blazar -- The brevity and elegance of your so-called "poor man's" script amazes me... but it also prompts a (hasty) question (I'll likely regret): as I read it, your script seems to imply that most of the junk I'm so awkwardly and verbosely handling is "unnecessary." True?

Well, mine just takes plain lists of files, as generated say by ls -1 or dir /b and makes them into minimal (but proper? I can only say they appear to work!) asx files. Just so that I can click on them under Windows and have them open in the appropriate player, in the order I want.