Priceline is my go-to resource for hotels.  Some of the entrepreneurs and VC-backed companies I’ve assisted for the past few years were not flush with cash, so there was always a question mark about whether I’d be reimbursed for travel.

The “Name Your Own Price” model personified by William Shatner worked like a charm to minimize my cash outlay, just in case I got stuck eating the expense.

Many times, I’d wait until the day of travel to visit Priceline.  My modus operendi was to visit Expedia to check retail prices, Hotwire to find the lowest price for a particular category in my target neighborhood, and then Priceline to underbid the Hotwire price.

So I’d routinely lock in places like the downtown Minneapolis Westin for $69 (stayed there Tuesday), the Kimpton-owned Onyx Hotel in Boston for $110 or a W in Chicago’s West Loop for $90.

I have owned Priceline stock, helped in the capture of Priceline as an account at PRN before my departure, and shared a few tweets with @WilliamShatner, an avid Twitter user.

Killing Shatner in a fictitious bus crash is a bad idea.

When I screened the commercial this morning for my wife, a former surgical ICU and burn nurse, she was aghast.  After treating hundreds of accident victims in her career, she didn’t see any humor in a bus accident.

Her reaction to Priceline’s violent and painful way of offing Shatner confirmed what I was feeling in the pit of my stomach, and what I learned in journalism school — never joke about a tragedy.  We’ve all passed the scene of a fatal accident or experienced the loss of a loved one in a vehicle crash, so it’s off limits for humor.

Yes, I laughed at the Saturday Night Live skits in the 1980s about Toonces the Driving Cat, because cats don’t drive.   But William Shatner is a real person.  We’ve grown up with him as Captain Kirk and chuckled at his oversexed antics on Boston Legal.

Rather than killing our pal, it would have been better to choose more ridiculous way for him to disappear — leaving Priceline free to pursue its next branding chapter.  Maureen suggested a UFO abduction.  I kind of like the idea of him hearing noises in his hotel mini bar and getting sucked into a vortex of miniature booze bottles.