Sex tapes and outings and schlubs, oh my!

Celebrate the year in sexual intrigue, as D-list celebs spread it for the cameras, Hollywood avoids smushmortions, and Hitler's mommy gets laid.

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Scandal, Abortion, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gay Culture, Homosexuality, Sex, Movies, Jodie Foster, Norman Mailer, Paris Hilton, Rebecca Traister, Life

Dec. 27, 2007 | The weather outside is frightful (literally!) but the fire is so delightful (except in Malibu!), so if you've no place to go, settle in to read Salon's annual recap of the so-called erotic antics of the year that was.

The big news this year was that while Paris Hilton did go to prison, she did not have sex on tape or flash poon in 2007. I know, this piece is going to be way shorter this year.

So let's get a move on. As always, organized into entirely arbitrary but organizationally useful categories, your Year in Sex.

Bare-assed babes

You may not ever have heard of Disney Channel cherub Vanessa Hudgens. If you are between the ages of 17 and 40, perhaps you've been forced to watch the "High School Musical" canon while visiting your sister's kids. "Oh, there's a sequel? Be a dear and pass Auntie the scotch." Hudgens is the milk-fed star of the films, and dates squeaky-freaking-clean costar Zac Efron (Right, like Judy Garland dated Mickey Rooney. Aren't we too smart for this kind of thing yet? Um, no). But when nekkid photos of 19-year-old lass Hudgens groping and touching tongues with a female friend hit the Internet, many of those who wouldn't know "Bop to the Top" if it clubbed them over the head with its synthetic Latin beat, suddenly perked up.

Just as arresting in the junior-bits department was the decision of 18-year-old Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe to disrobe onstage in the revival of "Equus." You know how sometimes it's just too easy to make a wand joke? This is one of those times.

Then there was the 21-year-old "American Idol" contestant Antonella Barba, who endured the release and proliferation of snaps of her engaging in some of the wackiest cheesecake ever, including an "American Beauty"-style rose petal thing. There were also photos of her in a drenched shirt, apparently pleasuring herself in the middle of the fountain at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Not since Pearl Harbor was attacked has the Central Pacific seen such ... uh, well, it's really just a pretty girl grinding around a fountain in a wet white turtleneck. While the softcore stuff was real, and, according to the aspiring singer, meant for personal use only, alleged photos of Barba administering a hummer were fakes. All right, fine. You're going to Google them anyway. Here they are.

Sex Tapes of the Moderately Rich and Utterly Un-famous

It pains me to tell you that the year's biggest and most important sex tape was made by a woman named Kim Kardashian. Prior to her sex tape, Kardashian was best known as the daughter of O.J. Simpson's friend and lawyer Robert Kardashian, and the stepdaughter of Olympian Bruce Jenner. Naturally, she's also friends with Paris Hilton. At some point in the midst of a life in which she has done nothing for which she should be well-known, she was taped having sex with a man named Ray-J, who has an absolutely enormous penis and says the following awesome things to the camera: "Talkin' bout fuckin', talkin' about lovin', who you kissin', who you huggin'." Now, Kim Kardashian has her own reality show and was featured in a big spread in Playboy. Kardashian swore that the tape was supposed to be private and had been leaked without her knowledge, a claim cast into doubt by the fact that she repeatedly addresses the camera with lines like "Hey everybody!" and "For everyone who thinks my boobs are fake? They're real." Ray-J doesn't do a lot to help her claim of wide-eyed innocence by looking into the camera himself and greeting "all of you jacking off to this right now."

Then there was a video that might have been a sex tape of the White Stripes' Meg White, or it might have just been a dirty clip that you opened up at work because you were sort of curious, but immediately realized it was not Meg White and thought, "Even if it was Meg White, why would I have wanted to watch her having sex? I don't even listen to the White Stripes" and your browser window wouldn't close and so then there was just this wildly graphic video of two total strangers going at it on your computer at work in the open newsroom. Or maybe that was just me.

The biggest news in this category was the seemingly biblically ordained marriage of "One Night in Paris" leading man Rick Solomon and the star of the Greatest Celebrity Sex Tape of All Time, Pamela Anderson. It's like a royal wedding of the two greatest achievers in the Celebrity Sex Tape game, though it brings with it the fear that without their original partners, neither will be able to top past feats: After all, Pam would never answer her phone during coitus like Paris did, and Solomon would never, alas, honk his boat's horn with his flaccid penis, a move executed with such classy aplomb by Tommy Lee.

In late December, Kate Moss reaped further rewards from her Bad Idea relationship with scuzzerific former paramour Pete Doherty. Drug addict and Babyshambles frontman Doherty has stopped getting his cat high long enough to negotiate the sale, for around a million dollars, of a tape showcasing his and Moss', er, "love." Ladies, a tip: When your junkie lover with a cashflow problem whips out the camcorder, consider it a red flag. Another red flag? When a story about Kate Moss and Pete Doherty really classes up a category.

Movies That Did Not Include Money Shots (but did include a crowning shot)

So have you heard about "Knocked Up"? The funniest movie you've ever sort of hated? Yeah, it was hilarious. But there was that niggling concern -- expressed most recently by Katherine Heigl -- that the movie might have been "a little sexist." Ooooh, just a smidge around the edges. Like how all the women were uptight moody baby-factory bitches who sucked all the fun out of the lives of their previously fun-loving, leg-humping, bong-hitting men. But again: hilarious.

"Knocked Up" was also the standard-bearer for a new 2007 movie trend: Call it the "Papa Don't Preach, I'm Keepin' My Baby" nouvelle vague. From "Knocked Up" to "Juno" to "Waitress" to "Margot at the Wedding," Hollywood was all about the sanctity of embryonic life -- so much so that, unbelievably, none of the characters who found themselves unexpectedly up the stick (with the notable exception of young wiseacre Juno) even paused to consider what Apatow's movie so helpfully called "a smushmortion" before heading out to Buy Buy Baby and commencing with the mood-swings-and-barfing shtick. Around the world, at post-"Knocked Up" drinks, the following conversation took place between professional women: "So seriously, you're 28, you've just gotten a promotion, and you get pregnant by that Seth Rogen dude: Do you have that baby?" Fuck, no!!!! "Ha ha ha ha ha! Heh. Heh. Huh. Wow. Yeah. Hey, should we get another drink?"

Next page: Who peeked out of the closet in 2007?