Don Wrege: Prince of Darkness
Don Wrege and I once worked together on a website called DiveIn. It was a city guide launched by US West in those heady times (1997-98) when people thought online city guides were going to be the next big thing. I was just starting college at the time, and Don, who liked to say that he was in multimedia when back when it still had a hyphen, epitomized for me the glamour of the nascent web biz. The guy had actually had a strange video of his own creation played in normal rotation on early, experimental MTV, for crying out loud (yes, kids, there was an MTV before Carson Daly)! How cool is that?
I learned a lot of things from Don, not the least of which was how to use Photoshop. If you’re reading this on the current version of my weblog (and not through some sort of RSS feed or future redesign), you should see a photo of some Trafalgar Square pigeons in the upper right corner. The duotone coloring and the fade on the left side are both tricks I learned from Don, and they make me look far more competent with Photoshop than I really am.
Don owns several domain names, but his principle one, Mediawhore.com, is by far the most appropriate to his personality. He’s not famous, exactly, but he seems to have an almost preternatural ability to get the media’s attention. When I worked with Don, Peter Boyles (a local radio talk show host here in Denver) was beating the JonBenet Ramsey drum daily, and Don was right there, supplying Boyles with hilarious parody songs that taunted John Ramsey, the police, and the entire, uptight, bourgeois bohemian enclave of Boulder, Colorado (all of whom deserved it, of course).
Lately, Don has catered to the public’s insatiable appetite for all things Osbournes by reincarnating himself as an Ozzy Osbourne impersonator. I find this highly amusing, since the whole time I worked with him I definitely felt he looked an awful lot like Ozzy. As Ozzy, he has made appearances on numerous TV talk shows (including Live with Regis and Kelly), and radio programs. On one occasion, while Don and local radio personalities Lewis & Floorwax were driving around Denver in a limo, he actually had a chance encounter with the Insane Clown Posse. This, of course, was highly ironic because there has apparently been a longstanding feud between Mr. Osbourne and said clown posse.
I haven’t seen Don for awhile now, but we do email occasionally, and you can rest assured that, whatever his next move, I will continue follow his brilliant career with the greatest of interest.