Ok what I see in madnomad.com is that there is a blog in the middle, and two rows of pictures and links on both sides. Yes, this is possible with WP. You have to sit and design in to your heart’s content, that’s all. The side links can be made by installing a separate sideblog and then integrating the RSS feed. The photos can be done with Flickr or Coppermine with the Coppermine into WP plugin. What else do you need? Email me if you need help with anything else.
And about Static pages, download a nightly of WP 1.5 and see the dued go… ??