Ox Notes: April 1, 2008

After last night's Dancing with the Stars Performance Show, Samantha Harris gave TV Guide the scoop on Tom Bergeron's pretend vocal troubles and subsequent rescue by Survivor host Jeff Probst: "Basically, Tom has been wanting to do this with Ryan [Seacrest] for several seasons, but Probst was in the audience tonight."

Extra filed its own backstage report from the DwtS set, and Entertainment Tonight has video of their post-show interviews with the competitors. Another backstage report can be found here.

Former contestant Joey Lawrence is providing DwtS commentary for Yahoo! this season, alongside dancer Diane Mizota, who played Carrie Ann Inaba's twin sister in Austin Powers in Goldmember. The duo's comments about last night's show were insightful and frank, making their Buzz Session required viewing.

In other TV talent competition news, the new season of America's Got Talent will premiere on NBC on June 17.

ABC announced its summer schedule, which includes a new reality show called I Survived a Japanese Game Show. The show actually flies Americans to Japan to compete on one of their notoriously crazy game shows. The concept is brilliantly simple, and I love it. Check out a preview here.

Tommy Lee and Ludacris will compete on a Planet Green show called Battleground Earth (not to be confused with Mitt Romney's favorite novel, Battlefield Earth) to see who's the most eco-friendly musician. I'm not sure that Tommy Lee can correctly spell "recycle," so I don't know how informative the show will be. But I give Tommy a gold star for the effort.

I dare you to resist watching these Muppet Show Bloopers. Can't do it, can you?