You don't have to follow French politics to know how David Martinon came to be the consul general in Los Angeles, though it helps. Something of a wunderkind as the young spokesman for President Nicolas Sarkozy, he had a falling out with his political mentor and got the Los Angeles post as a consolation prize in 2008. The job comes with plenty of entree to Hollywood and an official residence in Beverly Hills where Martinon and his staff entertain producers, directors, journalists, bloggers and assorted hangers-on. He has shown up at Scott Kaufer's monthly right-leaning media gatherings at Yamashiro, and is positioned by Laurie Pike in the March issue of Los Angeles as the representative of France who will have to deal with the Roman Polanski situation should the director ever make it back to L.A.

The writers of Hitch, Gran Torino, and Shakespeare in Love take turns saying thanks, then line up for a buffet lunch. Martinon sits among them at a poolside table on the lawn of the Residence of France, a cream-colored house that is understated compared to its McMansion neighbors in the flats. He is 38, and his wavy brown hair is going gray. In sunglasses and a dark suit, he looks like a young Bobby Kennedy cast in Men in Black. He apologizes for the shades, adding that he has spent a sleepless weekend on the phone with government ministers in Paris discussing Roman Polanski’s fight against extradition to the United States. When Polanski was arrested, Martinon says, the filmmaker’s lawyer called right away. “I knew before everyone.”

Speaking of: There's a dinner this evening at the British residence in Hancock Park for Dominick Chilcott, who is visiting from Washington where he is deputy head of mission at the British embassy.

Photo: Gregg Segal / Los Angeles magazine

Todd Ruiz, the former politics reporter at the Pasadena Star-News and hand at other newspapers hereabouts, has landed in Bangkok. He's blogging about the political turmoil there and calls his blog Reporter in Exile. From the first post two weeks ago:

I'm an economic and cultural refugee. I've dropped anchor in Bangkok, Thailand after a stint in Morocco. Too damn French there.

This blog might provide a window into life as an expat. It could bore you with rants and musings. There could possibly be chatter about all manner of profanities that appeal to this geek, from algorithms to Zoroastrianism. Pre-emptive apologies should I discuss the games I play.

Expect to see a lot of Thai politics - compelling stuff. Especially with everything going on at the moment. I'll provide a primer for those who are intrigued by such things.

More local blogosphere news and links

Only one California political hopeful got featured in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, answering Deborah Solomon's questions. That would be Mickey Kaus, who talks about why he's running against Sen. Barbara Boxer. Couple of tidbits:

DB: After years of sitting in a room in Southern California writing a blog for Slate magazine, you’re planning to challenge Senator Barbara Boxer in the Democratic primary in California in June. What led you to get into politics?

MK: I’ve been a blogger since 1999, and it hasn’t done the job. In California, the Democratic Party is worse than it was when I started. The only thing left is the interest groups. It used to be a functioning party independent of labor, and now that has atrophied.

[skip]

DB: Do you think we are entering the age of the amateur politician? As veterans like Evan Bayh drop out, amateurs like Al Franken and yourself are ascendant.

MK: I do not expect to win, and that is the difference between Franken and me. This is an issue-raising candidacy.

[skip]

DB: Are you concerned that you could jeopardize her campaign and help her Republican opponents, who include Carly Fiorina?

MK: Well, Carly Fiorina is a very weak opponent. The McCain people don’t like her; the Hewlett-Packard people don’t like her. Everywhere she has been she has not left a trail of admirers.

Kaus says he'll blog independently if Slate doesn't want him to continue while he's an official candidate. At Slate, he was being paid $90,000+ until a recent pay cut for everyone knocked him to down into the 80s, he says.

Politics notes: KNBC's "NewsRaw" will be airing tonight's Whitman/Poizner debate at 5:30, on digital channel 4.2....City Attorney Carmen Trutanich will talk about his prosecution of supergraphics violators on tonight's "Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW at 7:30. City Councilman Jose Huizar is also on talking about the 2010 census.

Sylvie Drake was the theater critic of the Los Angeles Times for a couple of decades. She shows up now in the video series Old Jews Telling Jokes; the video begins with 30 seconds (at least) of ads so I won't embed it, but you can watch it here.

Free rides for local politicians, Hollywood and Barbara Boxer, Villaraigosa's carbon surcharge and the New Yorker looks at Hollywood publicists. Plus more, after the jump.

The New York Times' Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes set up a piece examining the future of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter by saying the "feisty tradition of entertainment trade reporting and criticism...has been so severely tested in recent weeks that some wonder whether the entire era is drawing to a close." There was last week's elimination of the top staff critics at Variety, followed by the lawsuit from the producers of "Iron Cross," and with the increasing competition from the web the question now is whether the trades' style of journalism "can even survive."

Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder David Beckham suffered a ruptured left Achilles' playing in Italy tonight for AC Milan. (Video) The injury is serious enough to quash his hopes to compete one more time for England in this year's World Cup. It may also finish off his U.S. soccer cameo with the Galaxy, and the English soccer press is speculating this could be the end of Beckham's playing career. The Times of London:

Beckham was unchallenged when he pulled up in the 88th minute of last night’s 1-0 victory. He grasped his left ankle before making a “broken” gesture with his hands. He limped off the field in tears, repeating: “It’s broken, it’s broken,” according to reporters.

“David’s injury makes us sick,” Leonardo, the Milan coach, said. “When I think of his personal history, everything I know about him, how hard he works, I feel so bad for him."

In the Times of Los Angeles, soccer expert Grahame Jones writes the injury "probably will spell the end of his international career [and] could mean that his Major League Soccer career also will come to an end." Beckham was scheduled to fly to Finland for surgery as soon as Monday.

BBC Radio: "The news is absolutely devastating for David Beckham..." Story with audio

Photo: Times of London

Graves was found dead Sunday at home in Pacific Palisades, the L.A. Times says, citing law enforcement sources. It appears that Graves died of natural causes. He starred in the television series "Mission: Impossible" and has movie and TV credits that span 1942-2010 and include "Stalag 17," "Route 66," "Airplane!" and "Airplane II - The Sequel."

Remembering Graves in Pacific Palisades

Isn't this gorgeous? In honor of Angels Flight re-opening Monday to paying passengers, let's return to the days when the funicular originally called the Los Angeles Incline Railway was an integral part of Downtown life. Passengers paid a penny (later a nickel) to ride Olivet and Sinai between 3rd and Hill streets and the neighborhood of hotels and rooming houses on Bunker Hill. In 1931, artist and architect Millard Sheets interpreted Bunker Hill in this canvas he called "Angel's Flight." It hangs in LACMA's Art of the Americas Building. LACMA:

The young women in the painting -- the model for both of whom was the artist’s wife, Mary -- may be standing on either the observation tower or a railway platform on the hilltop. Sheets omitted the famous cable railway and chose to view the scene looking north toward the stairway. He did not depict the stairs as straight, as they actually were, but showed them as meandering up the hill, thereby exaggerating the sense of height.

See Sheets' Tenement Flats, which hung in the White House during FDR's time, for another interpretation of Bunker Hill life in the era. It also leaves out the railway.

Add Angels Flight: Olivet and Sinai, the original cars, ferried invited passengers this weekend. Service resumes Monday at 6:45 a.m. Angels Flight has been closed since 2001, when Sinai broke loose and rolled down to strike Olivet, killing passenger Leon Praport and injuring seven others.

Add Sheets: Best known for his watercolors and the mosaic murals on Home Savings and Loan buildings around California, Sheets painted this beauty in oil. He taught at the famed Chouinard Art Institute in the Westlake district and was director of the Otis Art Institute in the 1950s.

"Angel's Flight" via LACMA Collections Online

Abelardo de la Peña Jr., the editor of LatinoLA.com, lived for the longest time in more outlying parts of town like Wilmington, El Sereno and South Pasadena. In October, he and his wife and daughter decided to give Downtown life a try in South Park. He's been blogging about the transition at Downtown Lalo, most recently about helping a visitor who seemed a bit lost.

I asked her if she wanted a ride. My wife looked at me funny, but she understood. No time for a young lady … her name was Marie Helene, she’d come up from South Gate, but was really from France, was trying to get a job as a 3D animator … to be walking through the “historic corridor” at night....

Driving back, my wife and I talked about how strangers seem to gravitate to us for directions, assistance, advice, etc. Must be because we are comparatively small and non-threatening.

He's also written about the Central Library, where his wife works. A good reminder that our friends at the libraries are, as always, likely to take the worst of the city's budget-cutting pain.

More Downtown blogs: Blogdowntown and View From a Loft keep extensive blogrolls.