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HE plot of the juvenile (yet hilarious) 2010 Hollywood flick The Hangover goes something like this: a bunch of friends travel to Las Vegas, get inadvertently high on “roofies” and wake up with moerse headaches the following morning.

Because I suffer from a hint of pseudo-exceptionalism, I have often expressed the opinion that there’s nothing special about the endings and beginnings of calendar years. I may or may not have called a calendar year a “totally random cycle of 365 free rides around the sun” to cultivate an aura of intellectualism.

But even I have to admit that I’m suffering from a figurative hangover from that wacky 366-day cycle (a leap year) called 2016. By the time Carrie Fisher and her mom, Debbie Reynolds, had passed away within 24 hours of each other, I was