Breaking News!! EDITED

15 MAR 06 (See editors note below)

I’ve become friendly with many of the dealers at my local casino, the Muckleshoot. I guess it’s because I’m always nice and I always toke the dealers. They tend to stop by and say “hi,” even when I’m just standing at the board. I’ve blogged about Mary. She’s a wonderful woman who refused to run away with me when she saw my wedding ring. Jokton always says, “Hey Doc,” whenever he sees me, and Heather gives me a huge smile and hello when I walk in.

Colette is attractive. No one would argue this point. She is always professional and she’s a great dealer – I honestly think most people don’t realize how good she is. She wears a bit of make up and clearly takes good care of herself. Sometimes, however, Colette comes in “done up.” No joke – she looks like a supermodel, and it’s almost surreal. Why is this supermodel dealing me cards? I should be watching her on the TV, not flipping her a dollar when she pushes me a pot.

Come to find out, Colette has a secret identity. Occasionally she’ll disappear. The last time she was gone, I found out that she was flown to Monte Carlo to deal to Phil Ivey et al during the last Monte Carlo Millions (which Phil won). So last night, she’s chatting with the table and she casually mentions that she just got back from Costa Rica. I remembered this article, so I said, “Were you down there when the cops raided Calvin’s house?” Well, she got this deer in the headlights look. “You know about that?”

At this point, I realize that the rest of the table has become very curious. I smile and nod, saying yes. She gets this really cute furrowed brow look and finally says that yes, she was there at his house, but wasn’t dealing when the cops came crashing in. In fact, she said, there was no gambling at all when the Policia arrived.

For those that didn’t link the article, Calvin Ayre is the billionaire tycoon that started bodog.com. He has a mansion in Costa Rica and he’s filming a reality TV show down there. 100 cops came crashing into his house, coincidentally when the cameras were rolling. The theory was that either Calvin had a disagreement with the Costa Rican government, or this was just a big publicity stunt.

Here is the breaking news – Colette tells me that it was in fact a publicity stunt. I know this isn’t earth shattering, but I’m rarely (if ever) on the “inside,” so I feel kinda special knowing someone that was there. The really funny part was that when she finished dealing, she came over and whispered in my ear, “Are you on the board at Bodog?” Yeah, a geek like me on the board. Nah, I told her. I’m just a doc that reads a lot on the internet. She says she’ll email me some pictures from the event. I hope she does – I’ll post any good ones here.

Final note: I posted this in the comments section of my last entry, but it deserves to be brought up to the main page. Besides, the comments sections don’t include the cool links.

For those that don’t know, Maigrey coined the brilliantly impromptu phrase, “Bah, when serving justice, guilt is a poor condiment” in the comments section of my blog entry about a Valentine’s Day Maiming I levied against a deserving opponent. She realized how great the phrase is, and now uses it as the banner on her blog. In fact, it can also be found as the banner at Hoff’s place.

Since it was first posted to my blog, I demanded royalties. Can you blame a guy for trying to cash in? (I guess you can.)

Editors note: Embarrassingly, Colette saw my blog. You know how you felt when the cute cheerleader in high school saw your notebook with the “Dr. Chako loves Bunny” note written inside? Yeah – that’s how I feel right now. Well, she’s really cool about it and pointed out a few corrections I needed to make to the story. Said corrections are now made (sorry if anyone out there was given the wrong impression – totally my fault). I even corrected the spelling of her name (one “L” two “T’s,”). Hopefully, I’ll get some cool pics out of it.