Courtesy of Focus Features and iStockphoto

From now until the end of the year, Vulture will celebrate the people (and, er, things) who made 2007 what it was: Pop Culture's Bravest.

We really wish we were classy enough not to point out that wangs were popping up everywhere this year, but, sadly, we are not — there were dicks all over the place! In fact, there were so many penis-related happenings during the latter half of 2007 that some even declared it the Season of the Wang. We're not sure what it was that spurred pop culture's fascination with all things phallic, but, well, it certainly was entertaining. Today, we recognize the year's superlative dongs.

Fiercest Wang: Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises. In Mortensen's much-talked-about naked knife-fight scene, he skillfully used his wang to create a diversion. It worked. On us, anyway.

Most Committed to Wangs: Judd Apatow, who has vowed to put wangs in all of his films, like he does with Seth Rogen.

Most Resilient Wang: Ian McKellen, King Lear. Despite repeated disparagement from former New York theater critic John Simon, McKellen's junk was undeterred. And why should it be? McKellen is reportedly "swinging pipe."

Photo illustration by Everett Bogue. Photos: Getty Images (Silverman); iStockphoto (TV)

From now until the end of the year, Vulture will celebrate the people who made 2007 what it was: Pop Culture's Bravest.

Gleaming, tanned wunderkind Ben Silverman burst on the scene this summer with his sudden ascension to the throne at NBC Entertainment, replacing his "friend" Kevin Reilly over Memorial Day weekend amid much he-said, he-said drama. Within weeks, he made the move that instantly convinced us he was both the savior and the destroyer of television: Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso, the Colombian telenovela repurposed for American audiences, the story of a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks who's convinced that breast implants are her ticket to a better life. Its perfect English-language title, like a beautiful song you croon to your sweetheart under a silver moon: Without Breasts There Is No Paradise.

Photo Illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: Getty Images

From now until the end of the year, Vulture will celebrate the people who made 2007 what it was: Pop Culture's Bravest.

It finally happened last week: We threw away our ratty McKinley High ringer T-shirt, purchased online seven years ago now from a Website quixotically begging NBC not to cancel Freaks and Geeks. By the time the shirt arrived in the mail, Freaks and Geeks was toast and Judd Apatow was off preparing his next failed TV show, Undeclared. Even though it could no longer do any good, we wore the shirt all the time, as a secret Valentine to fellow Apatow fans. So seven years later, as we tossed the holey shirt in the trash, it was pretty amazing to survey what has happened to Apatow's career.

2007 was the year that fans who had thought themselves alone in their worship of Judd Apatow watched in bewilderment, then wonder, then outright joy as all of America suddenly and unexpectedly agreed with them. Knocked Up and Superbad were indisputably the thinking person's comedies of the year, breathing new life into tired genres — the romantic comedy, the teenage buddy flick — with sharp writing, unexpected emotional depth, and some foulmouthed truth-telling about the state of the American male. Suddenly Judd Apatow became Judd Apatow™ — beloved comic brand, the source for the upcoming presumed monster hits Walk Hard, Pineapple Express, Drillbit Taylor, and Dumped (each of which will include wangs). When was the last time a screenwriter had such cachet with a broad audience? When was the last time the producer was the star of the film?

Photo Illustration: Getty Images, Scholastic, Random copyright infringers, TIME Magazine, Warner Brothers

From now until the end of the year, Vulture will celebrate the people who made 2007 what it was: Pop Culture's Bravest.

For those of us who took seriously the adventures and life passages of a fictional British teenage wizard — that is to say, almost everyone in the world, apparently — 2007 was a hell of a year. J.K. Rowling tugged our strings like the expert puppeteer she is; from fighting against book-leakers and early reviewers to waiting until everyone had finished Deathly Hallows to out Dumbledore, Rowling wanted to stage-manage the way readers experienced Harry Potter just as she had so expertly stage-managed Harry's own story. If she could afford to buy everyone in the world a comfy chair to read the book in, she probably would've. Oh, wait — she could afford that.

Photo: Radiohead.com

From now until the end of the year, Vulture will celebrate the people who made 2007 what it was: Pop Culture's Bravest.

In what will surely be remembered as 2007's most important blog post (just ahead of this one, we hope), Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood announced the details of his band's seventh LP: "Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days; we've called it In Rainbows." No sooner had he typed those words than Clive Davis exploded, all our CD players turned into pumpkins, and angels came down from heaven and punched Doug Morris in the groin.

Photo illustration: Getty Images and NASA (space shuttle)

From now until the end of the year, Vulture will celebrate the people who made 2007 what it was: Pop Culture's Bravest.

It had to happen someday — after ten albums packed with increasingly creative and ridiculous sexual metaphors, R. Kelly had finally run out of things on Earth to compare his penis to. But while a lesser artist might've repeated himself or stopped penning freaky sex jams altogether, Kelly evolved, boldly taking his shtick where no horny R&B singer had gone before: outer space. The result? "Sex Planet," 2007's finest ballad about zero-gravity intercourse and the indisputable centerpiece of Double Up, the best album of Kelly's fifteen-year career.

When the track leaked in May, the blogosphere didn't know quite what to make of it; sure, the lyrics go to all the most obvious places (black holes, the Milky Way, and Uranus, most notably), but Kellz's unblinking conviction matches the song's absurdity making it hilarious, yes, but also catchy, and even kind of sexy (especially if you're drunk). "Come fly away with me, riding my ecstasy out in the galaxy," he croons over a mellow Fender Rhodes figure. (Side note: Double Up's sequencing makes the year's weirdest argument for the return of the album format, with "Sex Planet" inexplicably segueing directly into "Rise Up," Kelly's tribute to the victims of April's Virginia Tech shooting.)