All seems well in Tinseltown again.

Tom and Katie are about to become proud parents. So are Brad and Angelina.

Dodger Stadium looks better than ever, and Jack Nicholson looks as though he's had a bit of a makeover, too.

The beautiful people are still beautiful. The Clippers are no longer pitiful.

And the Lakers are back in the NBA playoffs.

Yes, those Lakers. You might remember them from a few years back when Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal were buddies, courtside seats cost $2,000 a game, and the biggest problem owner Jerry Buss had was figuring out how many diamonds to put on the championship rings.

Not everything has changed.

Sitting near Nicholson will still set you back a mortgage payment or two. The Laker Girls still look Hollywood perfect, and Bryant still shoots every time he touches the ball within 25 feet of the basket.

But even in Tinseltown not everything goes according to script. The dynasty was unraveled quickly when Kobe and Shaq started feuding, Kobe and Phil stopped talking, and Kobe had to go to Colorado to do a lot of explaining.

Things got so bad that B-list celebrities were allowed to sit at courtside.

Gone are the old Lakers who used to swagger into the playoffs knowing they could beat anyone.

In their place is a team just happy to still be playing this coming weekend.

"It doesn't really seem like we're overly jumping for joy, but it is a great accomplishment for us," Bryant said after the Lakers beat Phoenix to clinch a playoff spot Sunday. "We came from last season when we didn't make it. This season nobody expected us to make it and here we are."

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