These are troubling times in America. The economy continues to stagger, we’re dumber and fatter than ever, and thanks to an oil company that need-not be named, tar balls will outnumber beach balls on the coast of the southeast U.S. for the foreseeable future. And unless the U.S. National team decides to shock the world in South Africa in the next week or so, our bragging rights on the world stage are limited to a 50 year-old construction worker with bad kidneys and high blood pressure who woke up one morning and decided to channel his inner Rambo. Of course, a lot of folks would have you believe that our country’s derelict moral compass is at the heart of the problem.

Friends, Lucha VaVoom won’t right America’s moral compass, but believe you me, it’ll make the needle stand more erect.

For the uninitiated, Lucha VaVaoom is a bite-sized morality tale topped with a heepin’ helpin’ of old-fashioned T&A. It combines Mexican wrestling (aka “lucha libre”), burlesque (suspected cause of “va va voom”), comedy and tequila for a night of entertainment that you’ll be talking about for years, or at least until your therapist gives up. This Los Angeles-based troupe brought their wares to Chicago’s Just For Laughs 2010 festival this week and MOKB was there to wade through the wreckage, because sometimes in life, you gotta take the sweaty with the glittery.

Emcee Blaine Capatch looks like he is auditioning for a Lifetime original movie role of middle school girls basketball coach/sexual predator. The man simply oozes smarm, and his running commentary makes him the perfect Virgil for our journey. He is to Lucha VaVoom what Julie McCoy was to The Love Boat. Through the course of the evening, Blaine introduces an alternating series of wrestling matches and burlesque numbers, each just a little more twisted than the last.

If you are not well-versed in lucha libre, I congratulate you for making something of your life, but allow me to get you up to speed. Mask-wearing wrestlers (luchadores) fall into two camps: rudos (bad guys) and tecnicos (good guys). Matches can be mano a mano, or tag-teams of 2 or 3. The action is fast, furious and funny as hell as the luchadores really bring it for the fans. You can figure out the rest. On this night, the prime tenicos were Dirty Sanchez (and an extremely well-orchestrated mierda gag) as well as fan-faves Crazy Chickens, whose high-flying antics sent the folks in the first several rows scurrying for safety on more than one occasion. Representing best for the rudos were Chupacabra and Tiny Chupacabra (Memo to several audience members: a chupacabra is not an iguana), the latter of which matched wits against equally-scaled, but clearly superior tactician, Lil’ Chicken. That is a sentence I honestly never imagined writing.

The ladies (or Buxoticas in Lucha VaVoom parlance) bring a refreshing air of class to the proceedings. Burlesque is a little like art; you’re not sure what it is, but you know it when you see it. Maybe it’s stripping purged of the drug habits and daddy issues. If you don’t know the difference between pasties and a pasty, I can’t help you and we can certainly no longer be friends. A clear Buxotica highlight was Lucy Fur’s Carmen Miranda-Scarface mashup which saw her simulate a glittery coke binge (complete with giant razor blade and straw) before demonstrating how she earned her “Queen of the Tassel Twirl” title. The show-stopper for this recovering Catholic, however, was the Wau Wau Sisters. Taking the world’s unsavory naughty Catholic schoolgirl obsession to new, previously unimagined levels of sassy sacrilege, their equally side-splitting and loin-stirring erotic interpretation of Night Ranger’s Sister Christian had me flashing back to my high school Freshman Frolic dance. And Lisa, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry and I still want to pay half for whatever it cost to get your dress cleaned.

I wish I could write more, but thanks to sponsor, El Jimador, the rest of the evening is kinda fuzzy. I do remember being stunned by the fact that the rudos won the final match of the evening.  And maybe that’s the real lesson to be learned from Lucha VaVoom. Sometimes, the bad guys win, but there’s always another match. Actually, that might be complete crap, and simply a side effect of inhaling too much glitter. Regardless, Lucha VaVoom is must-see family entertainment, and since MOKB knows that some of you can’t get to (or are prevented by court order from visiting) Los Angeles, we hope to have a hand in bringing the show to Naptown next year.