After watching John Oliver’s scathing and much-deserved take down of the government-run U.S. lottery on the first season finale of Last Week Tonight, I figured it’d be the perfect intro to this month’s Paid for by the Following. Although the inclusion of this commercial for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation’s Lotto 6/49 is in no way associating it with the same questionable ethical practices of the lotteries in the United States. Those Canadian questionable ethical practices are apparently tied to their “freemium” Terrance and Phillip mobile game.
Considering the most I’ve ever won on a damn $3 California scratcher is $5 I’m assuming, based off of this commercial, that everything does go into slow motion when you hit the jackpot. The winning lotto ticket belongs to a wrestler who seems to be working a hippie gimmick, but not of the CJ Parker variety. A millionaire hippie? Quite the paradox. He is overjoyed and no doubt happy that his weekend warrior days are behind him. I’m also assuming he’s an indie wrestler based on the type of locker room he’s in. This isn’t the locker room of the Air Canada Centre, but rather the Canadian equivalent of an American VFW hall.
The hippie’s wrestling brethren are also ecstatic about him winning. Which means they either all went halfers on the ticket or he’s treating them all to the finest of meals and gentlemen establishments after the show. The boys in this locker room are made up of an overweight Hispanic(?) wrestler working a Super Porky/Hurricane Helms gimmick who chest bumps a very chesty darkest timeline Molly Holly. There’s also the Biff Slamkovich-looking wrestler sans mullet. A most definitely Hispanic luchador who not only has a handlebar mustache, but half of a lucha libre mask and a sombrero because they didn’t want to be as ethnically vague as they were with the other fat guy. And a black wrestler doing the Shelton Benjamin “Gold Standard” thing.
Everyone’s jumping up and down in celebration. Bodies are either jiggling all over the place or remaining tautly in place. Barbells are carelessly being tossed aside and ropes of baby oil are squirting high into the ceilings like some ghost ectoplasming everywhere. Including onto the chubby Hispanic(?) wrestler’s man boobs.
Really, this commercial is the opposite of the movie The Wrestler, the one with Mickey Rourke, not Ed Asner. Thing’s aren’t so bleak. This hippie wrestler can now walk away from this business that no doubt would’ve chewed him up and spit him out a crippled and financially broke “legend”. He can finally afford to go back to college and finish that degree in philosophy.
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