Madonna turns 50 today. Enjoy Like a Prayer.

Madonna is the paragon a kind of pop music that I enjoy (only semi-ironically) far more, I imagine, than my fellow writers on the blog. But despite the many (younger and younger*) girls who have come after with aspirations to the crown, I think nobody has, like, a prayer of coming close. Why? My thoughts after the jump.

We are pleased to open the LOLjoker contest. Send your LOLjokers to sheely AT overthinkingit DOT com before Midnight EDT on Sunday, August 3, 2008. To one grand prize winner we’ll give away a vintage batman t-shirt and a guest spot on our next podcast.

Rules and guidelines »

[Beginning today, we will be saving our most thoughtfully overthought articles for Sunday publication. Though we haven't the audacity to hope that we will replace your ritual of lugging the phone-book sized Sunday Times down to your favorite obscure Park Slope coffee house to pore ostentatiously over while sipping the organic, shade grown, fairly traded red eye your favorite heavily tattooed and multi-pierced barista pulls with tender loving care, we hope this weekly day of rest affords you time to devote some extra overthinking to this new weekly feature, Overthinking It Magazine. —Ed.]

Even as McDonalds continues to evoke freedom fries francophobia in new advertisements, there are signs that the popular culture has moved on, and that we are on the brink of a new era in French-American relations. The ambassador of this détente? None other than a 25 year old female electro-hip-hopper named Yelle. Video and analysis after the jump.