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Landon Donovan Pitches The Mexican Lottery, Is Not Shot

Jan 5, 2010, 7:00 PM UTC

â†µI have no idea what the American equivalent of this is. It’s Landon Donovan dressed up as Stereotypical Mexican Extra in an ad for the national lottery down south:â†µ

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â†µâ†µFor those who fell asleep in high school Spanish, the plot is that Donovan’s trying to sneak into Mexico because it’s “easy to win” there*, which the border guard reacts to by ominously waving his beatin’ stick until Donovan clarifies that he’s actually a peso fiend looking for a sweet hit of that Mexican lottery action. The border guard then shoos him back into America. Dollars to donuts there’s a PhD thesis referencing this thing within three years. â†µ

â†µâ†µThis is crazy. Mexicans hate American soccer and they hate Landon Donovan, the guy who’s consistently shredded them whenever the two teams have played. If term “bête noire” didn’t exist people would have to invent it to describe Landon Donovan’s relationship to Mexico. Sometimes during USA-Mexico games you can hear the country violently scream Donovan’s name. Only in the movies can Americans work up the sort of nationalistic fervor that Bill Simmons himself documented during the most recent USA-Mexico game at Azteca. â†µ

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â†µNot to go all Simmons on you, but the closest I can come to a comparison point is if Rocky was real and Ivan Drago was in an appliance store commercial claiming that he "must break low price barriers." Maybe a Whole Foods commercial starring Sarah Palin would work. She walks in, declares that she's a maverick about food choices too, and is chased from the store by a pack of crunchy professional types wielding sage-and-garlic-encrusted organic turkey drumsticks. â†µ

â†µâ†µYeah. Other than that, I got nothing.â†µ

â†µâ†µ*(Patently false, by the way. It is impossible to win there. Mexico hasn’t lost to the United States in Mexico in over 20 years; it’s only when the two countries meet anywhere else that the USA asserts its dominance.)â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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