A Program About Unusual Buildings & Other Roadside Stuff

When I think about documentaries I usually conjure up images in my head of black and white films giving a panoramic view of a town while a dreary male voice drones on for about an hour and a half. But many documentaries nowadays are nothing like this, and so I don't even think of them as documentaries anymore. Films like Who Killed the Electric Car? and My Kid Could Paint That are popular with good reason. They draw you in with interesting camera angles and lighting, they look for interesting information in a subject you may not be into, trust me, I was less then thrilled when my Professor told us we were watching Who Killed the Electric Car, but the funeral scene at the beginning for a car had me so amused I was instantly entertained while being educated. I've really come to love documentaries, but the one I watched earlier today (or actually yesterday considering it is 2am in the morning) really disappointed me.

A Program About Unusual Buildings & Other Roadside Stuff. It quickly disappointed. After going through one corny semi-odd (but not really all that odd) building after the next we got to a city with a ketchup bottle as a water tower. This is where things started getting weird.
One man said something like, "It is a bit hard to find, but if you take the highway south out of town, you go down this hill then when you come back up it just seems to rise out of the ground. It's amazing."

When I attempted to imagine the awe I would experience watching a ketchup bottle rise out of the ground, I realized I simply couldn't manage such awe for such a ridiculous sight. Amusing? Perhaps. Awe-inspiring? Not really.
But another view commented, "I was raised under the ketchup bottle."
He sounded so serious, like the loyal child of a church going family proudly declaring they were raised under the Bible.
Then it occurred to me... The town was like a giant cult that worshiped their great and wonderful ketchup bottle. I could just imagine the city coming under their great ketchup bottle for their morning prayers, and proudly telling foreigners how they worship the great ketchup bottle that makes their crops grow and couples have babies. I am rather certain that I must never visit this town as my sacrilege will probably cause me to be... boiled in ketchup? Illinois Ketchup Torture? Sued by Heinz? Attacked by the small ketchup minions who the people of the town set out bowls of ketchup for every night to ensure good luck?

I'm quite certain the cult like reverence shown by the town had probably quite a bit to owe to the editing team of the documentary, but after that we really could stand the movie no longer. We'll find another documentary another day and probably enjoy it. But looking at the program lineup I don't believe I really missed much. Maybe a duck and a clam box, and a slightly disturbing and racist building in the shape of an African American Woman. You enter the building through her skirts. I'm quite certain turning the movie off early saved me a nearly wasted 45 minutes or so of my life.