LOS ANGELES -- Before Thursday night's big elimination episode, we decided to comb the area and see how Hollywood fits into the rest of the world, and how `` American Idol'' fits into Hollywood. (View photos by Sun Chronicle photographer Mark Stockwell in the photo gallery.)

Turns out Hollywood doesn't fit into the rest of the world at all, and the star-making `` American Idol'' seems right at home.

The Sunset Strip, as it heads into Beverly Hills, looks like a movie set. Everything is colorful and nearly surreal, as if for show.

The billboards are gigantic and frequent, sometimes taking up the side of an entire building, and aren't limited to particular topics. It's equal opportunity advertising for jeans, movies, and TV shows, alike, though we saw nothing for `` American Idol.''

Except for the high-rise buildings, every establishment seems to have some element of nostalgia or the offbeat to it. Even the diner we went to for breakfast had free valet parking, and the best orange juice I've ever tasted in my life. Our waiter Ernie said it was freshsqueezed, though not from the orange trees behind the diner. (I asked).

The area has the flavor of a living, breathing amusement park. The eye doesn't know just where to look.

Beverly Hills is like the Earth-version of Utopia. We took a more extensive drive through the area today, and I struggled to take in what appeared to be a terrestrial heaven -- everything green, plush, perfectly manicured and sculpted, as if trimming shrubs and cultivating grass is someone's full-time job. It probably is.

The houses look like castles in a fairy tale, and palm trees line both sides of the streets, rising impossibly high.

On Sunset Boulevard many of the palm trees are dying. Walking down the Sunset Strip last night, staff photographer Mark Stockwell and I both tripped over several dead branches that had fallen in the street, as if they were LA's version of foliage.

But in Beverly Hills, there are no dead branches lying on sidewalks.

The palm trees are green, gorgeous and gigantic, physical marvels that somehow manage to remain upright.

The lawns are also an impossible green. I don't know what kind of fertilizer they use, but it must be a magic one. Hedges line the edge of many yards, almost a polite way of saying `` Keep Out.''

Nonetheless, Beverly Hills, home to the Loews Beverly Hills Hotel, where the `` American Idol'' contestants are staying, is nearly impossible to describe.

Mark said to me that it's the kind of place you just can't capture in one picture. I had to agree. Almost as impressive are the Hollywood Hills. Most of the city is laid out in a grid pattern where all the streets meet at right angles. Not so in the hills, a labyrinth of steep streets, curved and narrow roads with houses clustered closely together on each side. The hills don't have the luxury of strict organization and planning the rest of the city does -- though they seem to have nearly every other kind of luxury.

Some of the houses actually look fake, and the rocks look like plastic formations you might find at a miniature golf course. At different times Mark and I both had to ask, `` Is that real?''