Pitchfork

Stephen Colbert took a swipe at our favorite Japanese-folk-tale-loving indie proggers when he premiered a new segment called "Who's Riding My Coattails Now?" on last night's "Colbert Report". After showing a fake GQ cover placing him next to Jay-Z in the magazine's "Men of the Year" issue and then accusing Alex Trebek and "Jeopardy" of stealing his ideas, Colbert pointed out Colin Meloy and co.'s previously reported "Re-Animate the Decemberists" contest, which asks fans to take green screen footage of the band performing and add animation to create the video for "O Valencia!". Apparently, it's strikingly similar to his own "Green Screen Challenge", which featured green screen footage of Colbert with a light saber.

How did Colbert respond to this act of plagiarism? He issued a "Second Green Screen Challenge": "to edit me into the Decemberists' green screen challenge... Let's see how well they perform their trademark brand of hyper-literate prog rock when I'm slicing off their legs at the knee." In order to make this happen, he is offering his green screen footage for enterprising fans to use in their entries to the Decemberists' contest, which must be in by December 15 to be considered.

For the record, we are totally behind this idea and hope that November 29, 2006 is forever remembered as the day "When the War Came".

(By the way, this isn't the first time the Decemberists have caught the attention of a mainstream TV talking head. Apparently, there's a guy on SportsCenter who loves 'em.)