Find the work of Cory Casciato

This blog is primarily to index the various things I (Cory Casciato) have written around the rest of the Internet. The primary places to find my work are at the web site of the Westword, especially the BackBeat Online blog, where I post almost daily. My own web site, The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, is the place to go for my writings on zombies. You can find a new zombie post there every weekday, barring serious illness or other unavoidable circumstance. I usually end up posting late in the day, due to other responsibilities that take priority. You can also find the occasional piece at Topless Robot if you like geeky things arranged in a list format. You can also find a big, unsorted mess of photographs I have taken at copesounds.fotki.com (I’ll be cleaning that up and doing a best-of album for easy perusal at some future point).  If you love something I’ve done and want me to write a piece or take a picture for you (my rates are very reasonable!), or you want to praise me, or hate something I’ve done and wish to eviscerate me, you can reach me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

I’ll be posting links to specific pieces at least once a week, so check back if you like reading things. This post is sticky and may be updated from time to time, but other posts follow with links to specific pieces. Enjoy!

Like many a struggling writer these days, I do a lot of my writing directly for the web. And while many of the things I write for the web are pretty ephemeral newsy posts, or quick comments on current events, or whatever, some are more than that. Here are links to five of my favorite blog posts I’ve written.

• Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits – A report on the very first Rocky Mountin Fur Con, a furry convention.
• Hot Robot Action – A web feature on the Motoman Project, Denver’s very own robot performance art troupe. They like to make things go boom.
• Thank You for Sucking – Does your band suck? This is my way of saying thanks. Seriously.
• A Love Letter to the Jim Jims – Sort of the polar opposite of the “Thank You for Sucking” post. A long, self-indulgent, gushing review of the Jim Jims Bottom of the City EP.
• Twist that Knob, Push that Button, Make some Noise – An impassioned defense of electronic music and the people who make it. Fuck you rock snobs.

My newest endeavor is writing about horror movies for Examiner.com. So far, I have only managed to get a piece a week up there. You can read my review of End of the Line and my review of Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. There’s also a news item that is no longer relevant, but you can find it there too, if you care that much. If you are the bookmarking type, might I suggest bookmarking my index page for all my Examiner work?

Here’s my latest music feature for Westword: The gorgeous IDM of Iuengliss. Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments.

Here’s a handy index of all the full features (1,000-1,500 words) I’ve done for Westword‘s music section over the past two years. Again, as with the Topless Robot lists, I will update the blog as I write additional features by sticking them into their own post. This is just to get us all caught up to present day. In order of newest to oldest:

• Tauntaun – Denver retro-metal (think Metallica circa 1986)
• Dualistics – Another Denver band, this one an up-and-coming pop-friendly rock band.
• Everything Absent or Distorted (a love story) – One of my favorite Denver bands, kind of like a way less pretentious Arcade Fire.
• Matmos – The incredible IDM duo Matmos. These guys were a great interview.
• Does It Offend You, Yeah? – British dance rockers who’ve made quite a splash. This is probably one of the bigger “buzz” bands I’ve interviewed. Another really good interview and thus, a good story. And, no, it doesn’t.
• Astrophagus – Another stellar Denver band, these guys are kind of like a folkier Radiohead, circa OK Computer.
• Yeasayer – This is one of the best new bands to emerge in the last five years. And I got to interview them. They were also incredibly cool dudes. They made Pitchfork’s year-end best-of list.
• Vampire Weekend – Wait, maybe this is the biggest buzz band I’ve interviewed… I don’t know, you tell me.
• Kevin Drew – One of the Broken Social Scene main men strikes out on his (sort of) own and I talk to him about it.
• The National – My first feature for the paper. The National are great, a solid, mature rock band that integrates influences such as Joy Division without being slavish imitators (looking at you, Interpol). They made lots of year-end best-of lists, too.

Topless Robot is a blog that I write for on a semi-regular basis. They cover the geek scene — video games, anime, genre film, and things of that nature. In addition to news posts about stuff like action figures being released and trailers for geek film, they post horrible fan fiction, contests, bizarre videos and daily lists. The daily lists are where I come in. I’ve done a few of the things for the site. The latest one came out today, so it seemed a good time to make a post indexing my work for the site. They are pretty cool and fairly popular, so if you haven’t checked them out and you like geeky stuff, go there and rectify that situation.

My Lists (newest to oldest) -

• The 10 Best Movie Games for the Atari 2600
• Science Fiction’s 6 Excuses for Everything
• The 10 Most Easily Averted Mad Science Disasters
• The 10 Real-Life Ideas More Insane than Almost All Science Fiction
• The 8 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books Which Most Desperately Need Movies (co-written with editor Rob Bricken)
• The 10 Greatest Zombie Films of All Time (With Evidence)

My favorites were the zombie movie list and the real-world ideas more insane than sci-fi. The books that need adaptations generated the most discussion — close to 250 comments! When I do more lists for the site, I’ll probably just add them into their own post, but with a Topless Robot category and tag for easy access.