What Would Dr. Huxtable Do?

I awoke Saturday morning feeling sticky, hung-over and remorseful. Sure, this was not unusual, but I hadn’t felt that gross from a previous night’s activities since I lived in San Diego and discovered Tijuana.

Let me explain.

Last week, SN&R’s Nick Miller asked if I wanted to attend the Sacramento Jell-O Jam, an event described by its Web site as “Jell-O + Costumes & Bikinis = Prizes & Fun.” Intriguing, yes, but I had reservations. Sure, I like boobs and bikinis, and proceeds from Jell-O Jam would benefit Feel Your Boobies, a breast-cancer-awareness organization that urges women to … you know.

But it raised a moral dilemma: Is exploitation OK if it’s for charity?

But I had never seen a Jell-O wrestling match. So, like a cop volunteering for a strip-club sting operation, I took one for the team and signed up.

Much like my past Tijuana excursions, the night started at a light-rail station, where an old scraggly haired guy with stalactite teeth stumbled toward me and mumbled that I was giving off some kind of bad vibe. Normally, weird light-rail encounters like this don’t creep me out, but the guy was wearing tie-dye and Mom taught me to stay away from hippies.

Downtown, I met up with my buddy, who—judging by his vest, tweed jacket and a fedora—must have confused “Jell-O wrestling match” with “Great Potato Famine re-enactment.” To his credit, he had invited a female friend, so we wouldn’t look like those sketchy guys who, whenever multiple women get frisky, clutch their beers in one hand and whip out their cameras with the other.

I imagined Jell-O Jam would go down in the kind of seedy bar you’d see in old Sylvester Stallone movies, but this Jell-O Jam was held inside Table 260, a somewhat-upscale Southern food restaurant with stony chairs and sluggish service. Somehow, local deejay 7evin got roped into the event, but he was banished to the back of the restaurant, where he spun mash-ups for the disinterested crowd and looked bored.

Besides the bits of orange gelatin splattered on my jeans and knockoff Chuck Taylors, the wrestlers were was tame. Most looked like they got lost on the way to yoga class.

I talked to a few of them, including one of two male contestants, who, post-match, was breathing harder than a nun in a cucumber field. I don’t remember what he said, because while the talked, the next all-female match began, and I had to clutch my beer in one hand while whipping out my camera with the other.

We left before the official end of the event and headed to my buddy’s apartment, where he showed off the custom fighting game characters he had created on his Xbox 360.

My favorite was the Gandhi look-alike; the dhoti showed some skin.