Imitation

Real life can pose much in terms of material for comic strips, television shows, and movies. My wife was a nurse and she likes to have medical shows on while sewing or doing whatever else she does. I suspect some of the most successful shows or comics have imitated real life in some sense or another, albeit with some unique twists of drama.

In the newspaper of 3/25/25, the Family Circus comics had Billy with his classmates in line to get their eyes checked. Billy says to a child behind him, "I didn't study for an eye test, did you?" It reminded me of when I was in fourth grade waiting in line for my eye check and never having had one before. I was wondering how it would turn out and if I would pass, particularly since I never studied for it. It turned out I did not pass, and had my first trip to an eye doctor, and shortly thereafter my first set of spectacles. Trips to the eye doctor have now become more common. Who knew that Billy and I had something in common.

Family Circus Cartoon
March 25, 2025, WI State Journal

The "Everybody Loves Raymond" television series had a successful run on CBS. The producers and writers contributed its success to the show having embodied different aspects of everyday life, that most families have gone through. I think many of us can related to Ray and Debra and now Frank and Marie. There is an episode where Marie gets mad at Frank having dumped out a her pancetta fat saved in the fridge in order to reuse the jar. (Starts about 3:10 in the link.) Just a couple weeks ago I dumped excess fat from cooking, in a former metal food can in the fridge not knowing I contaminated whatever good fat my wife was saving. My wife has similarities to Marie Barone, with cooking being just one.

While my wife has a large variety of medical shows to watch on which she can get her medicine fix. Me, I was a lowly public servant, and as a planning and zoning guy, there are slim pickings. In the US there was Parks and Recreation, which often imitated real life. Not that I watched that show much, but the few episodes I did see, I would tell people that real life is even more bizarre than the Parks and Rec television show. While the show mainly focused on parks and recreation, the city planner was often called on, in the first season or two before they cut him off, to assist. Not unlike real life. Particularly later in my career when the city hired more of a rec guy than a parks guy to run the park and rec system, we had to backfill a number of park issues for him. Running a park system is more than organizing little league games.

"Clarkson Farm" Jeremy Clarkson at Planning board
It did not go well for him.  At my work, sometimes it was
me doing his reaction at decisions made by the appointed or elected bodies

I have found that planners often pop up more in British shows. I think it is likely due to the larger degree of land use controls in Europe. Clarkson's Farm being one example, where Jeremy Clarkson was always fighting the planning department to get his way to make his farm more profitable. One episode he shows up to plead his case for a change before the planning board. Clarkson was, like many I dealt with, always pushing the boundaries to see what he could get away with, and was big on doing and asking for forgiveness (or just approve it) later. This type of attitude makes a mockery of the whole field. 

During Covid we watched a British show called "Grand Design", about house construction in varied parts of England. Due to construction they often showed the planning issues that arose and how they were dealt with. "This Old House", which has never been the same since Bob Vila left, but because they often do historic renovations, they have to deal with the historic preservation or landmarks committee. People get to see the red tape people have to deal with, but in the public interest of retaining the values and architecture people hold true. At least in "This Old House", planners are treated with some respect.

We planners often get a bad rap, particularly when something goes wrong, but what we do right seldom gets a comment. The Fitchburg Days festival was not much of a success, but it would have been much more successful if they had asked me to be in a dunk tank. Planners can get thick skin and a bit jaded with all the criticism and onslaught they receive, not unlike the one on Parks and Recreation. (You can read a bit about it in the link in the prior sentence.) All those rural land owners that wished to develop and met with the indisputable wall in the planning department, could have been around the block to get a chance to knock me in cold water. The explanation for all the weird things that happen in Fitchburg is due to its geography--it sits at the juncture of varied landscape types and the conflicts that arise at the intersections of such varied landscapes. These varied landscape types (urban-suburban-rural development-pastoral), also meant it struggled with its identity. Geography can explain a great deal, as can human interaction with the natural environment--human geography.

Planner in "Park and Rec"
I wish I had used a drafting board,
it would have saved my neck doing plan reviews

On the other hand, my wife as a nurse gets to see shows were humans are cured or patched together. They evidence the good that nurses and doctors do. Obviously the powers that be have this idea that medical shows are more interesting for the general public, but I think I could have challenged that. I wish I had kept a journal of all the weird happenings and occurrences I saw in over 32 years at Fitchburg alone. It would make for an interesting television series, and perhaps it could have burgeoned into a successful second career. Yes, planning and zoning work can be boring, but we all live in a built environment and planning is what makes such environments function, or well, not function. While television and cartoons may imitate life, at least in my former planning world, real life was more bizarre than what I have seen in cartoons or on television.