Yeah, kinda like Jim was saying.
I once achieved a similar look messing around with keyframes on the wave filter. Starting from zero I ramped up the speed, ramped down the wavelength, and slowly ramped up the amplitude. Then on the incoming clip, I matched the parameters that my first clip ended on and inversely ramped the parameters either down or up. Add to this a slight gaussian blur and I think you might like it.
Hope that helps you, and I hope it was clear. And, if I remember correctly, you have to check the 'vertical' box in the Wave filter parameters.
PowerMac G4 dual 1.25, 12 1.5 Powerbook Mac OS X (10.3.9)