George W. Bush just needs some hair on his knuckles.

Sure, the president is leading America through its biggest crisis in recent memory. But that doesn't mean Bush is ready to take his place in the hall of world leaders yet.

To get that coveted spot in the Wax Museum at Fisherman's Wharf, Bush first needs hairy knuckles, dentures and acrylic eyeballs.

"We're basically waiting to insert his eyes and teeth, and then we'll apply the makeup," said Curtis Huber, the wax museum's curator. "We'll probably have him complete for Thanksgiving."

Keeping up with the new world order is hard for everyone -- but that goes double for the folks who undertake the painstakingly slow process of forging wax look-alikes of the most glamorous and powerful of their day.

Will Britney Spears be popular a year from now? Probably, Huber says. Robin Williams? Of course. The museum has hopes to make one of each.

But 'N Sync, the boy band of the minute?

"Not going to happen," Huber said. "By the time all five are completed, people will ask -- 'who?' "

On the war front, besides the commander in chief, the museum is not too out of date. Gulf War foe Saddam Hussein glares out from the hall of dictators, while Nazi fuhrer Adolf Hitler -- the museum's most vandalized figure -- stands in the middle of the "Axis Gang."

But timely or not, the museum has no plans for an Osama bin Laden.

"It's a little bit in bad taste," said Huber. "During the O.J. (Simpson) trial we had him outside, but we decided keeping O.J. would be in bad taste, so he's in storage. His head is in a box somewhere."

There are several reasons the wax museum won't be installing George W. Bush until nearly a full year after his swearing in.

The contested presidential election dragged into December, keeping sculptors from getting to work. And then actor John Travolta, comedian Mike Myers and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown were all waiting in line ahead of him.

There is also the detail-obsessed process of making the figures in the first place. Mayor Brown stood in to be fitted for his wax twin, and museum officials took 60 different measurements of his face alone.

The museum didn't have the luxury of a fitting with Bush, but the staff did recruit a man of similar height and weight to stand in for a full body cast.

Sculptor Kahn Gasimov relied on photographs to shape Bush's head from clay, which was then used to make a plaster mold. Wax was cast into it for an eerie, baby-pink likeness of the president. Workers threaded human hair into his scalp, one strand at a time.

Once his eyes and teeth are complete and Bush takes his place alongside Mao Zedong and Mikhail Gorbachev, he will have cost about $10,000 to produce.

While its goal is to be "in with the new," the museum is also something of a cruel barometer of when a celebrity is passe.

But because the figures take so much time and money to create, the museum doesn't just throw away the not-quite-so-famous. Some, like O.J. and Jerry Garcia, are still in storage. But the museum does reincarnate many a fallen star.

Richard Burton -- his head cloaked in a biblical robe -- now stands listening to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi bobs anonymously in the waters of the Ganges in the Hinduism display.

And Jezebel bears a striking resemblance to a young Sophia Loren.

"Since nobody's sure what Jezebel really looked like, what the hell?" Huber said with a laugh. "It's a good-looking woman."

A ferry ride away, visitors touring the barracks at the Angel Island Immigration Station might want to take a closer look at the figures in the interrogation scene. They were donated to the cash-strapped historical site by the Fong family, which opened the wax museum in 1963.

Sitting below a wall carved with an anonymous poem from a despairing Chinese immigrant detained there, an angry-looking interrogator stares down a Chinese immigrant. An interpretor sits quietly beside him.

The interrogator is a hand-me-down baseball player -- Mike Piazza -- whose bat was pried from his hands.

And the interpreter? The Godfather himself -- a youngish Marlon Brando.

But the wax museum hasn't ditched old mumble-mouth altogether. A better ringer for Brando still stands in the "Hollywood Hunks" section.

It isn't unusual for the museum to take a second crack at a star when the likeness isn't captured precisely at first. The museum has gone through two Ronald Reagans and plans to make its third Princess Diana.

And then there are the stars whose wax clones seem to change as often as the season. Setting an in-house record, the museum has had four different versions of pop singer Michael Jackson in its history.

Still, passing off a famous face for someone else can be tough. Jackie Kennedy -- who today stands beside her husband in the hall of presidents -- once did a stint as Cinderella, wearing a long blond wig.

That lasted for a bit, Huber said, "till everybody noticed, 'Gee, that looks like Jackie with a dye job.' "

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Media Contact: Jeanette Guire +1 415 202 0416 jguire@waxmuseum.com