A seemingly nondescript apartment in So Cal - but a place where, in the late 1990s, my gf lived (cue Bob Seger “Night Moves,” suggestions of fumbling, drunk making out possibly with braces on teeth and cherry Chapstick on lips, the ripping off of clothes in a chocolate brown Camaro, the smoking of not sativa or indica but simply ‘Thai stick’).

And a place where, on New Year’s Eve in 1999 (or was it 2001?), I was served up a lesson in what we now call “fake news” or let’s just call it the “malleability of fact.”

That New Year’s Eve I had the flu, so rather than the usual festivities I stayed in bed, reading “London Fields” by Martin Amis, drinking lots of lemon-ginger-honey tea. From the house next door to the left I heard the countdown,”10-9-8…” and a chorus of “Happy New Year!” Then, about a minute later, from a house a few doors to the right: “10-9-8… Happy New Year!” Then again from a house across the alley.

This was pre Apple phone. Time was not Apple-synched. One person’s midnight was another person’s 11:58 p.m.

Ah, the glorious past, the gravity of years, the quicksand of nostal