THANX TO THE NEARLY 100 souls who braved the blustery Feb. night to attend our suave Signifying Nothing exhibition opening last night. The rest of you can see it seven days a week until March 6 at the 2nd & S. Jackson.

BACK ON THE POP-CULT FRONT, that PBS workhorse Sesame Street got a major format overhaul this week. The kiddie-ed show now features far fewer one-minute-or-less blackout skits and films, instead favoring longer segments (up to 10 minutes) with narratives and familiar characters. Producers say this restructuring is the result of intense audience research into what Those Kids Today prefer to see.

This, of course, begs the question: What will come in future years, as this long-attention-span generation enters adolescence? I’m no corporate futurologist a la Faith Popcorn, but there are certainly intriguing possibilities to imagine emergine sometime in the mid-2010s:

• USA Today adopts a new format, with no stories running fewer than 3,000 words.
• C-SPAN has higher ratings than MTV.
• Sony announces an enhanced DVD hardware format, allowing a single disc to hold those newly popular eight-hour movies.
• Basketball courts across America go unused; poker tables become hot sellers at Wal-Mart.
• Restaurants start charging by the hour.
• Latest teen-fashion craze: The Ring of the Nibelung look.
• Funny bullet-item lists go way out of style.