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Yes we did. Barack Obama's on his way to Washington, Britney's got a new album, gossip girls are dying to kiss vampires, and Mickey Rourke — Mickey Rourke! — is an Oscar contender. The 2008 Hot List is full of hopeful surprises — just like the man headed to the White House.

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"Twilight is a metaphor for the virtues of chastity, but it's had the opposite effect," a chagrined Robert Pattinson told us shortly before the goth blockbuster slayed audiences in late November. "I get letters that say, 'I'm going to kill myself if you don't watch High School Musical 2 with me.' " It was a little nuts: girls rampaging through malls for a glimpse of a relatively unknown 22-year-old British actor who played a brooding bloodsucker named Edward. But so far, the London-raised Pattinson (whose breakout was a memorable part in the Harry Potter series) has stayed humble. In his next film, Little Ashes, he will play a young Salvador Dali, as his advisers mull a trusted plan for plucking an actor from the tweenscape: Get him a role that puts a gun in his hand. But, Edward-mania will be hard to forget. Says Pattinson, "A mother recently gave me her baby and asked, 'Can you please bite his head?' " MELISSA MAERZ

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Andrew VanWyngarden doesn't want to talk about drugs. "Or partying," says the MGMT frontman, ordering a piece of cake in New York's Tribeca Grand Hotel. "Every article about us talks about drugs." It's the afternoon of Halloween, and the psychedelic-rock duo — VanWyngarden (left) and Ben Goldwasser — are recovering from a sold-out gig. Last night, MGMT dressed like mariachis and broke out a totally faithful cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." Inevitably, the afterparty stretched into the morning, and they're exhausted.

But minutes later, VanWyngarden happily launches into the story of the first time he ate 'shrooms with Goldwasser, at Connecticut's Wesleyan University in 2001. "It was a good bonding experience," he says. He even remembers the exact date: "It was September 27th." At Wesleyan, the two played in separate bands (VanWyngarden was the drummer in a 12-piece hair-metal cover act called Born to Kill) before forming MGMT their junior year. One of their first gigs was a 45-minute jam on the Ghostbusters theme. "We were thinking of ideas that were inherently obnoxious," says Goldwasser.

Before graduating, the duo recorded the electro-rock EP Time to Pretend, which eventually caught the attention of an A&R rep at Columbia Records, and scored them a slot opening for Of Montreal. Working with Flaming Lips producer David Fridmann, the pair recorded Oracular Spectacular — which has sold more than 225,000 copies since coming out in January. "We wanted the songs to be poppy to the point of being gross, with sarcastic lyrics," says VanWyngarden. (On their breakthrough single, "Time to Pretend," he sings, "Let's make some music/Make some money/Find some models for wives.")

The pair's videos have established MGMT as fashion It boys and psychedelic tricksters. In the Lord of the Flies-esque clip for "Time to Pretend," VanWyngarden (in hot-pink trunks) and Goldwasser (wrapped in animal skins) take tabs of acid and join a band of post-apocalyptic marauders. Even in street clothes — today VanWyngarden is wearing turquoise jeans — they are cool in a way that somehow seems calculated. "People assume that we're party dudes who care about our image, but we've always been about poking fun at that stuff," insists VanWyngarden.

It hasn't always been chocolate cake for the duo, though. "We had a month of debauchery," VanWyngarden says about their first big tour. "We lived the cliché, telling ourselves that it was ironic." Now, after nine months on the road, MGMT say they've mellowed out. "I have psoriasis, and it's gotten worse from the drinking and airplanes," says VanWyngarden. "It sucks." AUSTIN SCAGGS

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Gossip Girl, Gossip Girl, blah, blah, blah! Has there ever been a TV series drowned in such disproportional, New York-centric hype. . . . Oh, who are we kidding? We're crazy for it too. And the reason we love the back-stabby soap most is Blair Waldorf, the poor little Upper East Side rich girl played by the lovely Leighton Meester. Onscreen, Blair is an insecure junior socialite tormented by an underappreciative mom, a glamazon best friend (Blake Lively) and more boy drama than Marc Jacobs. In person, Meester is a knockout, a chestnut-haired 22-year-old who could be Jessica Alba's devilish kid sister, and she overflows with the brassy confidence that young, beautiful girls have when they first move to the city. "I fucking love New York," Meester says flatly. "You're never alone, but you're always on your own." A sharp line, but it's not exactly true for Meester, who, despite her preference for casual attire (tank top, jeans) and low romantic profile (she dates actor Sebastian Stan), is, like her co-stars, increasingly a paparazzi target. "People don't recognize me that much," she protests. But Meester got a hazing earlier this year when celebrity mags revealed she'd been born in a prison while her mother served time for a drug conviction. "What got me through it is that most of what people write isn't true," she says. Still, Damon Runyon would have loved that a plucky girl from a humble start has become famous for playing a Gotham princess. It really is a hell of a town. JASON GAY

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There's no hiding Dhani Harrison's lineage. "There's a lot I inherited from my dad," says the late George Harrison's son, 30, who is tentatively stepping into the limelight with thenewno2, a psychedelic band he formed with friend Oli Hecks. The pair released a debut on iTunes in August and have done only a few shows. Though he knows he'll never escape his dad's shadow, Harrison's OK with that. "There's negative baggage that can come with having a famous dad," he says. "But there are positive things too. When I want to take a meeting, people will listen to me." AUSTIN SCAGGS

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Hard to believe, but when Odette Yustman looks in the mirror, she would like to make changes. "I'm pretty skinny, and, being Cuban, I shouldn't be," says the 23-year-old actress. "It baffles me. Where are the hips? Where are the boobs? I would love to be voluptuous."

After breaking out in 2008's Cloverfield, Yustman will exorcise demons (literally) in the January horror thriller The Unborn. Why do audiences love seeing girls scream? "I don't know," Yustman says, laughing. "Don't make this sound weird, but does it remind people of other things?" SEAN WOODS

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On the Answer's tour bus, it's easy to forget that it's the 21st century. Next to one of the planet's last VCRs sits a VHS tape labeled "Steve Vai." European metal magazines are strewn everywhere. When the Irish foursome step on board — right after finishing an opening set for AC/DC in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania — the time warp continues. Lead singer Cormac Neeson has long, golden locks that make him look like a young Robert Plant. Guitarist Paul Mahon could have appeared on a vintage Creem cover. "All my stadium-rock dreams came true for a second out there," Mahon proudly announces.

Plucked to open for AC/DC on their 42-date North American tour, the Answer have virtually no influences from after Watergate. Their debut EP, Never Too Late, is four songs of anachronistic, wah-wah-laden blues rock (a full-length, Everyday Demons, is due in February) that won them powerful middle-aged admirers. Prior to AC/DC, the group opened for the Who, Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones at stadiums across Europe. "I think they pick us because we remind them of themselves in their youth," says bassist Mickey Waters. "We do honest rock & roll with no clichés." But the band is weary of being pegged as a throwback act. "It's important that we don't get labeled," says Neeson. "People think that I'm ripping off Robert Plant, but I'm just singing like I sing." Still, "he's not a bad man to be compared to, you know?" ANDY GREENE

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Sam Hollander has trouble explaining to grown-ups what he does for a living. "If you're over 24, you're not going to hear anything I do," he says. But the little girls understand: Hollander and partner Dave "Sluggo" Katz have become go-to producers for teen-centric pop-punk hits (Metro Station's "Shake It," Cobra Starship's "Snakes on a Plane"). Says emo kingpin Pete Wentz, "We bring them cupcakes, they deliver the frosting." It all happens in a Manhattan room that Katz describes as "some guitars, a bong and a vocal booth." Fortunately, these bands prefer Pro Tools to vintage amps. "Organic is not embraced," says Hollander. BRIAN HIATT

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Wakeboarding? Pansy sport. The hardcore crowd right now is crazed for "winching," a radical offshoot of wakeboarding in which riders skate across the surface of millponds, boulder-studded creeks, alligator-infested swamps and the occasional office-park fountain. They ride on bindingless boards, pulled by a diesel winch constructed from an industrial snowblower motor, chain-saw parts and parachute cord. Today the sport's madcap messiah is 24-year-old Kyle Walton, the lead rider of a Bellingham, Washington, team of winchers called Homeless — so named for their hitchhiking and couch-poaching tendencies — who represent the freshest talent in the nascent sport. "The boat kept a lot of kids from riding on the water," says Walton. "Now, with the winch, it's anybody's game." DAVID HOLTHOUSE

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Before Johnny Depp famously had a tattoo artist delete the "na" from his biceps, he had it right: "Winona Forever." Everywhere we look these days, there's another young brunette playing an ultrasarcastic, liberal-minded, sensitive slacker — the type of grunge Hepburn that Winona Ryder once made famous. Just watch Olivia Thirlby in The Wackness, Emma Stone in The Rocker, Hannah Bailey in American Teen, Ellen Page in Juno, Kat Dennings in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist — if you squint through Nick and Norah, you might mistake Dennings for Ryder herself. Both are five-foot-four-inch Jewish girls whose curvy top halves upend their bottom halves, and both, curiously, were home-schooled. Why the Winona-vitalization? Maybe it's because America is starting to resemble the place it was when Winona schlepped a greasy Dave Pirner to the Oscars: The economy blows, grads can't find jobs, even flannel is back. Meanwhile Ryder, after a brief detour through shoplifting ignominy, is sticking to the future. She'll be in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek prequel, playing Spock's mom. Shit, we're old. MELISSA MAERZ

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A biopic about a 1970s San Francisco gay activist may not sound like box-office gold. But for Milk, director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) pulled together the year's best ensemble cast. Sean Penn is uncanny as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be voted into office in America. Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) plays fellow activist Cleve Jones; James Franco is Milk's partner; and Diego Luna is Jack Lira, another Milk lover. "We started with Sean," says Van Sant. The rest of the group soon fell into place. "They're really fantastic actors that I've never worked with before," says Van Sant. "They hung out a lot and formed the group that you see in the movie — Harvey's support group." Penn also suggested Josh Brolin to play Milk's nemesis, Dan White, the deeply conflicted politician who shot Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone in 1978. "Both Josh and Sean had done a lot of very hardcore scenes in their careers," Van Sant says. "They knew a lot about guns. More than I did." BRIAN BRAIKER

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Walking into Jonathan Wilson's Wednesday-night jam session is like being sent back 40 years, to when L.A.'s Laurel Canyon was home to rock royalty like Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. Artists such as the Black Crowes' Chris Robinson, the Jayhawks' Gary Louris, Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis and her boyfriend Johnathan Rice, and a fleet of newcomers and old-timers gather at Wilson's to make beautiful music and smell the Nag Champa. "First time I went and walked through the beaded curtain," says former Crazy Horse keyboardist Barry Goldberg, "I swear I almost had a flashback." READ MORE

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No film project has enthralled the indie-blogiverse more than Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are. But in the past year, the film has been plagued by rumors: that Jonze's version was too dark, that the studio hated it, that Jonze might take his name off the movie. Here, the media-shy Jonze finally sets the record straight on one of 2009's most anticipated films. READ THE Q&A

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Even before Jamal Woolard landed the role of the Notorious B.I.G., he entered what he calls "Biggie Boot Camp": For January's biopic Notorious, he studied the late rapper's lisp ("His tongue lays down in his mouth"), his waddle ("The same as Penguin in Batman"), the way he always held his head back on an angle ("Like a king looking down at his subjects"). And even though Woolard was already big enough to have notched a Type-2-diabetes diagnosis, he pushed his six-foot-three-inch frame up to 340 pounds. "I was just pigging out," says Woolard. "My doctor told me, 'You really are ready to die.' " But Woolard needed the gig. After growing up in Biggie's hood of Bed-Stuy, he spent years rapping under the name Gravy, but lost a record deal and had a baby on the way. "God made this happen," he says. Or maybe it was Biggie's mom, who took one look at Woolard and said, "That's my son." BRIAN HIATT

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Remember how alpha dogs kicked you in the balls just for a laugh? George W. Bush was one, right after 9/11. So was Tom Cruise, before he went nuts. Now it's all about beta macho: being a tough pushover. Brett Favre is beta macho — no alpha would have sobbed his way to the Jets. Madonna loves beta machos: Alex Rodriguez, Guy Ritchie. Nicolas Sarkozy is beta macho. So are Todd Palin and Tim McGraw. We're not sure about Obama yet — but Rahm Emanuel will cock-punch anyone who thinks he is.

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When your teacher told you, "Reduce, reuse, recycle," he or she probably wasn't talking about butt plugs. But retailer Dreamscapes has launched one of the country's first sex-toy-recycling programs. "I know our industry is taboo, but we want to save the environment too," says CEO David Kowalsky. The way it works: Box your toy ("Clean it first") and mail it to Dreamscapes, who'll ship out the components. Your toy may be reincarnated as a tire retread or playground mulch (Mommy!) — and Dreamscapes will send you a $10 coupon for your next purchase (vibratorshopping .com).

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You'd think Mickey Rourke would be happy, sitting in an Italian restaurant near his apartment in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, talking up his Oscar-worthy performance as washed-up pro wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson in The Wrestler. Still, he can't help but be pulled into the darkness of his past. He talks about how his once-hot career imploded and how close he came to ending it all, and when he talks about how his brother died of cancer four years ago, his once-pretty face twists, his mouth trembles, he chokes up and he drools a little down his denim shirt, unbuttoned to reveal the silver ram medallion that he wore in the movie. "I lost everything that meant anything," Rourke says. "I've worked very hard with a therapist. I was putting the blame on this prick or that person, but it was Mickey Rourke. I fucked up everything. When you fall that far, you can make the decision if you're gonna give it a shot or blow your brains out. The Ram is living in that same state of hopelessness."

It's impossible to watch The Wrestler and not see it as an allegory for Rourke's career: on top in the Eighties, AWOL in the Nineties and looking for redemption in the new century. The more Rourke talks, the more agitated he becomes. On cue, his manager arrives with a white pill and one of his pet Chihuahuas, Taco Bell, to soothe him. Rourke swallows the medication. "I have panic attacks when I talk about this stuff," he says. At his lowest, he says he was sitting in a closet with his favorite dog, Beau Jack, "doing some crazy shit, but I saw a look in Beau Jack's eyes, and I put the shit down. That dog saved my life. There's still a little man inside me with an ax — but I keep that little fucker quiet." SEAN WOODS

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We don't usually lose to Britain. Land, tennis, food — we usually crush their pasty bottoms. But lately, we are getting killed in an important siege: the Skank Wars. Not long ago, we dominated. We had Britney in the booby hatch, Paris in jail and Lindsay flashing her na-na. Those three were the skank Crosby, Stills and Nash (Nicole Richie was Neil Young). But as they did with punk rock, the Brits stole our idea and made it into art. Human crack pipe Amy Winehouse makes Britney look like Madeleine Albright. Sienna Miller and Kate Moss are having a topless photo contest on the Mediterranean seas. Potty-mouthed Lily Allen battles with Elton John at an awards show and dumps on sacred idols like Madonna. British reality nut cases like Kerry Katona (drugs, cosmetic surgery) and Katie "Jordan" Price (sex, cosmetic surgery) are much more awesomely trashy than ours. Peaches Geldof, Bob's wacky daughter who just got married at 19 (and, if rumors are true, may soon get divorced)? The United States has no answer for Peaches Geldof. America needs to get its skank game face back on. It's time to liberate our girls and chain up Lindsay's undie drawer. Alert Barack Obama. Consider us hawkish on the Skank Wars.

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You know how denim companies artfully "distress" jeans with, like, sandpaper and bleach? So not exploitative! We much prefer French clothier A.P.C.'s new Butler Worn Out line, for which every whisker, stain, tear and ass-fade was created by an actual human body, walking around and wearing them out. Distressing!

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Freaky high warning: Lately we've been running into lunatics who take Ambien sleeping pills and try hard to stay awake. "It's a dreamlike sort of high," says Josh, 30, from New Jersey. "I usually take twice the recommended amount, then have a coffee or Red Bull to fight off sleepiness. But the first time I did it, I took more than that, went to a bar, and I kept asking to touch people's hair — there was nothing more fascinating than hair. This is what my friends tell me because I didn't remember any of it." Hey, not exactly the euphoria we chase, but to each his or her own.

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Growing up, Danny McBride didn't see believable rednecks coming out of Hollywood. "Just taking some guy and putting him in overalls and making him into some kind of hick — I don't know a lot of guys like that," says the comic actor, who broke out this year with great turns in Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder and The Foot Fist Way. Instead, McBride knew guys like Kenny Powers, the coke-snorting, Skynyrd-listening ex-ballplayer jackhole he plays in his new HBO series, Eastbound and Down, arriving in February. Eastbound is the brainchild of McBride and three Southern film-school buddies who are fast becoming the anti-Hollywood "Scrapple Pack": actor-writers Jody Hill and Ben Best, and director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express). Also on hand is a fringe actor named Will Ferrell, who serves as an executive producer and plays a small part as a car salesman. "The thing Danny does so well is play a lovable asshole," says Ferrell. "And he has a heart the size of David Lee Roth's balls." MARK KEMP

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With an Elvis pompadour and saddle shoes, Janelle Monáe looks like she stepped out of 1950. But after a spin of the Atlanta soul singer's Metropolis: The Chase Suite — a bizarrely catchy collage of hip-hop, jazz and funk offering a dystopian vision of the year 2719 — it's clear Monáe's staking a claim on R&B's future. "The old way hasn't worked — look at declining record sales," says Monáe, 24, whose Big Boi-produced disc cribs from Octavia E. Butler sci-fi novels and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, among others. "This is the perfect time to take a risk."

Monáe's music piles swooping horns, manic strings and organ-backed beats into theatrical tunes that sound as if Gnarls Barkley had hijacked the New York Philharmonic. Spoken-word parts — Monáe name-checks Jim Crow, crack whores and STDs — lend a poetry-slam feel. "Growing up, my father was in and out of prison, and he was addicted to crack," she says of the dark lyrics. "As an artist, I know this all comes out at some point."

Thankfully, the taboo topics haven't scared off fans. Diddy, who put Monáe on his Bad Boy label, called the singer "possibly the most important signing of my career." Prince even offered her his number after a gig. "He said he loved what I was doing and if I ever needed to speak to him, he's available," she says. "So I called him, and we talked about stage lighting. I thought I was in a dream." NICOLE FREHSÉE

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The self-proclaimed father of more than 200 psychedelics, 83-year-old Bay Area chemist Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin is the Thomas Edison of tripping. His favorite creation? 2C-B. "It's visually very pleasant, with a strong element of the erotic," Shulgin says. "It's short-lived, with no hangover. . . . All in all, one of the most graceful compounds I have ever invented."

What sets 2C-B apart from heavier hallucinogens like LSD is that it responds well to what seasoned psychonauts call "intentionality." To laymen, that means 2C-B is usually mellow enough that users can easily control their experiences. "2C-B responds well to self-direction," says Dr. Neal Goldsmith, a New York psychotherapist and psychedelics expert. "It's easily controllable. The experience is determined by your goal."

Usurping LSD as the drug of choice at this year's Burning Man, 2C-B is rapidly proliferating throughout clubs and underground parties, according to reports from DJs and promoters. At $20 to $40 a pill, the stuff's not cheap, especially considering that the peak effects of a one-pill "museum dose" last only about two hours, just enough time to enjoy 2C-B's aphrodisiac qualities. As Goldsmith puts it, "Any physical contact results in a volcanic uprising of sexual energy. Users report all the feelings of love associated with MDMA [Ecstasy] — and none of the performance problems." DAVID HOLTHOUSE

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"I was able to give advice on smuggling drugs, scoring drugs, casual self-harm, self-indulgence, bordellos, brothels, life under bridges and heads in the clouds," Russell Brand says, explaining his unique qualifications as the star of Get Him to the Greek, the eagerly awaited Forgetting Sarah Marshall spinoff movie currently in the works. Brand, of course, broke out with American audiences in Marshall, playing Aldous Snow, a big-haired, fresh-from-rehab rock star who spends his days perfecting yoga poses. In Greek, an addled Aldous takes a cannonball dive off the wagon, stuffing his face with drugs, forcing a plane to make an emergency landing in Vegas and canoodling with rocker co-stars Pink and Katy Perry (Oasis' Liam and Noel Gallagher also have rumored cameos). A real-life reformed sex and drug addict, Brand found his own experiences proved essential to the making of the film. Says director and co-writer Nicholas Stoller, "I'd wonder, 'How do you get heroin onto a plane?' And Russell was like, 'You put it up your bum.' So that's what we'd do in the movie." MELISSA MAERZ

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Seattle's Bimbos Cantina is famous for its quesadilla pie, toddler-size organic burritos and a kitchen staff of insanely talented musicians moonlighting as line cooks. "There were a ton of awesome people there," says Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold, who put in time in 2004. "Working there definitely opened my mind." The list of musicians who have rolled burritos at Bimbos is a who's who of '90s and '00s Pacific Northwest indie rock, including members of Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, the Melvins, Hole, Minus the Bear, Pretty Girls Make Graves and Murder City Devils. Owner Jeff Ofelt has run the Mexican spot since 1994, and he has a musician-friendly attitude toward staffing. "We're definitely flexible for people who want to take a few months off and go on tour," he says. "I don't make them commit to a decision like, 'I'm going to quit my job to pursue music.'" Ofelt also lets his employees control the stereo, which makes for a heady soundtrack in the kitchen. "I thought I knew everything about music from the Sixties and Seventies before I started there," says Pecknold. "It was humbling." AUSTIN SCAGGS

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Michael Cera
If the Volkswagen Jetta was a human being, it would be Michael Cera: smart, cute, reliable and yet a little too impressed with itself. Sometimes, you just want a Camaro — a Camaro that drunk-dials Ellen Page and hates the Moldy Peaches.

Funny or Die
We adored Pearl and The Landlord, but lately, Will Ferrell's Website feels like a video version of The Huffington Post: entitled Hollywood players with way too much time on their hands. Ron Howard reprising Richie? Looked like MADtv.

Auto-Tune
We wish we could say this through these synthy voice stretchers: enough already. T-Pain's contribution to pop is significant, but it's stunning it has lasted so long. Please give up — no one will top "Show Me the Way." Besides, Frampton used a TalkBox.

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Corporations spend millions every year trying to predict what's cool. We don't understand why they do this when all they have to do is trust one remarkably prescient oracle: Drew Barrymore's lust. It's true. Barrymore might get dismissed as a heartbreaker, but the reality is, her pheromones have surfed the razor's edge of pop culture for years. She was into Corey Feldman when he was Corey Fuckin' Feldman. She got Luke Wilson when Luke Wilson was hot (there actually was a time). Next, she moved to MTV antihero Tom Green until she had the wise sense to ditch him at Minute 16. Anticipating the explosion of a New York guitar-rock scene, she won over Fab Moretti of the Strokes. After that, she rebooted with Justin Long, the star of those Mac vs. PC commercials, and lately she's been spied with Ed Westwick, the brooding young star of couldn't-be-hotter TV show Gossip Girl. That makes Drew's radar six for six in the past — a record that would get her on the board of Berkshire Hathaway (and, perhaps, in Warren Buffett's pants — seven for seven). So the next time you're wondering what's next, don't turn to YouTube or Perez or, hell, some lame "Hot Issue." Look Drew Barrymore straight in the eyes — and then look for whoever is making out with her right now.

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On a recent Saturday afternoon at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, a mother shoos her children away after hearing 20-year-old porn star Sasha Grey blithely describe a day in her life. "When I'm not turned on for a scene, I'll warm up my pussy a lot ahead of time," Grey says, flicking back her long, dark hair.

With her sad eyes, waifish body and willingness to push the boundaries of porn, Grey quickly became the toast of the San Fernando Valley. She has screamed and sworn her way through more than 100 movies. And while Boogie Nights tells us that Sasha Greys do not last long, Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich) just cast her as the lead of his new film about a high-priced call girl. Grey's stardom is starting to titillate people in legitimate Hollywood. Naturally, she likes that feeling very much. CLAIRE HOFFMAN

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In the eternal battle between werewolves and vampires, the latter will look back and say, "2008 vas vonderful! Twilight! True Blood! Ah! Ah! Ah!" But there are signs of a werewolf rebellion. Book critics are howling over Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth, a werewolf noir written entirely in free verse (it's brilliant). Hollywood will kick off 2009 with Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, in which werewolves fight vampire slave masters. Then the already lupine Benicio Del Toro will star in a reimagining of Universal's 1941 classic The Wolf Man — and do multiplex battle with Hugh Jackman's X-Men Origins: Wolverine (not technically a lycanthrope, but still more wolfman than large weasel). Then maybe we'll see the lesbian werewolf teen flick Jack and Diane, long rumored to star Ellen Page. Why the hairy surge? Vampires are decadent, boom-economy monsters who live off the blood of others. In other words, stockbrokers. Werewolves, by contrast, are hairy blue-collar loners, contemptuous of civilization, motivated by hunger and bitterness. When society gets too corrupt, werewolves bite rich bastards in the ass. LOGAN HILL

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Photo: Warner Bros/D.C. Comics

In the first five minutes of next March's movie adaptation of the 1980s graphic novel Watchmen, a Matrix-style fight sequence breaks out, complete with two superdudes punching through walls with their bare hands. Bam! Pow! Awesome! Except that it feels off-key, as if Michael Bay had directed Moby Dick and kicked it off with a slow-mo man-on-whale duel.

It's hard to explain the greatness of Watchmen to non-geeks: Its writer, Alan Moore, is the Bob Dylan of superhero comics, a genius who injected verbal virtuosity, formal sophistication and philosophical complexity into the form, and Watchmen is his masterpiece. Over the years, two of Hollywood's top surrealists have flirted with a Watchmen adaptation (Terry Gilliam and Darren Aronofsky), but instead, the job went to Zack Snyder, a really good director of really dumb action movies, like 2006's dopey 300, a nearly shot-for-shot adaptation of another graphic novel.

Recently, Warner Bros. screened the first 20 minutes of Watchmen; it looks like the best parts of the movie come straight from the book, like a visually stunning sequence starring naked, blue-skinned, atomic-powered Dr. Manhattan. And the worst parts may well be everything else — especially since Snyder has admitted to altering the book's apocalyptic ending. But even if he botched it, he's given Moore's masterpiece a new life. I've even spotted actual females reading it on the subway. And that, at least, qualifies Snyder as some kind of superhero. BRIAN HIATT

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Thanks to a bad breakup and a nasty case of mono, Justin Vernon has become one of the most buzzed-about folkies in America. In the winter of '06, Vernon retreated to his father's hunting cabin in the northeastern Wisconsin wilderness to nurse his wounds. Subsisting on Leinenkugel beer and deer meat, and entertaining himself with a Vienna Boys Choir CD and Northern Exposure DVDs, Vernon wrote and recorded a set of nine harrowingly lovely songs. The resulting album, For Emma, Forever Ago — released under the name Bon Iver — is an icy moonscape of a record. Vernon, 27, layers vocal track over vocal track, harmonizing his eerie falsetto with itself along to chopped and spliced acoustic guitar. But it's less the voice of a guy wallowing in self-pity than someone trying his damnedest to move on from forever ago.

"This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization/It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away," he sings. And move on he has. Since his album came out in early 2007, Vernon has become a favorite of music supervisors (he's had three songs on Grey's Anatomy), Lilly Allen has blogged about him and he's performed with indie kids Lykke Li and Okkervil River. He's been invited to participate in a tribute to John Prine, a personal hero. Vernon's shows are warmhearted affairs — the audience is given lyric sheets and asked to accompany him. "I get cheesed out by sing-alongs but in these circumstances, they're singing a different part," he says. "It felt like it fills a gap."

Currently on tour through the end of the year, Vernon will swing through Australia before making his way back to Madison where he'll have one last blowout show at home. In January he'll release his four-song EP Blood Bank, and then "disappear" to work on a new record. "Nothing crazy," he says. "I'm not going to go back to the cabin. That would be ridiculous." BRIAN BRAIKER

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When My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy or Spoon's Britt Daniel want to push their guitar sound to 11, they go to Oliver Ackermann, maker of the boutique line of guitar pedals called Death By Audio. For the last few years, Ackermann — who also fronts the shoegaze-noise outfit A Place to Bury Strangers — has been building some of the most innovative effects boxes on the market: the "Interstellar Overdriver" is an insanely loud distortion box that also generates bizarro waveforms, the "Octave Clang" mixes ear-bursting fuzz with rich sitar-esque tones and the "Supersonic Fuzz Gun" has six knobs and one switch for endless combinations of guitar noise. While Ackermann's regular line pedals is a bit pricey they come housed in indestructible steel and he offers free repairs for the lifetime of the product. Even the Edge is such a fan that he ordered up Ackermann's whole product line. "His guitar tech e-mailed me and said he'd like to buy all the pedals," says Ackermann. "Then like a half-hour after I responded, my doorbell rang and there was a courier with a check. I was like, 'Sweet! You don't fuck with U2!' " KEVIN O'DONNELL

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Drum circles aren't just for crusty hippies, indigenous African tribes and grizzled jam bands anymore. Dozens of stylish rock groups — from Swedish chanteuse Lykke Li and British electro-pop group Friendly Fires to more mainstream acts like Modest Mouse and Animal Collective — have begun incorporating secondary drum kits, bongos and other percussive instruments into their live shows and injecting a very tribal (and very Grateful Dead) vibe to their already ass-shaking grooves. "A lot of rock music in the DIY scene has become more electronic based," says Hisham Bharoocha of the ambient electro outfit Soft Circle. "I want to hear actual live music being played. So when you have extra drums live, it really helps people get into the performance." Two years ago, Bharoocha and the Japanese art-rock group the Boredums staged the ultimate drum circle 77 Boadrum, which featured 77 drummers jamming out underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. The event was such a success they expanded the event to 88 drummers for '08 and plans are in the works to stage 99 Boadrum next fall. KEVIN O'DONNELL

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How do you get Tom Waits, George Clinton, Ghostface Killah, Santogold and M.I.A. to visit a Los Angeles studio located in an alley once inhabited by crackheads? If you're Sam Spiegel, you tell them you're out to make one hell of a party-starting record. Since 2003, the New York native — along with his Brazilian pal Ze "DJ Zegon" Gonzales — has teamed up with some of the biggest names in rap and rock for the debut record from his project N.A.S.A. "This record is about bringing the craziest combination of people together," says Spiegel of the record, which also features guest spots from David Byrne, Santogold and Kanye West. "It's about people from totally different worlds, just like Zegon and I come from different worlds."

Spirit of the Apollo, due out next February, is one of the most ambitious and adventurous records in recent years. The 16-track set features jams that mash up bhangra grooves with funky guitars ("Whachadoin?") and jazz-organ grinds with marching-band beats ("There's a Party"). But the bat-shit vocal collaborations steal the show. The atmospheric stomp "Spacious Thoughts" mashes Waits' grizzled growl with rapper Kool Keith's snappy bark. And the disco-funk jam "Strange Enough" is just that: Ol' Dirty Bastard rapping about Bugle Boy Jeans as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O plays the role of hook girl (Spiegel worked on her band's 2006 album Show Your Bones). "When we started five years ago, we wrote up this dream list of people on a dry-erase board," says Spiegel. "We ended up getting 80 percent of them and were like, 'I can't believe we're filling this dry-erase board up!"

Spiegel has always been obsessed with divergent styles of music. As a teen growing up in Manhattan in the early Nineties, he would spin Tribe Called Quest records at high school parties. And his brother — director Spike Jonze — cued him into alt-rock gurus like the Pixies. "I've always had an eclectic taste," he says. "And I was always getting a lot of musical advice from my brother."

In 2005, Spiegel scored his first big breakthrough when he collaborated with Karen O on the hushed ballad "Hello Tomorrow," which was later featured in an Adidas commercial and topped the iTunes singles chart. Since then, he's gone on to score hip-hop and orchestral songs for Nike and Converse commercials. And he's currently cutting new albums with Philadelphia MC Spank Rock and composing the soundtrack to David O Russell's forthcoming movie Nailed. But there's one project he?s reluctant to discuss: the much-anticipated Karen O solo record, which Spiegel produced. "Whenever I talk about it she wants to kill me," he jokes, adding that it will come out sometime in the near future. "She put a hit out on me once. And I begged her to take it off." KEVIN O'DONNELL

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The 2008 Hot List

Hot Actor | Robert Pattinson

Hot Band Everyone Wants to Be In | MGMT

Hot Gossip Girl | Leighton Meester

Hot Singer | Dhani Harrison

Hot Bombshell | Odette Yustman

Hot Rock Gods in Training | The Answer

Hot Production Duo | S*A*M and Sluggo

Hot Scary Sport | Scary Sport

Hot New Winona Ryders | Olivia Thirlby, Emma Stone, Hannah Bailey, Ellen Page, Kat Dennings

Hot Cast | Sean Penn and the Actors of Milk

Hot Rock Scene | Laurel Canyon

Hot Movie Drama | Where The Wild Things Are

Hot Biopic | Notorious

Hot Male Mood | Beta Macho

Hot Bedroom Trend | Green Sex Toys

Hot Comeback | Mickey Rourke

Hot International Crisis | U.S. Stars Losing Gossip Battle to Shameless Brit Girls

Hot Job | Denim Butler

Hot Multipurpose Drug | Ambien

Hot Scene-Stealer | Danny McBride of HBO's Eastbound and Down

Hot Sci-Fi Beyoncé | Janelle Monáe

Hot "Safe" Drug | 2C-B

Hot Sort-Of Sequel | Russell Brand's Aldous Snow

Hot Rocker Job | Bimbos Cantina

Hot Backlash | Michael Cera, Funny or Die, Auto-Tune

Hot Cultural Barometer | Drew Barrymore's Lusty Heart

Hot Porn Star | Sasha Grey

Hot Creature | Werewolf

Hot Geek Angst | Watchmen Worry

Hot Folkie | Bon Iver

Hot Box | Death by Audio

Hot Revival | Drum Circles

Hot Star Magnet | Sam Spiegel