A quick history for those who don't know who Edward Gorey is: he was an artist and writer best known for his stark, macabre drawings, often featuring children. Perhaps his best-known work is Gashlycrumb Tinies, the story of twenty-six children (each one representing a letter of the alphabet) who each meet a grisly demise ("R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire," etc).

Pete Emslie, a Canadian-born artist who works mostly as an illustrator for Disney merchandise and children's books, has a site with some really amazing caricatures, many of them television celebrities. His drawing of Larry King is on the right, but also check out this drawing of Don Rickles from Jeff Pidgeon's blog, where I first read about Emslie's site.

As Pidgeon points out, Emslie's caricature is more than just a good likeness, it also captures the essence of the real person. That mischievous grin and those bright ornery eyes tell volumes. I also love how King's shoulders are almost higher than his head.

How are you? That's good. I just wanted to take a moment from your usual reading of sitcom/drama/reality stuff and tell you about some specials and documentaries popping up this month that looked rather interesting to me. I hope you think so, too. Here's what I found:

If you like music, PBS has two specials coming up you might like: Great Performances: We Love Ella! A Tribute to the First Lady of Song, and Paul Simon: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The Ella special, which features contemporary artists performing songs by iconic jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. The Paul Simon tribute will air on June 27, also at 9:00 p.m. Simon is the first songwriter to receive the prize, and will be honored during a ceremony featuring several singers, songwriters, and other people of note, including his former collaborator, Art Garfunkel.

"Too Art For TV, Too" is the second annual art exhibit in New York City featuring artwork from animators in both the TV and movie industries. The exhibit opens on May 4 and runs through May 25 at the Stay Gold Gallery and does not feature work created for the animators' respective TV shows and movies, but rather original art "free from television's corporate demands."

Over thirty-five artists will have work on display, including the Venture Bros' Jackson Publick, and animators for SpongeBob SquarePants, Celebrity Deathmatch, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Code Name: Kid's Next Door and Blue's Clues. That list of show's alone surely makes this worth checking out, which I would do if I actually lived in New York City. You can check out the site here, which has some small samples of the work to be displayed. Jason DiOrio's bony monkey creature is my favorite.

[via Jackson Publick]

Stolen, a 2006 documentary by Rebecca Dreyfus and Susannah Ludwig, follows a group of men and women, most notably the late art detective Harold Smith, as they try to recover paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston in 1990. Thirteen paintings were taken from the museum by thieves disguised as policemen, including Rembrandt's The Sea of Galilee and Vermeer's The Concert. None of the paintings were ever recovered.

VIP Passport, a new late night series that kicks off November 3 in select markets features a group of folks from various reality series flying to some of the hottest night spots around the globe and having the time of their lives while kicking back with famous photographers, artists, designers, musicians, and whatever vapid hair-gelled meat puppets the producers decide to throw into the mix. Bored viewers who tune into the show will also be given the chance to win a new car every week, details of which can be found on the show's site, which will launch later this week along with a schedule and channel listing. The idea for the series came to the three producers, Larsen, Julien Lecomte and Dax Lugo while watching old videos of past parties at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion. I think the point that may have escaped them is that they were actually in the Playboy Mansion at the time, which, you know, may have added to the enjoyment just a little bit.