Can you recommend some good modules?

I've spent a fair amount of time looking at the different CMSs and I've decided to go with Drupal. I've been designing and developing sites for about 13 years although this is my first time using a pre-made CMS.

There are so many modules (many with redundant features and different dependencies) that it's been a bit overwhelming so I'm hoping you guys can help me out!

I'm going to need a photo gallery and calendar (are there any that already have facebook or flickr hooks?) I'm also looking for the usual blogging, news and podcast type pages. Obviously, I'm also going to need to theme the thing but that's a different topic entirely!

I was going to ask about an OpenID module but my understanding is that that module has since been rolled into the Drupal 6.x base. Has anyone had any luck using this to allow users to effectively do single-sign-on through your site and access Google applications? I've done some searches and found that people have been working with Google's OpenID but I didn't see anything about success with SSO.

Thanks in advance for putting up with my newness.