There's a scene in the movie When Harry Met Sally where two characters are out on a blind date. One of them, played by Carrie Fisher, quotes a newspaper article in mid-conversation. Turns out the article was written by Bruno Kirby's character, who is sitting across the table from her. He replies, "I wrote that! No one's ever quoted me to me before!"

I have now experienced that moment, but not in the confines of a New York City restaurant. Nay! My moment is comparatively massive! International even! INTER-FREAKIN'-GALACTIC!

You see, I have had my own movie sent to me as an e-mailed attachment. Let me explain. As a freelance editor, one of my many jobs was doing some editing for America's Funniest Home Videos. This wasn't in those lame Bob Saget years, but rather in the more recent (and much cooler) Tom Bergeron version. And while working on that show was pretty fun overall, the best part by far was cutting one of the two music montages they have in every show. These montages would be theme oriented: one would be on people passing out during weddings, another might be centered on construction site screwups.

To give credit where it's due, these weren't solo projects. I'd edit them with one of their producers, Rich Connor. Rich would come up with the theme, find the footage, pick the music, and then call me. Between the two of us, we'd then find the best moments, do our best to time it to the music, and tweak the heck out of the cuts til it worked just right. I have no idea how many of these Rich has done with other editors -- it has to number in the very high double digits -- but he and I cut maybe 20 of them together.

Most were pretty good, some crossed into greatness -- 90 seconds of fantastic clips married to the perfect piece of music. And one of those pieces that we cut -- a piece on cats -- is still among my favorites.

So I was pretty surprised when, among the daily dose of forwarded jokes and funny pictures, a friend of mine had sent me a short movie. And there it was: our AFV kitties. Someone, somewhere, had judged this clip funny enough to find a copy, convert it to an internet movie, and send it to their friends. I wish they had used a Quicktime movie instead of Windows Media, but ah well. They had quoted me to me, and it's pretty darn cool. Even if it is just a bunch of stupid cats.

Update March 29, 2005: For some unknown reason, this video has just hit massive popularity again. Massive enough that the site has been exceeding its bandwidth. I hate doing this, but as a free, no-adversiting site I can't afford to keep boosting the bandwidth. I'll put the video up again when the hits scale back.

© 2003, Michael Yanovich. www.mentalsnot.com