Ox Notes: February 22, 2008

CBS is following NBC's lead and will make episodes of classic TV series like Star Trek and Melrose Place available for free on the Internet.

Despite the promise of an acting career after her popular run on Dancing with the Stars, Season 2 finalist Stacy Keibler is still stuck making guest appearances on ABC shows. This time, she shows up in the season finale of October Road.

HBO has nabbed the rights to the Iraq war documentary Taxi to the Dark Side after the Discovery Channel announced plans to shelve the film until 2009. HBO will premiere the doc in September, just ahead of the presidential election.

China has extended the primetime ban on the biggest threat to Chinese culture: SpongeBob SquarePants.

A reporter for the Village Voice went undercover to a taping of Iron Chef America and discovered that there's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in the show. Well, mostly just smoke.

This afternoon, Anthony Bourdain will announce the winners of the first Golden Clog Awards at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Bourdain and his pal, Michael Ruhlman, created the awards for achievement, or lack thereof, in a variety of food-related categories.

Saturday at noon ET, MTV turns its network over to the guys from Jackass for 24-hours of stunt-themed programming. Jackass ringleader, Johnny Knoxville, has recovered in time for the event after tearing his urethra trying to back-flip a motorcycle.

Zap2It has a recap of last night's episode of Survivor: Micronesia. I wasn't expecting the vote to go down the way it did, and I'm not sure Cirie made the right strategic move. She went from swing vote to agenda-setter in no time, which should make everyone on her tribe nervous. The fact that she's not an asset during challenges makes it that much easier to eliminate her.

The challenges this week were fantastic. Mud pit pseudo-capture-the-flag was exciting to watch, and nature timed a downpour perfectly to highlight the consequences of losing a Reward Challenge and being the tribe without a tarp to sleep under. The coconut basketball Immunity Challenge was also fantastic because it allowed Jonathan to do some hilarious trash talking. The longer Penner sticks around, the happier I'll be.