A West Hollywood city ordinance overrides any no-pet clause in your apartment lease if you have HIV/AIDS.

We just noticed a new “Japanese” restaurant a ten-minute walk from our house, at Robertson and Melrose: Fat Fish. We checked it out on the web and it sounded great: an upscale-istic fusion-ocious Asian French sushi bar with exotic green-tea margaritas, or something like that.

It could have been a bad sign that the place was completely empty at 6pm but then again that’s early for West Hollywood. No-one was at the entrance or noticed us so we walked in. We started off with some sweet and sour shrimp which any Chinese-American restaurant in the 1950s would have done a better job of. Service was perfunctory. The asparagus tempura was a soggy mess; perhaps they thought the elegant “presentation” (stacking them up like Lincoln logs) would make up for that. The “Tuna Trio”, a combination of tuna tartare, tuna sashimi, and seared albacore, looked and tasted like it had been put together by a guest worker hired the day before, which it probably had been. The “Ichi Roll” was some dry salmon meat and yellowtail wrapped up in some kind of unidentified covering and perhaps deep-fried? It seems unlikely it had been made that same day. We passed on the proffered dessert of tempura ice cream. After we gave them our credit card they took ten minutes to bring back the receipt to sign, then acted put out when we asked why it was taking so long.

We had a weird sense as we made our painful way through this meal that this was not a real Japanese restaurant. By Japanese, I mean menus designed and dishes cooked by people that trained in Japan and with Japanese chefs. Frankly, a Japanese restaurant would not dare to serve the crap that Fat Fish does. Later we found out—Fat Fish is run by some non-Japanese restaurateurs who are moving upscale from the low-ball sushi takeout business. Suddenly it all makes sense. Samurai on La Cienega is another sorry example of a non-Japanese Japanese restaurant. The kim-chi on the menu is a dead giveaway.

Next Fat Fish says they are opening another location in Westwood. It’s really too bad that there are so few enough people who actually know what Japanese food is supposed to taste like that establishments like this manage to stay open.

It’s impossible to miss Christoph Bull in the organ scene here in Los Angeles. I think I first heard him play at one of the weekly concerts at First Congregational Church, which lays claim to having the largest church organ in the world—actually, three organs controlled through a single console. After playing some of my favorite Bach and Reger pieces in his clean, powerful style, he asked the audience for a theme to improvise on, and ended up choosing mine: “Michelle”, on which he did a great job. That reminds me: he promised to send me the recording on a CD and never got around to doing that. He also played a concert at the new organ in the Catholic cathedral here.

Last week Sakiko and I went to a concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall that he called “Organica 2004”. I was surprised at the huge turnout for an organ concert; that was probably due both to the popularity of UCLA’s music series, and Bull’s mastery of the e-mail medium: he’s the Howard Dean of the organ world, complete with his own website, although he doesn’t have a blog yet.

The organ console was down at the bottom of the orchestra pit and then raised dramatically, facing forward, to the level of the stage, spotlighted, as the concert began. On the screen behind the console were projected huge images ranging from shots of the actual pipes producing the sounds we were hearing above the ceiling, to real-time shots of his hands on the manuals and feet on the pedalboard, to abstract kaleidoscopic images.

Bull is trying to pull the organ into the 21st century with his Organica series. In addition to solid renditions of the classics, and performances of his own compositions, he did a beautiful duet with an electronic violin, and in the final piece, Toccata and Fugue in D minor which we’ve actually all heard a bit too often, he pulled off the amazing stunt of playing the organ at the same time as a synthesizer placed to his side.

You may be thinking that this sounds too weird and contrived to really be any good. But actually the effect was glorious and exhiliterating. And there’s more: Bull was actually singing some of the songs. He has an excellent voice, and his rendition of Lennon and McCartney’s Blackbird was ethereal. He turned half around, facing the audience, playing the organ with one hand and one foot, and sang to us.

Some may find this all contrived, but I it worked wonderfully. Christoph Bull is our new Virgil Fox.

I visited the Japanese-American National Museum, in the middle of LA’s Little Tokyo, and was very impressed by their permanent exhibit focused on the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II. We had walked by it dozens of time but never bothered to go inside.

I had never heard the sad fact that when the US let the detainees out in 1944 they then immediately proceeded to draft all of the eligible males.

There must be more gyms per capita around where I live in West Hollywood than anywhere else on earth with the possible exception of Manhattan.

Right up on Santa Monica, a 10-minute walk, is 24 Hour Fitness, a capable if boring chain. That’s the main place me and Sakiko work out.

But the training we do once or twice a week with Mike is in training gyms. We started off at Todd Tramp’s at La Cienega and Melrose, also a 10-minute walk away, a testosterone-oriented place with the eponymous Todd sitting at the front desk looking oh so muscular. Later, we spent six months working out at the trendy Angel City Gym on Melrose, just an eight-minute walk from our house, right past the Epicurean School of Culinary Arts where Sakiko and I have taken a number of cooking classes. This is the gym where they have $5,000 pieces of original artwork on the wall for you to gaze at while doing your gluteal extensions. Or perhaps you’d like to go out onto the second-floor balcony, complete with gazebo, to do your end-of-workout crunches.

Later we moved to Workout Warehouse, on LaPeer between Melrose and Santa Monica, a twelve-minute walk, the grunge gym par excellence, where they make a point of not decorating. Lots of celebs here, though; we’ve seen Tim Allen, Raquel Welch, Keanu Reeves, Brendon Fraser, Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina), Jennifer Tilly (the divorcee Jim Carrey represented in Liar Liar), and of course the stunning Rachel Weisz.

Most recently we switched to Exclusive, at La Cienega and Holloway, a block north of Santa Monica; this one might be a fifteen-minute walk. Too soon to judge this place, but it seems very laid-back.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The other day we peeked into a building across the street from the iconic Urth Caffe and found it was a gym, Libby Healthworks. Above the Starbucks on Santa Monica is Body Works. I’d guess in a fifteen-minute walking radius of our house there’s probably a total of fifteen gyms.

Bush is in initiative mode now. And obesity is the topic of the moment. Why not announce an anti-obesity “vision” for America? He could start off with tax credits for gym membership, workout equipment, personal training fees, and nutritional consultation. Or maybe this is something the Democrats should pick up on.

Bastide is considered one of the top new restaurants in LA. Esquire named it one of the twenty best new restaurants of 2003 in America. And it’s just walking distance from our house, on Melrose Place! We had to try this out.

But wait! It’s supposed to be impossible to get reservations there! Wrong. We were eating there about four hours after our phone call.

There’s no a la carte menu here, just three tasting menus. The “fig” menu looked interesting; that’s right, every course had something to do with figs. We had the “traditional menu” for $90. The Bastide menu has an extra course or two for $100. We were offered another 10-course menu called the “Chef’s menu” for $125. We went with the traditional menu—which had two choices for each of the major courses.

We started off with some champagne, with some guidance from the rather haughty sommelier. But I guess all sommeliers are haughty, right?

Amuse-bouche was a little scallop in a sweet wine sauce with caviar on top.

For the first course, Sakiko had a salad, shrimp on a bed of ratatouille-like vegetables, very finely diced, with a pronounced tarragon flavor, encircled in a cucumber strip, with an herby green on top. The vegetables were good but the shrimp lacked personality. Bob had a melon crab tortelloni, on a very sweet jello made from a Sauterne-like wine, a single chive on top. I have to admit that the juxtaposition of crab and melon was interesting, but I’m still not that much of a melon fan. I found the crab filling to be uninspired.

For the second course, Sakiko had Mediterranean fish soup, poured over cheese and bread. The waiter went to great lengths to explain to us that they could not call it a bouillabaisse, since it was made not out of Mediterrean rockfish, but local rockfish. In any case I think fish stew is one of the most surpassingly good flavors our civilization has invented, and Bastide does this as well as anyone.

Bob had eggplant caviar, eggplant mousse, and trout, in almond sauce. Little caramelized almonds on top of the eggplant mousse tied the dish together a bit. The eggplant dishes were lovely and had great texture. The trout (which I guess was French, since they called it a “truite”), was fine but nothing to write home about.

For the third and main course, Sakiko had ribeye along with a tender ossobucco-like piece of meat, and crunchy tasty salty good stuff in a bone. Sakiko’s dish was quite the artistic layout. The mushroom ragout was possibly the best single preparation of the entire meal. But I found her ribeye both less flavorful and tougher than I would have preferred.

Bob had pieces of squab, and zucchini flower stuffed with chicken pate. I found the chicken pate to be flavorless; actually, I forgot what it was and couldn’t even tell, so I had to ask the waiter!

We were competently paired with a glass of interesting wine for all of the courses. I didn’t study the wine list in depth, but there seems to be a lot there at reasonable prices.

Bastide has a great dessert menu. They have eight or so preparations, each around a particular theme. Sakiko had “Lavendar”, a fabulous thing involving ice cream and meringue. Bob had “Apple”, which meant apple crepes, caramelized apple, and apple ice cream. The lady at the next table had “Chocolate”, which among other things some chocolate soup which I thought I’d like to try next time I go back.

Bottom line: this is a great restaurant, one of the best in LA. It could be nearly perfect if it drilled down and tuned some of its dishes. But even then it’s questionable whether the experience is worth $200 per person.

Visited this posh steakhouse in the heart of Beverly Hills. Pre-dinner martini was fabulous. The soft-shell crab appetizer was heavenly. Then we split the bone-in rib-eye, cooked to perfection. Great big red Cabernets recommended by the house—Hess and St. Francis.

The valet told us that recent celebrity visitors included Brad Pitt and his wife (who’s that?), and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The new LA Cathedral was designed by Rafael Moneo, the Spanish architect who also designed the Getty Center here in LA. Judge the design for yourself—to me it looks like he thought he was designing another museum instead of a church.

On April 30, 2003, Sakiko and I got the chance to attend one of the first concerts on the new organ at the new cathederal. This is a Dobson organ, with 4 manuals and 105 ranks. One unique thing about it is its height—85 feet, in order to fit into the dimensions of the cathedral.

At the console was Christoph Bull, a well-known local organist known for his great improvisations—one of which he graced us with at this concert as well. The program included Vierne, Alain, and Durufle—maybe Bull thinks this is a French romantic organ at heart? Bull is the organist who at a concert last year at First Congregational Church picked my suggestion for an improvisation theme—the Beatles’ “Michelle”.

More information about the LA Cathedral organ.