living in new york city in the late 90s into the 2000s definitely had its perks.  chief among them, for me, was a store called mondo kim's, which was an east village institution. three stories: ground floor, cds; 2nd floor, vinyl, 3rd floor, movies.  kim's boasted of easily one of the widest selections of art films in the world available to rent. they even had illegal bootlegs, and plenty of them.  rumour had it that matthew barney's lawyer came in once and forced them to pull their unauthorized copy of the cremaster cycle off the shelf.  i spent hours in that place, delighting in feeling overwhelmed, like a kid in a candy store unsupervised. so, after i'd had my fill of serious fare, after i'd seen my fair share of films by eric rohmer, igmar bergman and aleksander sokurov (dude! this guy was tarkovsky's understudy! dude!!!), i began to seek out sexier selections.  i delved into the ouvre of takashi miike and duly had my impresssionable socks knocked off.  one night, dj lionshead and i took home a sexploitation movie for kicks.  it's called deadly weapons, and is about a woman who murders people with her extra large breasts.  we laughed uncomfortably for the first fifteen minutes or so, at the absurdity of it all, in awe of the fact that this film actually got made.  we definitely turned it off before it reached it's climax (zing!).  i certainly expected that film to cause me to feel some feelings.  still i found i'd gotten more than i bargained for.  few films have left me depressed quite like that one.  emphasis on the exploitation part of sexploitation.  another night, i discovered that kim's had an entire section entitled "pinky violence".  i liked the name.  i liked the sexy japanese ladies wielding weapons on the box covers of the dvds.  this was long before there was a wikipedia entry on pink films.  so, i lacked any kind of context for this fare.  i'd been disgusted by sexploitation films before, but these 1970s films were from japan, the land of the rising sun. everything is more sophisticated in japan, my naive white american male self thought.  one film jumped off the shelf at me, called sex and fury.  i'd just finished reading faulkner's the sound and the fury.  this film's title, therefor, drew me in.  i was pleasantly surprised to discover that this film was among the source materials shamelessly copied by tarantino for his terrible kill bill films.  prior to my memborship at kim's, my entire concept of edginess in the movies had been supplied by the work of david lynch and quentin tarantino.  lynch's work maintained a modicum of legitimacy with me, but, by this point, i'd seen enough posters of john travolta and samuel l. jackson on college dorm room walls, sporting mullets and brandishing heat, next to black lit bob marley posters, to permanently cheapen any usage of the word 'motherfucker' in my mind's eye.  so, the other day, perusing the dark corners of music journalism online, i discovered the fact that there is this guy who, as a labor of love, compiled an unauthorized collection of soundtrack music from pinky violence films.  groovy.   

_alibi