Thank goodness we remembered to TiVo 2005. If it wasn't stored in our mental hard drive, we wouldn't have believed what went on in La-La land this year.

To think we thought Brad and Jen were the ideal couple! That Tom Cruise was normal! That Nick and Jessica and were in it for love - not publicity! And that Michael Jackson might have been guilty!

This year opened our eyes all right - although we probably wished we had kept them shut:

BRAD THE CAD: Maybe he thought they were on a break. That's the only good explanation Brad Pitt could have for breaking poor Jennifer Aniston's heart by hooking up with his "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" vixen, Angelina Jolie. While Brad's perfect rep was blemished by the affair, it was hard to hate on Angelina - her adopting half the third world and all. Why didn't Elizabeth Taylor think of this tactic when she stole Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds?

NOW ON DVD: Just when they were getting to be one of Hollywood's veteran couples with three years' tenure, Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey called it quits - appropriately enough, a few hours before Turkey day. But "Newlyweds" was so over anyway. "Nick and Jessica: Divorce Court" will be much more fun (especially when Jessica's lawyer needs to explain that annoying legal term: A-L-I-M-O-N-Y).

CRUISE WOOS KATIE: Even the "mid-life crisis" excuse can't explain Cruise's eye-popping behavior: his couch-jumping "Oprah" antics; the proclamation of love for cutie Katie Holmes and ensuing engagement after two minutes of dating; their suck-face appearances on red carpets; his tangling with Matt Lauer on the "Today" show … next time, instead of jumping on a couch, Cruise should consider laying on one.

FEUD OF THE YEAR: Hell hath no fury like a postpartum mom questioned about her right to self-medicate. And Cruise (already on shaky ground after the whole couch thing) drew Brooke Shields' ire when he chastised her for taking pills to deal with debilitating depression following the birth of her first child. For the pregnant Holmes' sake, let's hope her delirium over Cruise is strong enough to last through shrieking cries, 2 a.m. feedings, diaper emergencies and the terrible twos.

THEY LIKED MIKE: For those who doubt the magic of Michael Jackson: over the course of his child molestation trial he showed up to court in pajamas, got caught with a mountain of porn, his DEFENSE witnesses admitted to childhood sleepovers with an adult Jackson - and he was still acquitted. The outcome might have been drastically different had he had shown up to court in tighty-whiteys.

GROOVE OVER: Oh no you didn't! "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" author Terry McMillan almost snapped her neck while unleashing a head-shaking, eye-rolling fury after finding out the boy-toy husband that she met on a Jamaican vacation was secretly gay. She took him to court to make sure the pre-nup was enforced. Let's hope she remembers all this when she vacations on Fire Island next year.

YO, SON, PEEP THE JAIL REMIX: Lil' Kim, Beanie Sigel and Cassidy were among the high-profile rappers who were behind bars as their albums were released. Don't they know that you can't do Patron-and-Porsche videos from a cellblock?

BOYS TO MEN: Britney Spears grew up this year with the birth of her son, Sean. Now if only her hubby would do the same - Kevin Federline is still smoking around poor Brit. As far as that fledgling rap career, given the frightful track leaked on the Internet, K-Fed shouldn't give up his day job. Wait - he doesn't have one.

It was a year when the American theater lost two of its giants - Arthur Miller and August Wilson.

"Monty Python's Spamalot" was Broadway's big musical winner, with "Doubt" 2005's most honored play. The popular and critical success of "Jersey Boys," the story of the Four Seasons, gave the much-maligned jukebox musical a reprieve after a trio of pop flops, "Good Vibrations," "All Shook Up" and "Lennon."

And Oprah came to Broadway - as a producer - with "Oprah Winfrey presents" listed above the title of "The Color Purple," a musical version of Alice Walker's novel of female emancipation and abuse.

"Doubt," which arrived with little advance fanfare in late 2004 at off-Broadway's Manhattan Theatre Club, blossomed even more on Broadway. It moved there in March with its original cast - Cherry Jones, Brian F. O'Byrne, Heather Goldenhersh and Adriane Lenox - intact.

John Patrick Shanley's drama of suspicion and certainty set in a Bronx parochial school took just about every best-play prize in sight - the Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama League Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, among others.

If "Spamalot," based on the merry British cult movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," captured the top Tony for best musical, its three competitors for the prize also came up winners. For one thing, all three of them - "The Light in the Piazza," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" - are still running.

Miller died in February at the age of 89, less than six months after his play, "Finishing the Picture," had its world premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. It was an extraordinary ending for the man who wrote "Death of a Salesman," one of the great American plays of the 20th century.

In "Picture," Miller ruminated on many things, including art, commerce, politics and the relationships between men and women, during the filming of a movie not unlike "The Misfits," which starred one of Miller's wives, Marilyn Monroe.

Wilson's announcement that he was dying of liver cancer startled the theater community. He died Oct. 2 at age 60, after having completed his monumental 10-play cycle chronicling the black experience in 20th-century America - one play for each decade. Some two weeks later, Broadway's Virginia Theatre was renamed for the playwright.

Page turner: Internet as new frontier in 2005

As sales stayed flat and attention spans short, the year in publishing unfolded like a whodunit the entire industry would love to solve: What sells, and how and where you can sell it?

Much of the story takes place online.

Bookstores and paper are only part of the market. If plans succeed, books will also be read on cell phones, promoted via blogs, e-mails and even videos, and purchased online by the page. If necessary, publishers will do the selling themselves. In 2005, Random House and Simon & Schuster joined Penguin Group (USA), Scholastic, Inc. and others who offer books directly off their Web sites.

Five years after the dot.com crash, the Internet is like a prized mass of undeveloped territory. In November, Google launched its much-anticipated - and much-litigated - "Print Library," a database of books scanned from five major libraries that led both the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to sue for copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com plans to start selling books by the page next year, with Google, and perhaps Microsoft and Yahoo, expected to try the same. Random House has already declared its interest in such a system.

In 2005, some books were destined for success all along, such as "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and David McCullough's "1776." Others came out of nowhere, like "On Bull--" But publicity didn't equal sales for Martha Stewart's "The Martha Rules" or help Barbara Ehrenreich's tale of white collar woes, "Bait and Switch," match the impact of her blue collar "Nickel and Dimed."

Nothing is certain in publishing, except for Oprah Winfrey. She made a medical advice book, "YOU," an instant smash; inspired hundreds of thousands to buy, if not read, the novels of William Faulkner, and helped Vintage Books make millions off of James Frey's addiction memoir, "A Million Little Pieces."