The pop tart returns _ but this time, in tartan.

Byline: Dan DeLuca

PHILADELPHIA _ Things about Madonna we like: Music. How she licks milk out of a bowl in the "Express Yourself" video. "Frozen." Desperately Seeking Susan. Her Immaculate Collection retrospective. The back cover of Music, which shows her looking at a guitar as if she has no idea what it is.

Things about Madonna that make us roll our eyes: The fake English accent. "American Pie." Sex. "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." Her fling with Vanilla Ice. Every movie she's starred in except Desperately Seeking Susan, not including Truth or Dare, which is a documentary and doesn't count.

Way back on her debut album in 1983, Madonna made it plain that she had a plan: "Unlike the others, I'll do anything," she sang on the disco come-on "Burning Up." "I'm not the same, I have no shame."

And since then _ aside from her failure to become a credible film star, last year's The Next Best Thing being her most recent flop _ she's pretty much had her way with us.

Perhaps the greatest measure of her success is that when Madonna launches the U.S. leg of her Drowned World tour in Philadelphia on July 21 and 22, she'll do it in an incarnation that once would have been unimaginable. Instead of the lightweight Boy Toy, the married mother of two _ who turns 43 on Aug. 16 _ will play the two sold-out houses as a Grammy-sanctioned artiste, a pop oracle whose music and image are …