big trials! big books! big bellies! big stars! big ideas! big votes! this year's high-stakes, high-anxiety fall season has it all—from missy elliotT's new styles to mr. roth's new nightmare, from Gwen stefani's solo debut to the phantom of the opera's new christine. here, elle's annual list of the top 25 hot and happening—all the people and things we'd hate to miss

7. THE YES MEN - POLITICAL PRANKSTERS
Michael Moore isn't the only humor-tipped thorn in the president's side. Just as Fahrenheit 9/11 winds down its summer run—the DVD is out in October—here comes a documentary called The Yes Men. Made by the folks who did 1999's American Movie, it follows the antics of a very funny pair of activist performers whose mock Web sites for the World Trade Organization and a certain former Texas governor have often been taken for the real thing. Invited to address international business conferences, the Yes Men went on the road as apparent WTO reps, donning sober business suits and colorful costumes to suggest such efficiency measures as implanting foreign workers with microchips to monitor their performance. They call this “identity correction”—using parody to expose their target's true face. And they do: Their profit-minded audiences take the Yes Men's Swiftian proposals absolutely straight.

Five years ago, their well-researched Web site for the president inspired a Bushism heard round the world. “He said, 'There ought to be limits to freedom,' ” says Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. At press time, Bichlbaum and partner Mike Bonanno (noms de prank of a writer and media arts professor) were planning stunts for both political conventions and a fresh dose of identity correction for the president. “We're going on the campaign trail for Bush,” Bichlbaum says with a wicked chortle, “and we're using a lot of technology.”—K.D.

8. GWEN STEFANI - WITHOUT A DOUBT
With a face like that of a back-lot angel and a voice that everyone from Moby to Eve wants to cozy up to, Gwen Stefani could have ditched the guys in No Doubt long ago to take up blowing a lot of melismatic hot air about undying love. Though her first solo effort, an homage to the '80s dance music she grew up listening to, is due later this year, she's not interested in traditional divadom. The music industry rarely allows for idiosyncrasy anymore—that faded with the stars of Boy George, Prince, and Cyndi Lauper—but Stefani, 34, is doing those iconoclasts proud. She has admitted that she is neither dark nor naughty, preferring to name-check chamomile tea rather than Courvoisier in her bump-and-grind anthems. Her goofy, glamorous persona—which is equal parts anime character, scrappy SoCal punk, and Hollywood starlet—translates into record sales. Lots of them. And what other pop star has poise enough to impersonate Jean Harlow for Martin Scorsese, as Stefani will this December in The Aviator? We love her because she's what your dad might call a classy lady, because she's proving that nice girls—well, twenty-first-century nice girls, those who know how to accessorize sass with manners—can finish first.—Carlene Bauer