But now, after "two years in development," using the "latest in digital and laser technology," all the rules have been changed by a patent-pending, near-weightless bra that will have men falling all over women even more than before, further decreasing worker productivity by encouraging a guy to waste time making up lewd jokes and scheming how to meet a technologically advanced female so that he can get her out of her IPEX, hopefully without paying more for the date than she did for the bra (which costs $45 -- or $22.50 per imperfect breast).
We convened a meeting of the Institute of Drinking Studies to discuss this new technological breakthrough along with other advances -- including our ability to rally the forces by projecting the ghostly image of a frosty mug of beer into the sky, the Institute's version of the Bat Signal. Our destination was Casey's Bistro and Pub on Main Street in Stapleton (really 7301 East 29th Avenue), an Irish pub brought to us by the people who gave us Darcy's in the Tech Center. Casey's itself is a by-product of the new-urbanism technology that has revamped Stapleton and Lowry and may soon stretch to East St. Louis, for all I know. In keeping with the modern view of what housing developments should look like in order to mask the wife-swapping and other degenerate activities that occur within, à la Desperate Housewives, even this quasi-Irish pub's exterior is all shiny stainless and windows, which kept my phone ringing all night long as confused Institute members called to request vectors of our meeting place. From the outside, Casey's appears more like a Starbucks than a good watering hole.
Inside, though, this tavern has a much more authentic feel -- if you can avoid the glare of the setting sun. There's the requisite dark paneling and a tap row that could just as easily be in Ireland. Guinness, Murphy's, Boddington's, Smithwick's (Casey's joins a growing group of local saloons that feature this excellent brew) and Kronenberg 1664 grace the lineup, and there's nary a glimpse of their much lesser American brothers. I don't know how Casey's managed it -- maybe it was the brand-new taps (I drew my first beer here within 48 hours of the place getting its liquor license) -- but the Guinness was the best I've found in town. The Head of Drinking Regrets and I dunked our faces in the beer's foamy head at every opportunity, in the process getting not just laughs, but the best facial in town. We could have lasted all night on the low-carb, no-doubt-vitamin-filled beer (the Institute is thinking of lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to make Guinness part of its recommended daily diet). But in the interest of science, we also tried Casey's curry and an excellent shepherd's pie.
A guest of ours who is a new mother took advantage of Casey's no-smoking policy to bring her newborn to the meeting, and we wasted no time pushing Guinness on Mom, too. According to our resident Scotswoman, Guinness helps a mother's milk "come in" -- a theory corroborated by a chat room hosted by the website of the La Leche League (a militant group shunned by Hezbollah as too extremist), where women discuss the lactation benefits of the brewer's yeast in Guinness. Unfortunately, no scientific studies support this old wives' tale beyond proving that beer definitely relaxes a person -- which could be why this woman wound up in a position where she'd need to breastfeed ten months later.
Clearly, technology doesn't answer all of our needs. So far, for example, there's no evidence that beer cures cancer, leads to Mideast peace, acts as a galactalogue or lifts and separate breasts on a permanent basis without the aid of plastic surgery. The Institute is willing to act as lead investigator in a National Institutes of Health study to research that final question, however. As the Jewish Representative noted, "It probably took the IPEX Œscientists' two minutes to figure out the new bra, but they worked with supermodel boobs for over two years" -- and we could indulge our juvenile fantasy for at least double that amount of time. Until our research is completed, I advise young mothers and those who got them in that condition to head to Casey's. But leave all IPEX bras at home, because a few glasses of Guinness could lead to a $45 disaster.