Ryan McGee scores again with a five-year retrospective look at The Link from Jan Herman, our new best friend:

September 1st, 2007

It's only fitting on today of all days, the fifth year anniversary of "The Link", as it has been dubbed in public discourse, to look back on the rise and fall of a once-small time blogger who rose to the pinnacles of fame and came crashing down harder than Keith Moon after a night at the Holiday Inn.

It all started when The Juice, Jan Herman, linked his MTV Video Awards diary on MSNBC.com. A part-time hobby, "Wading in the Velvet Sea" suddenly saw more hits than a Cheech and Chong movie. Dizzy with power, Ryan soon indulged in excesses the likes of which have since been banished by Congress.

"I just don't understand," said Moxie. "I mean, yes, I supported him initially, even showed him how to make a few bucks off of the increase in traffic. But who knew it would lead to all this?"

"All this" indeed.

After moving into MC Hammer's mansion ("It's not like he was using it," said Ryan in 2003), Ryan set up shop in a bout of bacchanalia that rivaled Nero. With Moxie as poet laureate of something he called "Ryanopolis", he set up wireless connections that fed into a cybernetic implant in his skull.

"Yea, that was sorta painful," said Ryan a few weeks after the surgery. "And if I stand in a certain part of the bathroom, I pick up Nick at Nite. But it's all worth it. The people demanded more content, and by God I was gonna give it to them. Even at the cost of migraines so severe that occasionally I crumple in a heap of pained flesh in the corner."

Ryan threw elaborate parties, attracting the likes of P. Diddy, Joaquin Phoenix, and Kofi Annan. "Seeing Annan do body shots off Michelle Branch is something I'll never forget," said Dawn Olsen, a frequenter of such shindigs. "Please, help me forget. I've tried electroshock therapy, hypnosis, even that weird worm thing from 'Wrath of Khan'. I need help. Give me my life back."...