Overthinkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to open but your threads.

In rap news, Lil’ Wayne began his one-year jail term this week, pleading guilty to attempted weapons possession. The obvious joke is that doing a bid can only help a gangsta’s career, but that actually hasn’t been true. It certainly hasn’t helped Mystikal’s career any, though he only just got out.

Question: what should Lil’ Wayne do with his year off from recording (other than reflect on his crimes, rehabilitate, blah blah etc)?

Mr. Carter entered the following statement in his defense: I keep it real crisp like Kellogg, stack it like Lincoln Logs, then I drive my Lincoln over your dog, dawg.

Second, have we all taken a moment to let our jaws drop over the Tron Legacy trailer? Because really, wow.

Question: A revanchist Alice in Wonderland; a mature Tron sequel; and even that trailer for The Sorceror’s Apprentice looked a little edgy for a movie inspired by a Fantasia cartoon. Has the success of Pirates of the Caribbean inspired Disney to treat its properties in a more adult manner? If so, what does this suggest for the future?

Finally, we doff our bandannas for Corey Haim, who apparently succumbed to a drug overdose earlier this week at the age of 38. Best known for his adolescent attitude in such 80s classics as Lucas, License to Drive and The Lost Boys, Corey had regained some D-list cred by teaming up with Corey Feldman in “The Two Coreys” and a cameo in Crank 2: High Voltage. Fame treats few of us kindly, and young Mr. Haim worse than most.

This is how he'd want us to remember him: making out with Lala Sloatman.

Man, Lil’ Wayne doing a bid, Corey Haim dying: does OTI have any good news this week? As it happens, we do! Overthinking It is sending correspondents to PAX East, Penny Arcade’s East coast convention and gamer expo! OTI staff will be wandering the floor, documenting the happenings on the official Overthinking It Twitter account.

“But Perich,” you’re asking, “how will I recognize the OTI crew? Or how can I identify myself as a loyal Overthinker?” Well, you could always buy an official Overthinking It branded T-shirt!

Well, ACTUALLY ...

Are you coming to PAX East? Do you want to catch up with the Overthinking It staff? Sound off in the comments, since this is your … open thread.

Let’s take a look back at some developing pop culture news:

In a rap crime shocker, Lil Wayne has pleaded guilty to criminal gun possession in New York and could face up to a year in prison. Said Plaxico Burress: “Hey, at least you’re still walking.”

Question: Does pleading guilty to firearm possession confer the same street cred as pleading not guilty but being convicted?

The Philadelphia Phillies are in the World Series again, having beaten the Dodgers in 5 nailbiting games. Another World Series win would make the Phillies the only National League team to win back to back since the Cincinnati Reds in 1976, which would also make it the first time the Reds have been mentioned in sports news since 1995.

Question: Ryan Howard – baseball-playing robot sent from the future, or baseball-playing angel sent from Heaven?

The electronics world buzzed with talk of the Motorola Droid, Verizon’s Android-based competitor to the AT&T iPhone. Critics have already wowed over its thin frame, its actual-for-real keyboard, incredibly fast processing and its ability to make phone calls.

Question: What’s the one feature that would compel you to buy a smartphone other than an iPhone?

And finally, an Internet rumor circulated that Kanye West was dead, likely started on the 4chan boards. West’s girlfriend Amber Rose refuted the rumor, that West had died in a car accident involving high-end custom cars, on Twitter. What Kanye West was doing not being on his blog for those 20 minutes, we’ll never know.

Question: Has the recent spate of celebrity deaths made us all more susceptib–

YO, YO PERICH! I’M REALLY HAPPY FOR YOU, AND I’MMA LET YOU FINISH, BUT PAUL McCARTNEY HAD THE BEST CELEBRITY DEATH HOAX OF ALL TIME! ONE OF THE BEST DEATH HOAXES OF ALL TIME, YO!

Question: Has this meme run its course? Seriously?

Mark Lee hosts as he, Peter Fenzel, John Perich, Ryan Sheely, and Matthew Wrather (what what?!) go through some listener feedback, pick on the host, talk racial normativity, and engage in an epic rap battle on the merits of Kanye.

Tell us what you think! Email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401. If you haven’t yet, take the very short survey! And… spread the overthinking by forwarding this episode to a friend.

Download Episode 44 (MP3)

In a recent post on Lil’ Wayne, a fellow OTI blogger claimed that “Thus, Lil Wayne is not great because his metaphors and similies are tight, but because he mixes these metaphors with an avalanche of tropes and techniques including personification, anti-personification, hyperbole, kenning, punning, and onomatopoeia.”

Which is possibly the single most overthinkingit post in the brief history of our blog. But that’s beside the point. The point is… kenning? Really?

I haven’t found a kenning in Lil’ Wayne, so far. And at first, I was going to write a post saying that kennings just don’t happen in rap. (They basically don’t happen in modern English – the few that do occur tend to be idioms, like “beer goggles” or “bible-thumper.”) But then I happened to be listening to “Gimme the Loot,” off of Biggie Smalls’ epic 1994 masterpiece “Ready To Die.” And I came across this line…

Comparing Lil Wayne to Jay-Z has become the favorite sport of music writers covering Wayne’s new album, Tha Carter III, starting with its leak on May 31 and continuing through the album’s release earlier this week. Some of these comparisons are overwhelmingly positive, anointing Weezy as Hova’s presumptive successor at the top of the rap game. Others, notably hip-hop bloggers, have lead the backlash against the New Orleans rapper, arguing that the Carter III, along with the rest of Wayne’s output, falls short of even some of Jay-Z’s middling efforts, and can’t come close to touching Jay’s best albums such as Reasonable Doubt, the Blueprint, and The Black Album.

These comparisons are far from spontaneous or accidental. As far back as 2004’s Tha Carter, Wayne started making it quite clear that he considers himself to be the “Greatest Rapper Alive”, sometimes implicitly inviting the comparison to Jay, and more recently asserting his apparent superiority by dissing Jay-Z in interviews and redoing several of Jay-Z’s songs on his own mixtapes. Moreover, the two have collaborated twice in the past year, with Wayne featured on “Hello Brooklyn” from Jay-Z’s American Gangster album and Jay dropping a verse on CIII’s second track, appropriately titled “Mr. Carter” (if you don’t understand why, go ahead and click on the first two links above, and come back for the analysis after the jump).