The trickle of local Obama supporters receiving appointments as ambassadors is not quite a flood yet, but it's reached stream status. The latest is Munger, Tolles & Olson partner Vilma S. Martinez, the former president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She has been nominated to be envoy to Argentina. "More or less an icon in the civil rights community," says MALDEF board member Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law, in today's Daily Journal.

Previously: Charles Rivkin to France, Nicole Avant expected to go to the Bahamas.

John McCain will do the deed at a Meg Whitman event today in Orange County. That will give her McCain, Mitt Romney and Pete Wilson in the early stages of the Republican shakeout for governor. Michael Blood/AP

Note: No Morning Buzz today. But there are morning headlines over at LA Biz Observed.

It hasn't been called the Showcase for awhile now, and many longtimers still think of the movie house on La Brea Avenue south of Melrose as the Gordon. Doesn't matter now. Chris Nichols of the L.A. Conservancy's Modern Committee says the theater once run by Cineplex Odeon closed this month. One theory: lack of parking. It opened in 1938. There's some history at LottaLiving.com and Cinema Treasures.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is adapting to the new media order by revamping his official website to be more newsy under the guidance of Joel Sappell, who used to oversee the Los Angeles Times website. The new site is intended to bypass the media and communicate directly with Yaroslavsky's constituents. There's a job open for a part-time web reporter to write the stories that journalists used to do, though I assume a Zev-friendly spin will be, um, strongly encouraged. From JournalismJobs:

Looking for a new challenge and a new venue for those writing and reporting skills? Then help us create a paradigm-shifting website for one of Los Angeles’ most effective and popular elected officials, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. With fewer journalists covering our political institutions, we’re looking for a writer with sharp editorial skills to produce web stories across a variety of topics, including health, transportation, arts, environment, criminal justice and the economy. Our goal is to connect and communicate with constituents on issues that impact their lives and intersect their interests.

This part-time job is best suited for applicants who’ve worked at newspapers, have superior story instincts, appreciate the complexities of government and have embraced the visual storytelling and community-building of the Internet.

In addition to running LATimes.com until a 2007 shakeup, Sappell had been a projects and city editor at the paper and an investigative reporter. He joined Yaroslavsky's staff as Deputy for Special Projects last June, after taking a Times buyout (which he explained here.)

City Attorney-elect Carmen Trutanich announced that former Speaker Robert Hertzberg and former District Attorney Robert Philibosian will co-chair his transition team. Jane Usher, the former president of the city planning commission, will be the transition's executive director. When Trutanich takes office on July 1, his chief of staff will be former prosecutor William Carter, a partner at Musick Peeler, and the chief deputy will be Curt Livesay, who used to be the chief deputy for District Attorney Steve Cooley. Hertzberg and Usher are intriguing for having served in key spots for Antonio Villaraigosa — Hertzberg as chairman of the mayor's transition in 2005.

Bios in PDF form

E! News' Ken Baker thinks about the why behind celebrity obsession?

kenbakernow im trying to figure out why we are all so obsessed with jon+kate???

Baker is familiar to LA Observed readers for his TV appearances on E! and elsewhere, of course, and also as a multi-faceted author and as the former bureau chief at Us Weekly.

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Over at Run On, Sara Catania wraps up her career as a marathon runner for charity.

I ran longer and faster than I ever have in my life and I raised plenty more than I was asked to....

We stand. We breathe. We wait. We feel the adrenaline, which, according to Runner's World, "comes with getting excited for a race, [and] which also has the power to boost confidence and kill pain." Good.

The horn sounds and we're swept up in a giant mass of forward motion. We're somewhere in the middle of this massive crowd, but everyone is calm.

This does not at all resemble my typical crowd experiences, like the time I was on the green at Soldier Field for a Bruce Springsteen concert and was nearly suffocated in the press toward the stage.

It's a nice closer to 35 weeks of Run On. Read the whole thing.

Mayor Villaraigosa's statement on Douglas Barry is after the jump.

More by Steve Greenberg. Click on the cartoon to view it full-sized.

The financial crunch at Los Angeles magazine that helped nudge editor in chief Kit Rachlis to step down earlier this month has claimed three more stalwarts. Senior editors Jesse Katz, Steve Oney and Dave Gardetta are leaving the magazine, the staff was told. They were reclassified as editors recently (some say to placate the suits at Emmis headquarters in Indianapolis) but in reality they have been the backbone of the magazine's writing heft. All were brought in by Rachlis after he took over in 2000 and assembled a team of writers to go after big stories in L.A. From what I hear, Rachlis has been under pressure to emphasize service features, and this week's cuts suggest that the longer, difficult "serious" stories will be rarer. The magazine under Rachlis won its share of awards and national accolades, but the financial picture has unraveled quickly: It was just a year ago or so that the magazine was talking about having its best year ever. Seeking more details.

* OK, got some more details: But not a lot — there's reluctance at the magazine to talk on the record. I'm revising some of the analysis for now, and noting that some people around the magazine insist the financial situation at Los Angeles is no more dire than at other magazines that have lost a lot of high-end advertising dollars.

An investigative series in the Contra Costa Times up north says that an environmental program to benefit the delicate Sacramento-San Joaquin delta instead provided cash and cheap water for wealthy landowners in Kern County. The paper includes in that group the holdings of Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the Beverly Hills power couple. Excerpt:

No one appears to have benefitted more than companies owned or controlled by Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire, philanthropist and major political donor whose companies, including Paramount Farms, own more than 115,000 acres in Kern County. Resnick's water and farm companies collected about 20 cents of every dollar spent by the program.

• Inside the Obama events in Beverly Hills last night, with names. Variety
• Local Obama campaign finance co-chair Charles Rivkin was nominated to be ambassador to France and co-chair Nicole Avant is expected to be named ambassador to the Bahamas. Variety
• Paul Koretz leads by 702 votes with fewer than 1,000 left to count and is closing in on officially becoming the councilman from the 5th district. LAT
• Carmen Trutanich's strength in the Valley, where he won four of five council districts, was the key to his win as City Attorney, says Rick Orlov. DN
• Councilmen Dennis Zine and Bernard Parks want to strip Mayor Villaraigosa of the power to appoint a majority of the board members that guide the two city pension boards. LAT
• City budget approved by the council yesterday calls for some 2,000 layoffs and cuts on average 15% from city departments. DN
• Disgruntled LAPD cop who has made enemies in the department is bitter about a SWAT raid on his home in 2006. LAT
• Anti-Prop. 8 forces are divided about the strategic wisdom of the federal lawsuit filed by lawyers David Boies and Theodore Olson. LAT, DN, Bee, Mercury
• Tale of the murder case that involves the son of ex-Speaker Fabian Nunez is a story of bad little suburban boys. LA Weekly
• The airport commission has plans to upgrade the food and retail concessions in eight LAX terminals, but the column talking about the issues doesn't explore the role of local politics in selecting what gets sold at the airport. LAT
• Chronicling the demise of L.A.'s newsstands. LA Weekly
• The cover story in Our Weekly proclaims polygamy rights, and particularly black polygamy, as the next big civil rights fight. Our Weekly
• A proposed $2-billion real estate development that would replace the historic Hollywood Park racetrack and change the face of Inglewood may get the city's go-ahead tonight. LAT
• Philadelphia Daily News has a column on the brutal attack and beating there of the son of Times columnist Steve Lopez. Philly.com
• Dolores Hope celebrated her 100th birthday in the backyard of the family compound in Toluca Lake. LAT
• Something extremely weird, and a little bit wonderful, has happened in the world of Internet retail: the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt. Meghan Daum column
• Tonight is Heal the Bay's annual Bring Back the Beach benefit dinner at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. Info

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