DeadAir 2012: DeadAir 2001's Triumphant yet Dignified Return

Aloha! You may remember us, if you skulked around these digital alleys back in your salad days--say 2000, early 2001. Maybe you were looking for some Bryant Gumbel  to knock around, to kick a little sand in Calista Flockhart's skinny face, or perhaps you typed "dr laura naked" into AltaVista or Web Crawler, and there we were.

We were younger then; angrier--angry at the power-drunk politicians who'd impeach a President for getting a humjob from a chubby intern despite their own repeated Red Roof Inn trysts with their appointments secretaries; at celebrities making money wearing those same stupid suspenders and smashing those same damned watermelons year after year after year, while far smarter icons like Bill Hicks and Frank Zappa not only wither commercially but die decades before their time; at transplanted Texas scions of Texas-by-way-of-Connecticut bluebloods who not only probably couldn't spell "President" but definitely had no business running for it.

And it wasn't just celebrities who sparked our ire. There were our bosses who would sell us out for a case of Glenlivet; our exes who got freaky with our best friends and plundered our bank accounts and CD collections on their way out of our lives; the surgeons who accidentally sewed us up with a 6" pylorus clamp hiding beneath a section of large intestine.

In a nutshell, in this great big world there were unpunished offenders in our path everywhere we turned. Wouldn't it be nice if we could make all of them could show up together on one doomed plane flight?

So we did. And the response was overwhelming, with so many of you, in spite of what you thought were your better angels, nominating celebrities, professional athletes, co-workers, television anchors and more for our glorious aeronautic cataclysm.

But then 9/11 happened. We were as appropriately affected as most everyone else, and for the moment it suddenly just wasn't cool to wonder out loud, "Boy, why couldn't <blank> die in a fiery plane crash?"

Time marches on, though. That was four years ago. So many people have, through the healing process, rediscovered their inner asshole, and along the serpentine path our lives have taken since then we've found those people, and so many new candidates worthy of inclusion on our Doomed Fantasy Super Plane. It was time for DeadAir to fly again.

Granted, we've had to make some changes to our original Manifest. Johnnie Cochran and Ronald Reagan are gone, naturally; no one can really hate Bob Saget after his hilarious junk-snorting, philandering turns on "Huff" and "Entourage". Tom Cruise has earned Brooke Shields' old seat; David Lee Roth shouldn't have been on there in the first place; and only 24 people even remember who Kennedy was (but she's staying on anyway).

That aside, the rules are the same: Who would make this planet a better place by perishing in an unspeakably-horrific air tragedy? You make the call! It's as easy as submitting your own nominee. It's all benign make-believe, and it's surprisingly cathartic. And it's more effective on the psyche than doing something real and borderline-creepy like sending them angry letters scrawled in Magic Marker or berating them in public if you just happen to see them at Starbucks and running out to the parking lot and spray-painting, "YOU'RE GUILTY OJ !!!" on their car. And best of all, it's fun! So come on in...