For the benefit of newbies who dont know why their files wont open, heres what Ive learned;

1- there are files that are incomplete or corrupted, yet LW will download them, and you WONT see any error message! LW thinks they are ok, but they are not. Its not a bug in LW, its a bug in the file you have.
2- www.bitzi.com is a place where users like us keep notes on which files are corrupt, and how to tag and avoid them. Take the time to read up on bitzi because youre going to need it from now on if you use p2p.
3- mac osx is a great forum, but there are also lots of answers to your problem in 'gnutella> download and upload probs' forum. Do a search on your prob in ALL forums.
4 - dont name files like I did in the first post, oops. Its considered bad ettiqutte. Do it on bitzi.

thanks to arne bab, steif and ursula for their tips on bitzi.