quarantined as we speak, so you can understand how funny this must have struck all the 243 people on board.

On the way back to Canada, the airline crew put Potok in a mask and gloves. They should also have added a gag, leg irons, handcuffs and shackles, and forced him to listen to Michael Bublé  the whole way home.

A passenger on board, Julie-Anne Broderick, told her  Facebook that her flight returned "because SOME IDIOT pretended he had the Coronavirus to post on YouTube."

Of course, the airline, WestJet, had no choice but to follow infectious-disease protocols "out of an abundance of caution."

Ontario Police had Potok inspected and found him asymptomatic, as well as humorless. They arrested him for the most Canadian-sounding crimes you ever heard of: mischief and breach of recognizance.

"They've charged me criminally, and I have court to go to," Potok told the news, adding, "I'm an artist; any publicity for myself is good publicity."

"I had my camera with me — I was looking to get a viral video," he said. "I was looking to get it up on all the social-media platforms. I was looking to create a video, yes, that would go viral," he said.

And, as so often happens way too late to do any good, he became apologetic for ruining everyone else's trip.

"It seems to me like this was in poor taste, in retrospect," he told Global News. "What I did was wrong. I ruined the flight for 200 and somewhat people. I ruined their flight."

Why must people be such horses' asses? Come and get your trophy.