Bless and Mike's MagicCon Stories! - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: Bless and Mike's MagicCon Stories!

Release Date: February 28, 2025

Hosts:

• Nick Scarpino
• Blessing Adeoye
• Snowbike Mike

---

1. Introduction of Special Hosts

In a rare episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Nick Scarpino steps into the hosting role alongside regular host Blessing Adeoye and guest co-host Snowbike Mike. This dynamic trio delves into their firsthand experiences at MagicCon, offering listeners an engaging and humorous recount of their adventures.

Notable Quote:

• Blessing Adeoye [00:23]: "This feels crazy. It feels almost unnatural."

---

2. Setting the Stage: MagicCon Overview

The episode kicks off with Nick expressing excitement about the episode being part two of their MagicCon stories. The conversation quickly shifts to introducing Snowbike Mike, affectionately referred to as the "czar of Aura," setting the tone for an entertaining and candid discussion.

Notable Quote:

• Nick Scarpino [00:25]: "This is part two. If you haven't done your homework, pause this right now."

---

3. Travel Tales: The Flight to MagicCon

Blessing and Mike recount their flight experience to Chicago for MagicCon. Mike shares his aspiration to become a vlog superstar, hoping to document the trip, while Blessing emphasizes his need for personal space during travel.

Notable Quotes:

• Snowbike Mike [08:00]: "I want to make a vlog. Right? My dream is to be a vlog superstar."
• Blessing Adeoye [08:00]: "I'm very introverted. I want my space."

The flight experience was eventful, with Mike upgrading to first class without Blessing's knowledge. This led to amusing interactions, including a chat with an older woman who complimented their presence in first class.

Notable Quote:

• Snowbike Mike [12:25]: "There are all these videos, right? Ryan Trahan, he's on a plane with a shower in there."

---

4. Arrival and First Impressions at MagicCon

Upon arriving at MagicCon, Blessing and Mike navigate the massive convention center, marveling at its size and the bustling activity. They attend a PR dinner, engage with Magic the Gathering enthusiasts, and explore various gaming events. Blessing highlights the collaborative "Universes Beyond" initiative, which includes exciting crossovers like Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Notable Quotes:

• Blessing Adeoye [29:07]: "Now, I'm looking at Barrett, and I'm like, barrett, this might be your chance."
• Snowbike Mike [30:25]: "This will be the end of the year, too. So in June, you get Final Fantasy."

---

5. Gaming Adventures: Playing Magic the Gathering

Blessing and Mike dive into the gaming aspects of MagicCon, participating in various Magic the Gathering formats. They share their experiences with the Pro Tour, Chaos Draft, and the unique Two-Headed Giant format, where they team up to compete against seasoned players. The hosts humorously describe their struggles and triumphs during matches, highlighting the camaraderie and competitive spirit of the convention.

Notable Quotes:

• Snowbike Mike [44:15]: "It was sick. So Bless and I found Two-Headed Giants."
• Blessing Adeoye [50:04]: "Mike wanted me to do it for him."

---

6. Exploring Chicago: Beyond the Convention Hall

Outside the gaming floor, Blessing and Mike take time to explore Chicago's iconic landmarks. Mike describes his solo adventure along the Chicago Riverwalk, visiting Millennium Park and capturing the serene beauty of the cityscape at dawn. This exploration serves as a reflective moment for Mike, reigniting his passion for adventure and exploration.

Notable Quotes:

• Snowbike Mike [77:14]: "I'm walking down the river and I'm seeing these beautiful sites of Chicago."
• Blessing Adeoye [79:19]: "Chicago is such a good city."

---

7. Social Dynamics and Memorable Interactions

Throughout their MagicCon journey, Blessing and Mike engage with fans and fellow gamers, attending meet-and-greets and sharing memorable moments. Mike humorously attempts to connect with attendees, while Blessing focuses on building decks and fostering friendships within the Magic community.

Notable Quotes:

• Snowbike Mike [82:27]: "I had the time of my life, Nick, where I left that I left MagicCon with Bless."
• Blessing Adeoye [73:02]: "We don't want to stereotype, but we made tons of friends with people."

---

8. Challenges and Triumphs: Navigating the Convention

Blessing and Mike face logistical challenges, such as miscommunication and time management, which add layers of humor and authenticity to their stories. Despite these hurdles, they successfully navigate the convention, enjoy competitive games, and savor Chicago's culinary delights, including legendary deep-dish pizza and iconic Portillo's hot dogs.

Notable Quotes:

• Blessing Adeoye [60:59]: "And so we played against the team and... we realized that we hadn't eaten in forever."
• Snowbike Mike [67:05]: "We should have gone to the biggest one, but we didn't."

---

9. Reflections and Closing Thoughts

As the convention wraps up, Blessing and Mike reflect on their experiences, expressing a desire to return to MagicCon annually. They emphasize the inclusive and vibrant community that Magic the Gathering fosters, highlighting the enduring friendships and unforgettable moments created during the event.

Notable Quotes:

• Snowbike Mike [71:57]: "It was sick. It was sick."
• Blessing Adeoye [79:34]: "It was such a good time."

---

Conclusion

In this episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast, listeners are treated to a comprehensive and entertaining recount of Blessing Adeoye and Snowbike Mike's adventures at MagicCon. From the chaos of travel and competitive gaming to the serene moments exploring Chicago, the hosts deliver a rich narrative filled with humor, camaraderie, and insightful reflections on the gaming community. Whether you're a Magic the Gathering enthusiast or a fan of engaging storytelling, this episode offers a delightful glimpse into the vibrant world of gaming conventions.

---

Notable Quotes Compilation:

• Blessing Adeoye [00:23]: "This feels crazy. It feels almost unnatural."
• Nick Scarpino [00:25]: "This is part two. If you haven't done your homework, pause this right now."
• Snowbike Mike [08:00]: "I want to make a vlog. Right? My dream is to be a vlog superstar."
• Blessing Adeoye [29:07]: "Now, I'm looking at Barrett, and I'm like, barrett, this might be your chance."
• Snowbike Mike [44:15]: "It was sick. So Bless and I found Two-Headed Giants."
• Blessing Adeoye [73:02]: "We don't want to stereotype, but we made tons of friends with people."
• Snowbike Mike [71:57]: "It was sick. It was sick."
• Blessing Adeoye [79:34]: "It was such a good time."

---

Timestamp Highlights:

• 00:00 – Nick announces the special hosting arrangement.
• 04:35 – Introduction to the official MagicCon review.
• 07:14 – Discussing travel and flight experiences.
• 29:07 – Blessing and Mike detail MagicCon’s "Universes Beyond" collaborations.
• 44:15 – Participation in Two-Headed Giant format.
• 77:14 – Mike’s solo exploration of Chicago’s Riverwalk.
• 82:23 – Reflecting on meet-and-greet experiences.
• 92:07 – Final reflections and closing thoughts.

---

Note: This summary focuses on the main content segments, excluding advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections as per the user’s request.

Transcript

[Blessing Adeoye]

Foreign.

[Nick Scarpino]

Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Friday, February 28, 2025. I'm one of your hosts, Nick Scarpino, alongside the magic man himself, blessing Adioia.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Jr. A rare nick hosting a Gamescast episode.

[Nick Scarpino]

This might be the first time this has ever happened.

[Blessing Adeoye]

This feels crazy. It feels almost unnatural.

[Nick Scarpino]

I was excited about this. I came in earlier than I normally do, which is probably on time, and I watched, I watched an episode from that you guys did for the Monster Hunter review. And I. And I prepped for this because I was very excited because of course, as you guys know, this is actually part two. We'll get to what this show is about, the topic of the show. But this is part two. If you haven't done your homework, pause this right now. If you're watching live, sorry, you're s out of luck. And go watch the kind of Funny podcast because we're going to be talking about a very fun thing today and we're going to get part two about it. But we're not quite there yet, ladies and gentlemen, because of course, joining us as well to co host is the czar of Aura, Snowbike Mike.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's my turn and I'm gonna put an enchantment on the table and I'm.

[Nick Scarpino]

Gonna bring it up a little bit.

[Snowbike Mike]

You know what I mean?

[Nick Scarpino]

You always enchant me every day.

[Snowbike Mike]

Come on.

[Nick Scarpino]

I appreciate it.

[Snowbike Mike]

I love you, bro.

[Nick Scarpino]

I love you.

[Snowbike Mike]

Thank you so much. And I want you to know, Nick.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yes.

[Snowbike Mike]

Come Monday, I'm gonna bring it. I'm gonna. I, you know, I try to bring it every single day, but like we just got back off of Magicon. It was a lot of energy. Right. So let me get the weekend. I'm gonna bring, I'm gonna bring even more energy.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay, I appreciate that. Of course. This is kind of Funny. Games cast. Each and every weekday we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you like what we do and want to support us, go over and support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple podcasts to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Submit your thoughts and opinions live right now on YouTube with super chats as we go. And Mike will be correlating all together, reading them Housekeeping. Right now, we're all about live talk shows here at Kind of Funny right before this blessing and Mike hosted Kind of funny games daily and talked about the success of Monster Hunter into that game. You guys should definitely check out that episode. And of course after this stream we're going to be doing a special one today. Mike. Yep, we got a. We got a long fun marathon stream. The hunt is on. Answer the call of the wilds and join Greg Miller and the crew this Friday Today for the launch of Monster Hunter Wilds. Greg will be leading the crew from Marathon Stream exclusively on Twitch tv. Kind of funny games again, that is exclusively on Twitch tv. Kind of funny games where they'll stream as long as you want to hunt. Also play alongside the crew so you can jump in and help on the hunt if and when the crew needs it. Spoilers. They're going to need it a lot. We also want to talk about pack your bags, trainers. It's happening. It's happening, it's happening. Finally, we're headed to Johto. The next chapter of Pokemon Nick Lock journey begins with a mini marathon tomorrow. So today is Friday. Tomorrow at 9am Pacific Standard Time we are join us on YouTube. We're going to be doing a YouTube live premiere, a three hour long super cut. Mike, myself and Andy will be in the chat hanging out with you guys but so you can catch up because of course next Friday we're going back. We're going to Johto. We're doing the Nuzlock again.

[Blessing Adeoye]

How excited are you for that?

[Nick Scarpino]

I'm super excited. I wanted to play Pokemon again since we wrapped up the last one.

[Snowbike Mike]

I love that he's been ready.

[Nick Scarpino]

I've been ready. I'm not going to say that Andy and Tim are holding us back, but they're holding us back.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It's not that Andy wants to like, you know, just work on everything for so long. He wants to like get everything perfect and have all these unique things perfect. Like he's in the Duffy and all. It's like get out the Duffy and let's just get to get out of your Duffy.

[Nick Scarpino]

Get it in my.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Also much harder to do what he's doing with a DS game rather than.

[Nick Scarpino]

I didn't tell him to do the. There's so many Pokemon games but everyone's like, you gotta do Soul Silver. Soul Silver is the one. I was like, all right. And then I googled it and would you guys be surprised to know there's more than two Pokemon games out there?

[Blessing Adeoye]

No.

[Nick Scarpino]

Did you know there's a lot. That's crazy. That's crazy. But of course we are jumping into Soul Silver. It's Gonna be a Nick Lock. And I know what you're thinking. What's a Nick Lock? I didn't watch the last one. Well, it's a Nuzlocke, but it's Nick style. So join us next week for that. But before that, of course, jump in tomorrow with Saturday. Spend a little time Saturday morning. You can watch the cartoons later. Shout out to our Patreon producers and supporters, Delaney Twaining, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Karen Lindner. Today, we're brought to you by Greg Miller's live Chicago show. And better help. But we'll talk and we'll tell you about that a little bit later. For now, it is time for the topic of the show. Now, as you know, this is part two. Yep. If you watch the kind of funny podcast Blessing and I. Blessing downloaded the info of all the shenanigans that surrounded Magic Con.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

But he would not give me any details of the con itself. The con itself, any sort of battles, the meetup. And so I wanna. I think this is going to be our official review of Magic.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I think this could be a lot. There's gonna be a lot of things.

[Snowbike Mike]

We're gonna really deep.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Because, like, in there, I. I enjoyed telling my side of the story myself, but I. It didn't feel all the way right without Mike.

[Nick Scarpino]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Because, like, I spent an entire 24 hours with Mike, which is the longest time I've ever spent around the Uninterrupted. Uninterrupted. Just me and Mike for a full day.

[Snowbike Mike]

Attached at the hip.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. And I couldn't get away from him.

[Nick Scarpino]

Don't need to. Why would you want to?

[Blessing Adeoye]

So there was that. There's the meetup that we didn't get to talk about. I talked about also going back to Bloomington, Illinois, Central Illinois, and going to my aunt's birthday. But you can catch them on kind of funny podcasts.

[Snowbike Mike]

I have thoughts about that, too.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. Mike wasn't there. Mike wanted to go.

[Snowbike Mike]

I wanted to go.

[Blessing Adeoye]

But I doubt. And it was planned. It was planned at one point. And then, like, after we thought about it for a second, I then, like, looked at Greg and I looked at. My God. I was like, mike's not coming. Mike's not coming for my family gathering. I'm going to bring my coworker, my white co worker to this thing.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

My parents. All right. My. My.

[Nick Scarpino]

The whitest co worker you have.

[Blessing Adeoye]

The white.

[Nick Scarpino]

He's so white. He's red right now.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And they're going to be like, who is this man you brought? Is this your Lover. Like, they're going to look at me.

[Nick Scarpino]

They're going to think about that.

[Snowbike Mike]

I don't want him to be thought of as my lover.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, you wouldn't want. They would 1000% be like, oh, blessings never brought home a girl, but he's bringing home this. This white man. Crazy white dude in a motocross outfit. He must. They must be in love.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah. Like, and Mike is overly affectionate, so it's not that.

[Snowbike Mike]

Nothing but nice things about you, too. So. Yeah, they would have got the wrong ideas.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, exactly. So I was like, let me not complicate things. Mike, when he said that.

[Nick Scarpino]

So on the podcast, when we talked about this party, which admittedly sounded wonderful, and again, it's so awesome that you had a moment to carve out for your family. That's very, very important. But when I asked, did Mike go and you said no, I was like, oh, this is going to be a thing.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, this is going to be a thing. I could tell Mike is so hurt by this that we have to talk about it today.

[Snowbike Mike]

The moment I saw the Instagram stories go up, I was like, fuck.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I know.

[Snowbike Mike]

He, like, Blessing, first off, he's back in the cool outfit that I'm very jealous of, and I want to. I want to dress up. Then I have a question.

[Blessing Adeoye]

What's up?

[Snowbike Mike]

Okay, there's a moment there where it was your aunt dancing in the middle.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yes.

[Snowbike Mike]

But then they were throwing money at her.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, that's.

[Snowbike Mike]

Can we talk about that?

[Blessing Adeoye]

That's part of the culture. You do that in celebration, like, whoever you're celebrating. Like, they'll dance. And then you basically, like, yeah. Make it rain money. I love using $1 bills, but you are. Yeah, dude, I wish I took a picture or a video.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like, toward the end of the night, $1 bills everywhere. Just money.

[Snowbike Mike]

We got a new rule. When it's Mike's birthday, you shower me with $1 bills. That's my new goal. I love that.

[Nick Scarpino]

I'll just buy you a chai latte. It'll be equal to how many $1 bills people will throw at you.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. Where do you want to start?

[Nick Scarpino]

I want to start again at the beginning, because I know you talked about how y'all got there. You talked about the plane. You said that you didn't really want to re Recap. But I need to see that through Mike's eyes. Because, Blessing, as you know, when stories happen here, when people go on trips, specifically with one snow bike, there are usually two perspectives. There's what happened and Then there's Mike's version. So, Mike, I want to start with you.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, man. What an exciting moment. Right? Of course. You know, there's so many things to talk about. Big thank you to the Magicon team for inviting us out there. You know what I mean? For us to be able to go out and cover it and have some fun was a big deal. But to start right, I was really excited, you know, as you know, Nick, I always have a vision whenever we have these group trips.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yes.

[Snowbike Mike]

I want to make a vlog. Right? My dream is to be a vlog superstar, right? I want to be like, yo, what up, everybody? It's your boy Snowbike Mike, inviting you to the vlog today. We're in Chicago, right? Like, we don't do that now.

[Nick Scarpino]

Let me stop you. Why don't you just stream when you're there? Why don't you just like go live and stream from your phone?

[Snowbike Mike]

It was a work day, so I didn't want to interrupt this kind of funny stream from that.

[Nick Scarpino]

Next time. Next time we do it though, we should figure it out so that you could just stream for like three or four hours from Magical.

[Snowbike Mike]

I did want to do that. I just didn't want to interrupt that. We'll put that, like, I think it.

[Nick Scarpino]

Would have been okay or whatever.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We imagine we streamed the games we were playing. That would have been such good content.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so, you know, there's always. Whenever we get a group trip together, the first words out of my mouth is, are we going to meet at the studio? Because in my mind, right, we all meet at the studio. We take the Uber together.

[Nick Scarpino]

Sure.

[Snowbike Mike]

We start the vlog.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Here's the thing. I'll say this at the forefront. I'm such an asshole. It's like Michael's like, oh, we're going to get leave in the studio. I was like, no, man. Yeah, I'm taking the Uber directly to the airport. I don't want to see you until we're at the gate.

[Snowbike Mike]

That's the rule. Blessing and Andy are very similar of like, no, Mike, I will meet you there. And I'm like, we could take an Uber.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm like, this is my chance. Because I'm so. I'm like, very introverted, right? Like, I know when people see and watch content from us, they're only seeing me in a. In a state to where I'm talking. And I'm.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah, you're very. You're. Yeah, you're very extroverted. Yeah. On camera.

[Blessing Adeoye]

On camera, off camera. I'm Very introverted.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm very, like, you know, I want my space. I want to, like, you know, be doing my own thing. My favorite moments of the day are when I have my headphones on. We know, we know.

[Nick Scarpino]

We know that when your headphones go on, we don't talk to you.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, it is so nice.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah, it is so nice.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so now this is trip number two for me and Bless of just solo Mike and Bless. So I know the rules, right. I know Bless on the plane likes to have his space. I know that Bless needs his space and deserves his space when we do this, but this trip was a little bit different. This trip, you're going to get 24 hours of just me, which was fun. And so I asked, Bless, you want to meet me in the Uber? He says no. So then when I show up to security, where's Blessing? Five people in front of me, right.

[Blessing Adeoye]

In front of Mike.

[Snowbike Mike]

But to be like, oh, my God.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And I love. I love that Mike does not, like, care about the surroundings around him.

[Snowbike Mike]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like, there's a bunch of people that just are just trying to get to point A to point B. Yeah. You just hear Mike out of nowhere, oh, what's up, Bless? And I'm like, yelling, nothing.

[Nick Scarpino]

Nothing smarter than being loud in an airport.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

In this day and age.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Exactly.

[Nick Scarpino]

Screaming across a TSA security line, just having some fun.

[Snowbike Mike]

Well, Blessings Naruto bad got, of course, checked, you know.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

We talked about security, and I told Bless. I was like, be aware, they usually check giant blocks of cards because you can't see through that. So they think it's a bomb. And sure enough, Blessing got checked. You know what I mean?

[Nick Scarpino]

Now, again, we talked about this before, but that would give me so much anxiety because I know how much you guys take care of your cards.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, dude. When they started opening the box, I was like, please don't go for it.

[Nick Scarpino]

You can't.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Don't start taking them out the sleeves.

[Nick Scarpino]

Bending them back and forth, getting fingerprints on them. And that shit's gonna stay in there forever. Forget it. Forget it.

[Snowbike Mike]

No, that's funny. And so I also had a special treat that I didn't tell Blessing about that I told. I whispered to Roger, which was my first class upgrade, of course. You know, Joey, was it an upgrade? Joey has taught me a move.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Where, you know, if you are invited somewhere, you can take the free ticket and maybe you upgrade for more dollars. You know what I mean? And so I looked at the plane, and this was the biggest plane that I was ever going to go on. I don't take many trips outside of the US So I'm never on these big jets that you see with the pods, multiple sections, there's a row in the middle along with rows on the windows. That's crazy to me, right? That's the biggest thing I've ever seen. And so I noticed like, oh, shit, there's pods. And I see all the cool YouTubers there in these pods and I'm like, oh my God, imagine if I wrote a pod. And now I'm not going to France, I'm not going to Japan. This is a smaller ticket price still five.

[Nick Scarpino]

Still like, you know, a five hour flight. So I can.

[Snowbike Mike]

It was, you know what, because it was so big, it flew faster there. It's only 415. On the way back, it was five.

[Nick Scarpino]

Because that it goes against the. The wind.

[Snowbike Mike]

Exactly. And so it was only four hours. So it was a little fast. It was a little fast. And so I got the pod upgrade. But I didn't tell Bless. And so the whole time I didn't tell Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And then Bless notices. He's like, why are you standing in the first section? We're section three. And I'm sitting there smiling, laughing, and this guy's looking at me and blessed now his Blessings looking at me. And the guy goes, what are y'all doing? We're going, we're going to Magic Con. And the guy immediately shook his head. He's like, oh, here's some nerds. But he was like, I like Magic too.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And we're like, yeah, we got a whole conversation with the dude in the line. Both of them in the, in the line for first class.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so now as first class is starting to go in, Blessing looks at me, goes, okay, well, I'm going to go stand over there. Then I guess the guy's like, no, no, no, you can go with him.

[Nick Scarpino]

Go with him.

[Snowbike Mike]

You're his teammate. And Blessing, what did you say?

[Blessing Adeoye]

I forget what I said.

[Snowbike Mike]

You said Greg never brings you. Oh, yeah, I did say that immediately throws Greg out of the cuz.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Greg cuz like there have been times where I'm going to the same place as Greg Summer game fest or some shit.

[Snowbike Mike]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Or we're going to the same preview event. And like Greg will be in first class or not first class. He'll be in like group one.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah, he's got all the like the.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Miles traveling and I'll be in group five.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like literally, like it was a time. The time I'm Thinking of, I was in the very last group. I was like on group six or seven, which I didn't know existed.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And like, I was. I remember talking to Greg and being like, all right, peace. Like, I'll go stand on my part of the line. I didn't know you could just walk in with somebody who's in group one.

[Nick Scarpino]

You technically can. If you're traveling with them, you can walk in with them. Yeah, I don't know that that is a hard and fast rule. I think it's more of like a courtesy.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Because if they see, if they see that you're born in group five, they technically can. Can ask you to go.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Well, they did not do that.

[Nick Scarpino]

When I went, okay, cool.

[Snowbike Mike]

It was like, ye. You're. You're flying with him. You can go with his group. And we were like, really? We've never heard of that, you know. And so we walked up together. Sure. I scan it. Blessing's like, I'm with him. She's like, get on board. Let's have a great flight. And so it was awesome. Right? And so I don't know if I told. By that time, Blessing knew I was in first class. Right. And so we get out of the plane and she goes first class to the left. Blessing, you're to the right. And I said, see you, Bless. And I mean, this plane is massive dick.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Huge.

[Snowbike Mike]

They got a whole stewardess area in the middle there.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so now I'm in the pods and in my mind, bless him, Nick. Just so you know, I upgraded to the pod, thinking it was going to be a pod. You see all these videos, right? Ryan Trahan, he's on a. He's on a plane with a shower in there. You know what I mean? I thought I would step to the pod. It'd be a larger seat that could lay all the way back, but I'd have like windows that would go down in between me and bless here.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Right.

[Snowbike Mike]

That would secure me in my own pod.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

No, no, no, no. It was just a row of the chairs that could lay down, but we could see each other. There was no windows. There was no courtesy.

[Nick Scarpino]

Were you in that were the window. Were they actually the first class or were they the business class?

[Snowbike Mike]

No. Well, this was as far forward as you could be.

[Nick Scarpino]

So it was literally like one of those where you, you can kind of lean back. You are in a self contained area. You can put the little divider up.

[Snowbike Mike]

No dividers.

[Nick Scarpino]

There wasn't. You maybe just didn't.

[Snowbike Mike]

When you lay far Enough back. You're technically in the seat cove. So like I guess that would be your divider.

[Nick Scarpino]

The ones that I have seen, I've never, I've never flown in these pots before. Do have a button you can hit where this, the thing will go up so you're not looking at the other person. Cuz they're like, they're, they're sitting like 69.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, it's not like that.

[Nick Scarpino]

Not in a sexual way.

[Snowbike Mike]

It was a dude. Damn the dude. Let me tell you, I had so much.

[Nick Scarpino]

What does that mean? Dude, Dude.

[Snowbike Mike]

So there I was, I lock eyes with this older woman across the aisle, right? So it's me on the middle left seat because there's four and twos, right? And so it's me on the middle left along with the jabroni next to me. And I lock eyes with this old woman across the way and she's baffled that she's in first class because you know, we're not supposed to be here. And she looked at me, she goes, I can't believe we're here. And I said, miss, you look good in it. And she started smiling. She died, her and her old husband. And they're laying back, she's got a blanket, she's got an eye mask on now, passed out. I'm like, this is how we all deserve to fly.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Can I pitch a Patreon exclusive item?

[Nick Scarpino]

Sure.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We need a book of mic isms. Yeah, I think we need like a. Yeah, like a little book. That is a bunch of mic sayings. Because I need that.

[Nick Scarpino]

We need a bunch of mic sayings.

[Blessing Adeoye]

That's good.

[Nick Scarpino]

We need Mike sayings and we need the, the list, the ongoing list of Mike's nicknames for his friends. Like Martin Farton. Oh yeah, Squirrel.

[Snowbike Mike]

Miss you. You know, Sad boy Sean finally quit Starbucks. Very proud of you, Sad boy Sean. I love you. He hated that job. He needed to get out of there.

[Nick Scarpino]

It's a tough job for him. So Mike, was it everything you wanted it?

[Snowbike Mike]

No, I was mad. You know what, let me say, was.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It worth the upgrade?

[Nick Scarpino]

How much? Don't. Don't tell me how much because it's your money. I don't worth the upgrade. Was it worth the amount of money you spent on it?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yes. As someone who has a lot of flight anx anxiety, as you know, and it's not really the about. It's more of just a trip anxiety. So it is nice to like be able to have the seat be comfortable. Get over there. Right? So that was a big deal for me. So it was totally worth it at the end. And I had more fun at the end than at the beginning because I was let down. Right? Because now I'm staring at, I'm awkwardly laying down with this guy. At the same time, we're both like looking at each other. I'm like, oh, this is so weird. And he's laying down and I'm laying down. I'm like, just two bros laying right next to each other. Didn't want that vibe. Didn't want that vibe. But let me tell you what, at the end, when I'm watching Predator 2 and I'm fully laid back and my feet are up the best, you know what I mean? It was all worth it.

[Nick Scarpino]

Sure.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so I, what I told Bless at the end of it was like, you should go with someone. Get the two pack, it's more comfortable. The four pack, not comfortable at all.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's a great hella dope. In the chat says it should be called mic drops.

[Blessing Adeoye]

That's good.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's a great game for that.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so first class was a great time. They give you a hot towel. Awful food selection. You know what I mean? Just the worst food of your life.

[Blessing Adeoye]

But you're eating, you're eating lunch. I think, I think I missed it actually. I slept through that whole thing.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so that was my flight. We get off the flight and here's the best part.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Now me and Blessed are together. The trip has begun. And you know me, we're getting in an Uber and I'm talking, right? And this Uber driver, we're going back and forth. I'm excited.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Mike learned the entire history of Chicago.

[Nick Scarpino]

You know what I want you to do next time you go on a trip with Mike, I want you to write the story. Story. But leave like leave blank the parts that I have to guess. Like for instance when we got in the Uber and then just leave it blank. And I will fill in Mike, talk this guy's ear off your hour long ride from wherever you guys were going.

[Blessing Adeoye]

To be fair, the Uber himself was also very talkative. Of course they are.

[Nick Scarpino]

All Uber drivers are talking.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was like he was excited. He was so excited to tell tell us everything about Chicago.

[Snowbike Mike]

I love talking to the Uber driver. So we're going back and forth, man. We got a Bulls game. I think it's Friday. No, no, Mike, it's Saturday. Nick, I shit you not. This man is driving on the highway. Now he's on his phone like this, like full eyes on the phone. He's typing things in looking Up Chicago. Things to do for us while driving 60 on the highway. It was fantastic.

[Nick Scarpino]

Did you. Did you explain to this gentleman that you have something to do? It's called Magic on it.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, we. So we were like, oh, we're headed to the convention tomorrow, right? We're going to be hanging out around McCormick Place. Like, there. What's around there? What can we do? And he then was like, oh, are you guys here for the dentist convention?

[Snowbike Mike]

Dentist convention, of course.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And we're like, what do you mean? He's like, the McCormick place is going to be a dentist convention. I brought somebody here who's here for that. And we're like, no, we're here for Magic Con. He's like, magic. Like Magic the Gathering. It's like, oh, you should look into it. I think there's a dentist convention. Turns out both are happening at the same time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Biggest convention, same convention center.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So I like that he did it. Feel like he wanted you to look into it to maybe get you to go to the dentist convention instead of magic. I think it was, like, very fascinated with the fact that there are two conventions happening in the same exact location.

[Nick Scarpino]

I went to a VidCon one time. I think it was the first VidCon we had ever gone to, where half of the convention center was vidcon and the other half was the National Fencing Association's, like, State championship.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Tell you.

[Nick Scarpino]

Which was weird.

[Snowbike Mike]

I should have got lost in the dentist convention. That was my biggest MC.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We'll get there. But McCormick Place. Gigantic.

[Snowbike Mike]

Unbelievable.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Big convention center.

[Snowbike Mike]

Biggest you've ever seen. Massive. And so now I'm talking to the guy. Bulls game. He's looking up, you know, Charlie XCX is in the building. I'm like, oh, Charlie's here. That's crazy. Brad Summer.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, I know Charlie.

[Snowbike Mike]

Brad Summer. And so then we get to talking about hockey. I'm like, man, I wish I could see a Blackhawks game. You know, they got the World cup going on right now. He goes, dude, it's on right now. The man proceeds to pull up the live feed of a hockey game, flip his phone over, and is actively watching the hockey game. None of this is legal while driving. Yeah, okay. The man is actively driving 65 on the highway, watching a hockey game on the dashboard with me and blood. Blessing is looking at me, shaking his head at this point like, mike, what have you done?

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah, it's at this point that I would be like, just. Let's just stop before this situation gets any worse. Because at a certain point, he's Going to be in the back seat with you guys. And the Tesla is going to be self driving itself.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, yeah. It might as well have been at that point.

[Snowbike Mike]

He's turning it up. He's finding the perfect volume for us.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was doing that while also just giving us all these different bits of like Chicago stuff. Right. Tell us about the Chicago Fire. Telling us about McDonald's and how it's headquartered in Chicago and how you pointed out the biggest, biggest McDonald's in America to us, which looked really cool.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, I would have gone to that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I love going to the biggest one ever.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so that was. Then we got to the hotel.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. Then we got to hotel, dropped our stuff off.

[Snowbike Mike]

We dropped our stuff off. We had a nice little steak dinner with the PR team. It was fantastic. And then afterwards we asked for recommendations. You know, we drove past river north, which for all of you out there, you know, there's different pockets of the city that's happening. That's young, that's hip, that's hot. And we said, hey, we saw river north. Really hot right now. People, young people dancing, having fun. We kind of want that vibe. And I asked these two gentlemen along with Bless. I said, what's the vibe? Where should we go? And they pointed us to a bar. Bless. Yeah, they said, go to Rainbow Bar. Rainbow, Best dive bar in Chicago.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Rainbow without a W. We showed up.

[Snowbike Mike]

To Rainbow Bar, Nick, and there was 10 in the building.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was just a regular ass dive bar in like a un. Busy area. It was. We wanted to go to. Yeah, the river north thing.

[Snowbike Mike]

I wanted to go to River Bar.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We went to nowhere near that. Right. It was like some secluded bar. Walk in. This is a regular dive bar.

[Nick Scarpino]

Were these PR people from Chicago?

[Snowbike Mike]

These were journalists from another group and they were from Chicago.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

But I don't think they were picking up my vibes of like, I want young, hip. Maybe the bar's a little too loud and you don't like that. Yeah, that's what me and Bless are going for. Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

I would imagine. And I don't want to stereotype, but I would imagine that. Magic. The gathering Journalists.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Don't know where the party's at.

[Snowbike Mike]

We should have taken all their recommendations thrown in and just gone right to river north. Put ourselves. Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

If you, if you drove past the club that was spilling over with the party, that's. That's the vibe that you probably wanted to go to. Then you go to the Rainbow afterward for like one little drink.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. And then.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

And then you go to get Pizza.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I think their thing was they were suggesting, I think, their favorite bar. Right. Like, their go to bar. It's the equivalent of asking me what my favorite bar is exactly. Like, I don't. I don't go out to party, and you guys know that. I do want to shout out those guys, though, because they were fun to talk to. Dude.

[Snowbike Mike]

A lot of great people.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, a lot of great people at that dinner. And, yeah, there were, like, some dudes that worked at Polygon. And, like, I just. I was just asking questions about, like, yo, what's it like working at Polygon?

[Nick Scarpino]

Polygon. I haven't heard that name in a while.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, right. I was like, polygon up.

[Nick Scarpino]

They still around?

[Blessing Adeoye]

I basically was like, how's Polygon doing?

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I didn't know we were that. Yeah, y'all were still.

[Nick Scarpino]

I get that confused. It's obviously, I don't want to make fun. I don't want to make a lot of that situation. We'll just keep moving on.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

So, yeah, we went out to Rainbow, and now, don't get me wrong, Midwest vibes.

[Nick Scarpino]

Good.

[Snowbike Mike]

Like, just good. Just like, down home, quiet American vibes. 12 people, nice empty bar.

[Blessing Adeoye]

People there had a good energy.

[Snowbike Mike]

Everybody was smiling, having fun. I told Bless. I said, there's two cute girls over there. Get ready. I'm gonna talk to him.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yep.

[Snowbike Mike]

30 minutes later. Didn't talk to him.

[Blessing Adeoye]

No.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Try to make eye contact.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yep.

[Snowbike Mike]

Try to try to get the nod first before I walked up, you know, I mean, couldn't get it.

[Nick Scarpino]

Where are they, at the bar?

[Snowbike Mike]

No, we were on a sofa. They were at a nice little.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Me and Mike sitting next to each other on a sofa.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Drinking our drinks and just talking to each other. And they're, like, in that corner. Yeah. Like, in kind of a booth, talking to each other.

[Nick Scarpino]

Just the four of you in this place, basically.

[Blessing Adeoye]

No, it was like.

[Snowbike Mike]

It was like a few more people.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I mean, we were probably half the people there.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, it was really empty. It was a good vibe. It was a good vibe.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Just Mike, keep trying on making eye contact with these people.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's just Mike and Bless, we're just two homies talking, having some fun, really connecting, really bonding. Because this is our first trip, we're like. We're going to talk a lot about it of, like, Mike and Bless fully together. You know, Pax east, when we went together, we had our moments, but, like, I was able to dap up Bless and be like, hey, I'm going with Jeff Gub and Bless is like, I'm going to this hot TwitchCon party. I'll see you in a little bit. Right. So, like, we would dap up, do some other things, and we'd come back together. This was like, no, Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It's like we had nobody else, you know, it's just. It's just us two.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We don't know. It's not like pax, where I know a million people at pac.

[Snowbike Mike]

We don't know.

[Blessing Adeoye]

But we're at Magic on, I don't know, Magic people.

[Nick Scarpino]

You guys have to roll together. It's fun.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We went to. Or at least we tempted to go to three different bars.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. So then, of course, I'm sure you heard we went to a second bar. Because I remembered the guy was like, if you go to Rainbow, there's this gold star bar that's just a block away. So I looked at Bless. Now, mind you, it's negative 14 out and I'm having the time of my life. Okay. Finally.

[Nick Scarpino]

I heard you brought this winter coat is working. I heard you brought an appropriate thick coat.

[Snowbike Mike]

I thought about bringing a coat, and then I was like, no, I'm not bringing a coat. You know what I mean? It's just I didn't have.

[Nick Scarpino]

Not even the Carhartt.

[Snowbike Mike]

No, no. I had the car heart out and everything. Nick and I didn't. Like.

[Nick Scarpino]

That would have been the perfect weight for you, that kind of.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, it would have been perfect. I would have looked great. No, there I was. Freeze. I was looking like an idiot. I was freezing to death in the sweater. Right? My champion sweater.

[Nick Scarpino]

I love the champions.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Can I ask you a question? This is from Arjun in the chat. Mike and Bless. This is when you send them a drink. Have you ever thought about that? Because I think you could have gotten away with sending them a drink.

[Snowbike Mike]

I could have maybe, but, like, it was. It's not like that kind of vibes where you look at the bar, you know, when we weren't at the bar top right. It wasn't like they were across the bar. It was quite literally like I would have to get up, go to the bartender, order them drinks, then walking over there myself.

[Nick Scarpino]

Right.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so that didn't vibe. Well, that's already looking at.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's a red flag for most women.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

These girls already got drinks. They're smiling, having fun. So if she looked at me, I would have looked at her, gave her the nod, got up and been like, hey, what's going on? How y'all ladies doing tonight? Yeah, that's how it would have gone.

[Nick Scarpino]

I think you made the right choice. I think if there are two people sitting in a booth by themselves enjoying their. Each other's company, I think you left.

[Blessing Adeoye]

You gotta let them run.

[Nick Scarpino]

If you're at the bar and you can maybe have an organic way of being like, like, do you guys want to do some shots or something like that? That's always a fun thing. They can watch the bartender point the shots so everything seems like, okay and safe. But, yeah, I think you made the right choice.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, me and Black, me and Bless. Got it. Okay. Don't worry about it. We got it like that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Mike was like, we're gonna. I'm gonna talk to these girls. I was like, mike, that's not me. I was like, listen, if you want, I'll follow you. Like, oh, man, I'll follow. But I'm. That's not me.

[Snowbike Mike]

So then we go to the next bar, which is Star Bar, right down the block. Seven minute, ice cold walk. Blessings. Freezing to death. Unfortunately, your boy stomach, Mike thriving in the winter cold. I'm having so much fun just experiencing it. Then we get to Rainbow Bar or Star Bar. Dead again. Nick had a pizza party, though. Almost wanted to dabble in the pizza six. I mean, you walk in, Nick, big bar, then pool table and sofa in the back. But when you walked up to the back room, they had like six pizzas there. And I was like, should I grab a slice? That's like, you know what? Don't grab them. I kind of want to get sick right now. I backed off of it. I backed off.

[Nick Scarpino]

Smart, smart.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so we walk around. Of course they're hogging the pool table. Can we talk about pool table etiquette? Okay.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Hey, you finish a game, get the out the way.

[Nick Scarpino]

Were you.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Were you trying to play pool?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, I wanted to play pool.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I didn't know you're trying to play. I said that I would have, like, doubled up.

[Snowbike Mike]

They finished the game and immediately just went for another one. It's like, hey, nah, you gotta, you gotta.

[Blessing Adeoye]

You gotta walk away for five minutes. If no one else comes, then you can come back and do a second game.

[Snowbike Mike]

You got. Yeah. Oh, yes. Thank you.

[Blessing Adeoye]

That's what I'm saying.

[Snowbike Mike]

You walk, you go get some drinks, right? You clearly see snow. Mike, Mike standing up here. I'm looking at the chalkboard, I'm looking at you. You finish your game. Get out the way. There's one pool table. Okay, I see.

[Blessing Adeoye]

If you. I would have. I would have gone up and be like, yo, can I get next?

[Snowbike Mike]

I almost Bodied them almost.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. Can I get next?

[Snowbike Mike]

So then we went to the bar. We're hanging out. Cute girl walks by. Say, what up? She's going out for a heater. And you know me, I'm like, hey, what's up? You know, of course, nothing more than.

[Nick Scarpino]

You know that I know about you, that you just love ripping heaters.

[Blessing Adeoye]

You like standing outside near people who.

[Snowbike Mike]

Are love standing outside.

[Nick Scarpino]

I love it.

[Snowbike Mike]

I love talking.

[Nick Scarpino]

My favorite thing to do.

[Snowbike Mike]

So, man, me and Bless had a great time. Then we go to another bar. It was close.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. Our bartender sent us to the moon, basically. They were like, oh, yeah, you should go to this bar. It's awesome. Get an Uber. The Uber drops us off and drives away, and we're stranded at a bar that is fully closed.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, good.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, she took us to a bar that's clearly a summertime bar. Yeah, Nick, it was beautiful. Also, outdoors are all cargo containers lining the outside of it that have been cut open to have, like, windows and cool standing areas. Right. This place was called Recess, and I promise you, during the Chicago summers, that place pops off. Oh, yeah, right. That's where you want to be as Recess. Not.

[Nick Scarpino]

It's a great name for a bar.

[Snowbike Mike]

Freezing cold Thursday night in Chicago. Right. So she. She. Us. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So we're just standing outside. Remember that? I forget what time. It must have been, like, 1am or some. We're just standing outside and we're like, all right, let's go home. It's cold. Let's go home. So we get an Uber to the hotel.

[Snowbike Mike]

We Uber back, and Blessing's like, okay, this is the end. I was like, bless. That's just fine. What time you want to go tomorrow? He's like, mike, let's get some sleep. We'll recap in the morning. I said, bless. That's my guy. Okay. We got some good sleep.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Got some good sleep.

[Snowbike Mike]

Some good sleep.

[Nick Scarpino]

Did Mike try to sleep on the floor in your room?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, absolutely not. I. I would not have.

[Snowbike Mike]

Blessing was on the tippy top of the tower.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

Blessing's on the 22nd floor. I'm on the 18th.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, there's nothing like saying goodbye in the elevator and, like, me getting that moment alone being like, oh, man, I can. I can relax.

[Nick Scarpino]

Thank God. I don't have to talk anymore.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I don't have to talk. Mike loves to talk.

[Snowbike Mike]

So then we make it to Magicon the next day.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And, Nick, let me tell you what.

[Nick Scarpino]

Let me. Let's back up for a second. So what's the itinerary for Magicon. Do you guys have to be at things? Are there. Are there, like, do you have appointments for Magic?

[Blessing Adeoye]

No, I think we just had the dinner for. With PR this time the night before.

[Snowbike Mike]

We knew about the dinner. We also knew that there was a big Magicon ceremony happening on day one that is kind of like the announcement and the welcome, and they were like, hey, you definitely don't want to miss that. That's where we're going to announce this big, cool thing. And we're like, all right, awesome. And so I think we can announce that now. We can talk about it for a moment, right?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. So I think a big thing that magic's been doing in the last year, they've been doing a lot of collaborations, what they call Universes Beyond. Universes beyond is what they call it. And so, you know, the way I got into magic or the way I got into magic and Greg onto magic was through Ghostbusters because Greg. They allowed Greg to help announce the Ghostbusters expansion they're doing. And Greg got excited through that, and then I got excited through, like, Fallout and Final Fantasy and these different things they're doing. So the one they announced during magic on was for Avatar the Last Airbender, which is really cool.

[Snowbike Mike]

Big deal. Very cool.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Big deal. Because now I'm like. I'm looking at Barrett, and I'm like, barrett, this might be your chance.

[Snowbike Mike]

Damn.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Damn. Assassin's Creed wasn't gonna do it. I feel like there's been another, like, Doctor who, I think. Right. Was another one, right, Mikey?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yes. Doctor who was another.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Those couldn't do it, maybe. Because here's the thing. Because, I mean, like, there's so many friends out in the Bay Area that are Avatar the last Airbender people. And I know that this is the crossover that they've been waiting for, and that that's a great week to announce it. It was the 20th anniversary of Avatar, like, literally the other day. I think that's probably what it lined up with, right. Why they did it.

[Snowbike Mike]

I mean, this is a big rollout because this will be the end of the year, too. So in June, you get Final Fantasy, which all of the. You know, Tim, the nerds are excited for, right? They bring in all the final fantasies underneath one roof for all the different cards, which is awesome. Then we'll roll into, of course, Universes beyond with Avatar the Last Airbender at the end of the year, different packs in between. It's gonna be a really dope year for me.

[Nick Scarpino]

Can you mix those packs in with a normal deck or is this. How does that work?

[Snowbike Mike]

Starting now you can starting with finals.

[Nick Scarpino]

Do you have to stay like, hey, we're fallout. We're just playing for the fallout deck.

[Blessing Adeoye]

No, you can mix and match.

[Nick Scarpino]

So it's just kind of a themed. Kind of fun.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. I think before they're a bit more separate before they. But I think after a while they're kind of like it. Like it's a lot to manage and I think it's probably better as far as getting people in because like, I think there are a lot of people that just want to buy the Avatar set.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Play magic.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So it's way easier to buy that and be like, all right, cool. I know Mike plays magic, so I'm just gonna play with him now.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. So yeah, there will be the mix now together starting in June, which is really, really cool of like it. There's no rules anymore. There's no separation. Everybody's in whatever decks you want.

[Nick Scarpino]

Fantastic. Mike.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yep.

[Nick Scarpino]

I want to hear more about this incredible trip. Trip to Magicon. And we're going to do that right after a word from our sponsors.

[D]

This episode is brought to you by me, Craig Miller, Chicago. What are you doing Thursday, April 10th at 7pm the answer coming to my live show. That's right, Mrs. Miller's baby boy is coming back to Chicagoland and putting on a 90 minute, one night only show live from the Goodwin Auditorium at Ben Benedictine University in Lyle. I'm mixing a bit of up at noon with a bit of my best comic con performances with a lot of my Chicago influences. I'm calling it a late night with Greg Miller. And it's gonna offer never before adolescent tales, an interview with one of my favorite bands of all time, a conversation with Millie Ramsey about growing up in the Internet spotlight, your live questions for me and of course, tons of fabulous video game prizes. Get your tickets [e-mail] Chicago and hey, Midwest people, we never do shows out there. So this is your chance to see a Greg Miller stage show. Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin. We always talk about how we love to drive as Midwest people. So hit the road for an opportunity you may never get again. This is a fundraiser for Benedictine University. That's right, my childhood best friend Poe school. So get your tickets [e-mail] Chicago and I'll see you on April 10th. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. It's always important for us to be aware of a relationship red flags we should avoid. But what if we focused More on looking for green flags in friends and partners. If you're not sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags. Actively practice them in your relationships and embody the green flag energy yourself. Some of our best friends use BetterHelp and love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself. It isn't just for those who have experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. And it serves over 5 million people worldwide. Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com kinda funny to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E-L-P.com kindafunny betterhelp.com kinda funny.

[Nick Scarpino]

And we're back. I. I really honestly blessing with Mike. I can never tell if he's the happiest human being I've ever met or if he's like a bad day away from ending it all.

[Blessing Adeoye]

This is the third time this joke has been made today.

[Nick Scarpino]

Me and Ron, I really don't.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I can never tell.

[Snowbike Mike]

Mike, I want you to.

[Nick Scarpino]

I'm here for, for both. I want you to know if you want to celebrate life, I want to stand next to your side as your friend and coworker and do that with you. And if you're struggling, just let, let.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Let me know because here's the thing, right? Me and me, Roger and us were having the conversation this morning before KD of if Mike dies. If Mike and me and Moto die on the same day, who gets the headline?

[Snowbike Mike]

Who gets the headline?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Who gets the. Who gets the KHD headline?

[Snowbike Mike]

Who gets the headline?

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, it's definitely Miyamoto.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like, because do we resort? Do we take.

[Snowbike Mike]

Who's.

[Nick Scarpino]

Who's hosting? Am I hosting that day or is Tim hosting?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Let's say it's. Let's say it's a Greg and you.

[Nick Scarpino]

If it's Greg and me. Oh, it's gonna be Mike, probably.

[Blessing Adeoye]

If it's Greg and me, it might be Miyamoto. But like Mike, we'll give you like a Wii news slot.

[Nick Scarpino]

Mike. And this is the thing that you have to think about. If you, if you were to. If you were to pass away and we don't want you to, but there would be a moment where everyone would, would, you know, they'd. They'd remember you. Yeah. They take a second for You.

[Snowbike Mike]

Thank you so much.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's important.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, I. I got a new lifestyle. Dark, fast, you know, I want to shout out, count, who's in the chat right now? Count, can I. Can I get a little quick chat about Tupelo? Twin Lakes at Tupelo. I need to know my main man who's putting me onto the golden triangle. I got a new way of life that I'm very excited to tell you all about. It's a mindset.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Okay?

[Snowbike Mike]

Okay. Because you have to realize where you're at in life. And, like, you gotta appreciate that sometimes you could be in the golden triangle. Maybe your golden triangle isn't fully in right now, but, like, I, Snowbike Mike, I'm. I'm deep in the golden triangle. I'm living the best life. Good. We're gonna talk about that in just a minute, okay?

[Blessing Adeoye]

All right. So Magicon.

[Snowbike Mike]

I met him at Magicon, and he put me on and changed my life.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Okay?

[Snowbike Mike]

The golden triangle. Let me just tell you about the golden triangle.

[Blessing Adeoye]

What is the golden triangle, Mike?

[Snowbike Mike]

Let me put you onto the gold.

[Nick Scarpino]

I like you.

[Snowbike Mike]

Don't you tell me.

[Nick Scarpino]

I like you. Just to string me along for the next five days until I Google it myself. I thought this was a white lotus thing. I thought you were gonna talk about.

[Blessing Adeoye]

The white lotus is a magic card.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's about health, time and money.

[Nick Scarpino]

Right?

[Snowbike Mike]

And through life, your golden triangle will move around. Maybe you're Mike and blessings, age and beyond. Maybe you got kids and, like, your time is a little more limited. Maybe you're a little bit on the older side and your health is a little bit more limited. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're 18, you don't have the financials down yet, so your money's a little more limited. But when you think of Snowbike Mike in his prime, flush with cash, fucking dialed into the golden triangle. And so right now, I just want to appreciate. Right now. Wait. The king of Tupelo. My man. Okay? For putting me on.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Dialed in.

[Snowbike Mike]

When I think about my life, right? And it's like, what does Mike have? Mike has a whole lot of time.

[Nick Scarpino]

A lot of time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Great health. Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Great health.

[Snowbike Mike]

Sure, I'm breathing pretty heavy, but great health.

[Nick Scarpino]

You are. Yeah. You are the picture of health.

[Snowbike Mike]

I mean, I am the picture right there. And then I got plenty of cash to spend on whatever I want, obviously. Think about your boy, Snowbike Mike. I'm in the golden triangle. I'm living the perfect moment right now. And sometimes that maybe I meet a girl, maybe I have a kid, it changes. Okay? Maybe I fall on bad health, I twist my ankle, I can't go and do all the cool stuff I want to do times I buy too many magic cards. Okay? You know what I mean? But here's the deal. As of right now, shout out to my man count in the building. I've been, I'm in the triangle. And I need to remember that when Andy teases me and he's like, mike, what are you doing? It's like, I'm just living my best life right now. I want you to know that I'm living my best.

[Blessing Adeoye]

This is the man that loves lying, by the way.

[Nick Scarpino]

Mike, I. I want to say congratulations on living your best life.

[Snowbike Mike]

Thank you.

[Nick Scarpino]

And please out to me if you need help, please.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm just telling somebody this is the truth. You got to remember.

[Nick Scarpino]

And I'm saying, and I'm saying on one side I appreciate that and I think it's awesome that you're crushing it on the other side, I'm here for you, okay? I'm just letting whatever day that's going.

[Snowbike Mike]

To be so I, I thank you. You know, shout out to Twin Lakes Tuplo, just so Chris an the chat.

[Nick Scarpino]

Says Mike spends his nights telling us I'm dying. What he does. I know, Chris, I know, I know. We just can be here for him. That's all we can do. That's all we can do. There's no help but self help blessing. Back to magic, the actual convention.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I guess we should talk about arriving at Magicon.

[Snowbike Mike]

Right?

[Blessing Adeoye]

We get there, oh, the morning starts, right? I mean, what time, what time are.

[Nick Scarpino]

We talking in the morning? What time we talking?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like 9:30. 9:30.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, yeah, we met at 9:30.

[Nick Scarpino]

A little early.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's a little early, but like, like.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We want to make the most of the day.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, we want to make.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm only there for one day, so I want to make sure I took it.

[Snowbike Mike]

Really cool convention hours too. Nick. The convention show floor. 10 to 7, you can buy magic cards, you can explore the show floor. But underneath, in the belly of the beast.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Where all the tables and magic is going down, open till midnight.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Crazy.

[Snowbike Mike]

So they're like, hey, the show floor is closing. You can go down and play as much as you want till midnight. And everyone's down there playing games, trading. It was so sick.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So we wake up, we meet up at the bottom of the hotel. We walked to McDonald's, that's right next to us real quick to grab some breakfast.

[Snowbike Mike]

Best McDonald's ever it was the greatest.

[Blessing Adeoye]

McDonald's meal I've had.

[Snowbike Mike]

The Biscuit Light. Fluffy.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

It's home of McDonald's.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yep.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's where it was founded.

[Snowbike Mike]

They knew. They were like, we're two blocks from HQ. We're two blocks from the biggest McDonald's ever. We got to put on for our city. And they put on.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, no, it was different.

[Nick Scarpino]

So the biggest McDonald's ever is right next to the convention center?

[Snowbike Mike]

No, it's in downtown.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was, like, close to our hotel.

[Nick Scarpino]

Did you go to the one in the headquarters?

[Blessing Adeoye]

McDonald's?

[Snowbike Mike]

No.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye]

No, there's just a lot of McDonald's. So, like, the one we went to was just a corner McDonald's.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye]

But if we wanted to, honestly, we probably could have gone to the biggest one.

[Snowbike Mike]

We should have gone to the biggest one. But we didn't. We're just. Time was limited. We were making it.

[Nick Scarpino]

I get it.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We get to the convention center, we Uber over, we get out, and immediately play the game of. All right, who's here for magic and who's a dentist? And let me tell you, easy game to play.

[Nick Scarpino]

Not a hard one.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Not a hard game.

[Snowbike Mike]

Not a hard one.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like, you look at, like, a man who's in, like, a nice jacket, you know, and, like, beautiful teeth. Beautiful teeth.

[Snowbike Mike]

Stunning teeth.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And you're like, okay, that's a dentist. And you look to the right and just see people with backpacks and you.

[Nick Scarpino]

See people with backpacks and Naruto fanny packs.

[Blessing Adeoye]

On Naruto fanny packs, their hair is kind of dyed. You're like, all right, that's a magic.

[Nick Scarpino]

They look like they have. They're like, okay, this is day one of not showering for four days.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. And so we start. We follow where we see the magic players so we can find where the really quick.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm going to defend them. Smell was good.

[Nick Scarpino]

You were there for a day percent stank. You were there for a day.

[Snowbike Mike]

I was there for two days.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay?

[Snowbike Mike]

And let me tell you what. 35% stank.

[Nick Scarpino]

35.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I don't think I smell stank at all.

[Snowbike Mike]

Exactly. I'm telling you, you. It was very nice in there. Everybody was. Everybody was clean. It was good.

[Blessing Adeoye]

There are quite a few people who. I shook their hands after I shook a number of people's hands. Hands a little bit sticky and so.

[Snowbike Mike]

Work on that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Y'all work on that.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's gonna happen. As you know, Andy has that little lanyard of Purell. Yeah, you gotta do it.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, you got to do a fist bump. Bless I. I try fist bumps people. For some reason, they don't accept the fist bump anymore.

[Snowbike Mike]

What? I'm up, up. Can I talk about.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Somebody will grab my fist. Like, oh, yeah, the fist bump. People don't accept my handshake.

[Snowbike Mike]

I've been up because, you know, I come from up here. Yeah, Right. And so normally, what I want bless is I want one of these. We need to do that. Or I want one of these bless where we come in. Right. But my. When I come up here, people go, oh, hug initiated. Yeah, we dap first. Then we might hug.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

But, like, because I'm coming up so high, everybody gets.

[Nick Scarpino]

I don't want that.

[Snowbike Mike]

People that I think would pick that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Up, they just transition to the hug. It's fun to hug people.

[Snowbike Mike]

Hey, I'm fine with hugging. I like hugging. Get in here. But I want to do the cool.

[Nick Scarpino]

Handshake first as a non sequitur.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

It was brought to my attention that LeBron James has a handshake for every single person in his life. That's different. I would like that. I would like you to institute that. And kind of funny, if we all.

[Snowbike Mike]

Showed up at the exact same time, I would stand at the door, and I would make us all do the same.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like an elementary school.

[Snowbike Mike]

Everybody would do the high fives before you walked in. So I'll figure out a way where I listen to hear the gate close, and then I walk to the front door and I meet you, and you have to do the high five.

[Blessing Adeoye]

This is what you do. You do it during the weekly meeting of. All right, Mike, you're up, and you just walk around. Everybody gets a unique handshake.

[Nick Scarpino]

This is good.

[Snowbike Mike]

I like.

[Nick Scarpino]

This is good.

[Snowbike Mike]

I like this.

[Nick Scarpino]

So you go to magic. So are you catching games now? At what point do you initially. How does one initiate a game of magic?

[Snowbike Mike]

So you step up. You.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, you basically step up to the table. I want to get there in a second because I just want to shout out the fact that me and Michael, Mike, as we're going to this convention, had no idea how big it was gonna be as we were walking toward it.

[Nick Scarpino]

Magic's been on forever.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, but we didn't know, like, how the convention was, though.

[Snowbike Mike]

Right.

[Nick Scarpino]

Like, it might have been momo con, where you're like, oh, man, there's a lot of empty rooms here, because we.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Knew there are multiple conventions a year also. So it's like, okay, is this just people in Chicago that like magic that.

[Nick Scarpino]

Are going, Is this, like, the con for magic?

[Blessing Adeoye]

This is one of three. There's three a year, sometimes four.

[Snowbike Mike]

They bring this all around.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. So there's one in Vegas. There's one. Was it Atlanta? Is one Atlanta? Yeah. So, like, you get them in different locations throughout the year. But we were just like, all right, is this gonna be small? Is this gonna be huge? As we're walking, we're like, yo, there are so many people here. It didn't feel that way until you legit get into the. The show floor, the hall. And then you also realize, because we also didn't know those two floors. You get to the hall and you're like, oh, man, the show floor is massive. There's a lot of people. Then we walk downstairs and we just see a sea of tables.

[Snowbike Mike]

Can we bring up that video I sent you really quick? If you're listening and watching, I want to show the belly of the beast, because I ended the week going up to PR and thanking them for bringing us here. And I said this was an unbelievable experience that I will never be able to describe to somebody of how big this downstairs area was and all of the people playing. So you see we're on one wall. If I pan over, it is a just. There you go.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's insane.

[Snowbike Mike]

All tables.

[Nick Scarpino]

That looks like a back room table filled out.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It felt like that.

[Snowbike Mike]

And there are tables and seats everywhere and there are people playing at every single hour. All along there, it was jam packed. It was unbelievable.

[Nick Scarpino]

Is this. I assume a lot of these games are just for fun, but is there a ranked, like bracketed competition?

[Snowbike Mike]

So there's the pro tour. Up top. And I watched the pro tour.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay, they're nasty. Are they nasty?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. The pro tour, super sick. So they start off, it's half and half. First half is draft. So you're not bringing in your own stuff. You're similar to what blessing does where they give you packs and then you have to quickly make a deck out of the packs that you've received. Right. So there's no strategy of like, oh, this is my pre strategized deck that I'm bringing in. No, you got to make it right there on the spot. And then they have the second half where you bring in your pre made deck and battle, but you can only bring one deck for the whole weekend. No change in decks. The kid told me. And I was like, so how'd you do? And he's like, first day, I barely got by. Five and three today, not so hot. Oh, and four, like, oh, dude, that's crazy. And then I watched the finale at the end. On YouTube. Because they broadcast it live on YouTube and Twitch. Epic, bro. You gotta go watch this. The kids doing massive math problems to see if he can defeat the other kid. They got a mirror match of the. Both same decks going back and forth at each other. It was awesome. The pro tour. Sick. The pro tours.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Now, Mike, we gotta talk about what we did.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, we got. I mean, let's talk just. Nick McCormick center is massive. This is the biggest convention center I think, ever.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I mean, truly, I've not seen a commander center bigger than this one.

[Snowbike Mike]

This is massive because as we got.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Into Magicon, let me tell you, stop seeing the dentists. I'm like, they're. Where are the dentists at? Because I want to see how big their rooms are.

[Nick Scarpino]

I'll be real. I don't think Dennis are coming like that. You know what I mean? I think they got like maybe an eighth of this convention center.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm expecting like tens of thousands.

[Snowbike Mike]

There was a lot in one room. A lot of dentists. A lot of beautiful smiles out there.

[Blessing Adeoye]

A lot of people.

[Snowbike Mike]

They went to the left, Nick. We got dropped off in the front. We had to walk, walk for a mile across. We had to go across a bridge that went over a highway to the back half of the place. And then when we arrived there, it was massive. Stunning. Top floor of show floor. Like, they had ether drift little go karts that you could race here. What do they call those little RC track go karts?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Rcs.

[Snowbike Mike]

Is that what they are when they're on like the. They're on the predetermined path and they're the little electric.

[Nick Scarpino]

I guess it would be RC cars.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. Super fun. They had that. That's just miles of tables for people to play, food vendors. And then downstairs, the belly of the beast is ticketed play where you can pay to play. And they'll give you like a bunch of decks and cards to make up for what you've paid for, essentially. And so when we.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, so you pay and they actually keep the deck.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, yeah. They have just like regular free play. And then there's ticket to play where it's like organized and happening. And so Bless is reading through. He's like, oh, I want to play commander. And I was like, no, Bless. Like, let's play together. Like, we're here together. Let's do this together. So Bless and I found two headed giants.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, Two headed giant is a magic. It's a magic format where it is 2v2 and it's so rad. And I was trying to talk Mike out of it because like Mike hadn't played two headed Giant before. And like, not that the rules are super complex or anything.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah, but you have to understand, Mike's a gamer, he's a shooter.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, but that's the thing is I saw that and I was like, I know I've played it before with friends, you know, a couple of different rules. You know, we're playing, we're taking our turns at the exact same time and we share lives and stuff. Like Mike, are you sure you want to do it? Mike's like, oh yeah, that sounds fun. And so we pay the money, we, we do it, we go up. It's a whole process that we don't need to get into. But it was a technical difficulties because we're there on a press pass as opposed to a regular pass. And so like the website. Yeah, so like basically we had to talk to people, like people to help us actually sign up because they wouldn't work through the website.

[Snowbike Mike]

Got tournament and play organizers everywhere.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, everywhere.

[Snowbike Mike]

So they, there, there was never a time where you would have a problem that couldn't be solved. You walk up to this massive. Look at that downstairs, underbelly, imagine all that. But in the dead center it's this massive pillar of just help. Right? So you can walk up there, you can sign up, they'll organize you on what table you need to go to. And so we walked up, they signed us up right away. They're like, be back at one. And we came back, we came back. There was hundreds of people gathered around for just our tournament of play. Not to mention the thousands of people downstairs already playing other doing their own formats.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And so the format was two headed giant Chaos Draft Draft, your draft. I know that sounds like a bunch of gibberish, right? And we didn't explain, we didn't know what most of those words meant when we sat down. So we sit down and basically in a regular draft, right, like they'll give you a bunch of packs of the same pack. Like I went to the Aether Drift pre release and they gave me a bunch of Aether Drift packs to open. And then I make a deck in the, in the 30 minutes that we have here. Chaos Draft means that you are given a bunch of different packs from different expansions that aren't really supposed to play together well. Right. Like you are just getting random cards from random whatever.

[Nick Scarpino]

You gotta cobble it together and try to figure out how to make a strat.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Exactly. So you gotta cobble it together, but it's also draft. Your draft. And so the way we're doing it is they. They dump a bunch of packs on our table, and then each team at a time picks a pack. And so you have to be like, all right, I like this one with the dinosaurs on it. So I'm just gonna take the dinosaur pack, and then the next people go. And the next people go. And they were like, all right, we'll do the foundations because we know, like, there's good cards in there. Then you go, all right, let's do the vampires, I guess. So you're just picking random.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Just based off of, like, how the pack looks.

[Snowbike Mike]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Or your knowledge of it, too.

[Snowbike Mike]

And it was an exciting.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was cool, because now it is me and Mike being like, all right, one for you, one for me. Yes, Mike, what do you want? You like dinosaurs? All right, let's get that. That. Okay. I like this. This black and white deck looks cool. Okay, I'll do that. Right. And we're trying to strategize together. We then draft our. Our. Our packs, and then we open them. And now it is. We have to make two decks out of the six packs that we opened. And of course, it's m. They don't know.

[Snowbike Mike]

They don't know. I got the mastermind of magic here. And I looked at. Bless. I said, whip that deck up for me.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. Michael was like, you do it.

[Snowbike Mike]

You started cooking.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, Mike handed it to you. He's like, you do it.

[Snowbike Mike]

You play the game.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Mike tried make it sound cool just now. No. Mike was basically like, all right, Bless. Make it.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's a shocker. Bless. That's crazy.

[Snowbike Mike]

I've never heard of that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Mike try to twist that into. Oh, and I got the mastermind. No, Mike just didn't want to make a deck.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah, No, I understand.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Mike wanted me to do it for him.

[Nick Scarpino]

I get it.

[Blessing Adeoye]

That's what you build for me. So he was like, you do it. And guess what? I love making cook. That's my favorite part of the game, is deck building. So I did that for him. And so I looked through. I don't need to get into too deep of the process, but basically separated out by color. Look for the legendaries. Look for, like, what do we have the most of all? Right, Mike, I think you're gonna be good with a red. I forget what you're looking.

[Snowbike Mike]

Red, white, red, white, red, white. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And then I think I want black, blue.

[Snowbike Mike]

Because you only have so many cards, right. We're limited on what we can really do. So we're trying to, like, push.

[Nick Scarpino]

How many cards do you have? The deck?

[Snowbike Mike]

We had 40 on this one.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. For this one you can have like, at least 40.

[Snowbike Mike]

Okay.

[Nick Scarpino]

At least 40.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I believe it's 40 or more, but it might just be 40. I forget which. But yeah, it's 40 cards in the deck, so do that. We're then waiting for the tournament to actually get started because you have time to build. But then after, when everybody's done, we then start. You play like, I think a best of three matches against two other. Against three other teams.

[Snowbike Mike]

Tickets so blessing can go buy prizes.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Exactly.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. Tickets are on the line.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So we build, we finish building. And then we wait for it to get started. And then we wait. And then we wait. And for some reason, I don't know what went wrong, but how?

[Snowbike Mike]

Communication.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like, I think the turn for some reason for this specific tournament organization was just off.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And we waited for maybe. It felt like two hours.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Just sitting there, wasting time. We made friends with the people who were sitting around because everybody was like, what the fuck is happening? And like, something was just off. We ended up playing commander with our own decks with the people that are around us. Just trying to kill time.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And it was fun because guess what? People. One people in the Midwest, very nice people.

[Snowbike Mike]

Very kind.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Very kind people. Very fun to talk.

[Nick Scarpino]

Like those in la.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, exactly. But then also magic brings people together and so it's just a bunch.

[Nick Scarpino]

They don't call it magic for nothing.

[Snowbike Mike]

At the gathering. I know of a different gathering, but this was our gathering.

[Blessing Adeoye]

What gathering are you talking about?

[Snowbike Mike]

The Juggalo. The gatherings of the Juggalos.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I was like, never mind. I can't even say what I was thinking. Yeah. You can't just say you're going to gatherings. Mike doesn't have a great connotation.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, I didn't think of that. I thought you were talking about sex stuff.

[Nick Scarpino]

My brain went, sex first, but then, yeah, there's that.

[Snowbike Mike]

You think I'm going to sexual gathering?

[Blessing Adeoye]

No, man. Middle of the night in the Midwest.

[Nick Scarpino]

Midwest.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm going to a gathering real quick.

[Nick Scarpino]

During Black History Month.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Is insane. But no, everybody was super nice and super awesome. We made like. We made tons of friends with people. But finally it was time to go. Finally the thing started.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We played against the team and let me tell you, playing 2 2v2 with Mike. Such a fucking fun time. It was such a fantastic. Because it was us. Like, again, kind of newer to the game. Obviously, I'm newer. To the game because I only learned recently. And Mike is like, this is like, you kind of re entering into that world in a heavier way. Right. And so I think there is just like this baby, like. Like wonder, childlike wonder excitement. That's like, oh, man. We are playing this game. We are working together. All right.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm showing him my car.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We're showing each other our car.

[Snowbike Mike]

We're staring down our opponents. They're hitting him. I'm whispering blessings here. I'm like, oh, did you see that car? Like, we gotta get after that. And bless is like, hold that. Wait a minute.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. I'm like, don't play that because I'm gonna play this thing.

[Snowbike Mike]

What should we do? It was so cool.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Such a fun time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. And so we got squatted up against, like, can we. One nerd who was like, mastermind. This guy had it all down. And then the ultimate mega workout nerd. This guy was bluff as hell. Nick. Arms out. Just cut the sleeves off.

[Blessing Adeoye]

He was a physical trainer.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. Bulked up, bro. Dominating us.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Honestly.

[Snowbike Mike]

It is dominating.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It's kind of like when you meet gym leaders in Pokemon.

[Snowbike Mike]

Sure.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Where it's like, oh, you're a personality.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And now I gotta face off against.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

He had the cool nerd glasses that aren't nerd. Like, remember when I was wearing the fake glasses? Definitely wearing the fake Harry Potter glasses. But he looked cool in them. And you're like, oh, this guy's a personality. Is right.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So we face off against them. It's a. It's a long game because the two had a giant games. I think just last.

[Snowbike Mike]

We were battling.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We were. And we were battling. We were keeping in there. But at the end of the day, the other team won the first thing that we faced off against. So after we finished that first game, we realized that we hadn't eaten in forever. We had that McDonald's 2 to 3.

[Snowbike Mike]

O'Clock at this point. And I looked at blessed even before that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I think it was like, 5:00.

[Snowbike Mike]

We need to get food. I'm dying. And bless was like, we'll get food. Like, let's just see how this plays out. Like, let's just ride for a second. And we didn't know we were gonna have two hours of, like, downtime. Right. And so we saw our other homie from our pod. He walked up with a bratwurst. And it's like, now we're hungry, homie. Like, you're gonna kill us here.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah. And so that's good strategy.

[Snowbike Mike]

When we finished I looked at blessed, I was like, here's the deal. I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna go get us food.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

So whatever happens, you sit here and you play for me. You got my deck?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Here's the thing. Mike even left his phone of like, this is.

[Nick Scarpino]

Is go for it. This is the place in the Mad Libs where I write in my. You never saw Mike for the rest of the day.

[Snowbike Mike]

So get this, Nick. Ready for this? Because, like, I gotta tell my side, right?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Because like, I leave bless. And I need you to know, Nick, that like, I'm taking a walk.

[Nick Scarpino]

I know you are, Mike. I know you are driving. Mike is done with this experience. Can I explain to you, like, Mike's not waiting two more hours to play other fucking double double sided Snake or whatever that is.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So basically the way this works, you should know. You should know the way this works is, is we have the companion app, the magic, the Gathering companion app. And between each round they tell you in that app where you're supposed to go to do your next game.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's pretty sick.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And we signed up via Mike's phone, so.

[Snowbike Mike]

So I had to leave my phone.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So Mike is going to go get food. I'm here, like, holding down the fort. And I'm like, well, Mike, if you take your phone, I'm not going to know where to go. Because Mike's like, oh, our next game starts. Just play both decks. Play both games.

[Nick Scarpino]

And so I'm like, play the game.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm like, mike, I'm not going to know where to go. Mike leaves his phone with me and then leaves in the biggest. In the biggest hall you can imagine. Just fucking leaves. And then I get a notification on Mike's phone of, hey, this is your next match.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And so then I go and I'm like, all right, cool. I'm just gonna have to trust that Mike's gonna find me.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so when'd you go? I walked up. Okay. I didn't know if there was food downstairs, so I only knew of food.

[Nick Scarpino]

Upstairs, like it was. And just throwing this out there, right?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

And just saying, like, logistically, that's. That's the. We'll call that option A. Yeah. Option B is Mike takes his phone with him and then text texts you where to go next.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, that would have smart.

[Snowbike Mike]

We didn't think it.

[Nick Scarpino]

That would have been so smart.

[Snowbike Mike]

Because then he could have said, mike, you gotta hustle the up. Because here's what happened.

[Nick Scarpino]

It's one of the coolest things about having Phones is actually. And people don't know this. It's a great way to communicate phone to phone. They allow you to do that.

[Snowbike Mike]

I mean, it was like, yeah, let's take my phone. I don't need it. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Okay. So Mike goes. And Mike's taking his time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Sweet ass time. I mean, I like sweet ass time.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I have Mike's phone and I have both of our desk decks and everything, right? And I find the next location for our second match. I sit down and it is. I'm sitting across from two 13 year old cousins.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, they're gonna you up.

[Nick Scarpino]

These kids. I can tell right now. These kids are. They're the Double Dragon. They're gonna.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And like I, I put down Mike's stuff, right? I put down my stuff too. And I look at the kid, I'm like, hey, you know my, the dude I'm playing with, like, he went to go grab food real quick. We can start. But I'll just start off playing both hands. And that kid looks at me, One of the kids looks at me and is like, oh, you can't start until your partner's here.

[Snowbike Mike]

He said, no. Yep. He said, shut his ass, kids.

[Nick Scarpino]

These kids are serious. They're going pro.

[Snowbike Mike]

Wait until we just. Dude, the 13 year olds were so great. The one kid by the book trying to win. Yeah, Real like, I'm a prick energy. Okay, I'll just say it like that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And then his cousin, the coolest cousin, long hair, yeah. Looking like he's shaggy from Scooby Doo. Just here for a good time, finding his voice. But he knows that the mean cousin's gonna kind of direct the conversation. So the whole time, like, I'm trying to get the young cousin going by, like, you having a good time? What's up? What's up?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Well, here's that.

[Snowbike Mike]

Even shut it down every single time.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Because here's the thing, right before we even get there, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, we can wait. Like, we'll wait for Mike then. We'll wait. We'll wait for my guy to get here. And it is just me sitting across them. Like, they're just staring at.

[Snowbike Mike]

You haven't had a camera.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Mike doesn't have a phone. I can't text and be like, yo, hurry the up. Like these.

[Nick Scarpino]

No anxiety with this one, Mike.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm just sitting in front, comfortable being like, yo, we, us three are waiting for a man to find us. And I, he doesn't know where we're at.

[Snowbike Mike]

Check this out. So blessing Says, I want the biggest.

[Nick Scarpino]

Convention hall on the planet.

[Snowbike Mike]

He said, mike, I want a bratwurst. And I said, all right, I'll get you a bratwurst, right? And so now, mind you, Nick, downstairs, there might have been food. We didn't really explore the deepest depths of downstairs. Sure. So I go upstairs. I'm now here on the farthest end is the food, which means I gotta walk all the way across the convention center. I'm walking, okay? I'm not power walking. I'm not running. I'm leisure it. You know, I'm doing a couple of things.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Meanwhile, I'm sweating in front of.

[Snowbike Mike]

I get to the food section. I walk through all the three vendors. There's churros, there's a fudge stand, there's hot dogs, there's chicken tenders. I'm not seeing a single brat. So what do I do? I buy a hot dog. I eat the whole hot dog. Then I go over, I buy a churro, I eat the whole churro. And as I'm just standing this whole.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Time, I'm sitting in front of these guys, I'm like, he'll be here any second.

[Snowbike Mike]

I go, oh, what does he want? Want? And I go, you know what? I'll just buy him a hot dog and a pretzel. So then I go up, I go, give me a hot dog and a pretzel. I get that. Then I slow walk back, right? I mean, I'm just. People are saying hi to me. I'm taking photos with people.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I start. I start shuffling Mike's deck. I start like. I'm like, okay, well, I guess we'll get this prepped for when he gets here so he can sit down and play.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so I show up. Thank God. Blessing is at the front table of all of this, right? I'm. I'm lost in the. In the back rooms. I have no idea where I'm at.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Periodically I'm doing this. I'm just, like, looking for Mike in a seat of people, just hoping he sees me.

[Snowbike Mike]

I see bl. I go, they don't got a br. Works. He goes, it. I'll just eat the pretzel then. Whatever. And now. What up, kids? How y'all doing? I'm Stone Mike. Mike, let's dap up. Let's have some fun, kid. Shuts me down.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah. So he's a competitor.

[Snowbike Mike]

What happened? Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We faced off.

[Snowbike Mike]

We faced.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We faced off.

[Snowbike Mike]

We're.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And let me tell you, we're. We're locked in. I finally have a pretzel.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah. You got some carbohydrates to your brain.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, I got some car. I'm back alive after. Yeah, you are right. We start playing, and it's a competitive game. Like, it is us two versus again. The nice cousin up a little bit. The nice cousin and the evil cousin.

[Snowbike Mike]

The nice cousin and the evil cousin.

[Blessing Adeoye]

The evil cousin who's locked in.

[Snowbike Mike]

Kids about to turn 14, was celebrating his birthday at Magicon. The whole family came out. It's like, yo, this is sick stuff. His other cousin was like, shut the up. Don't tell him anything. We were here to win.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

No personal information whatsoever they can use against us.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Like, you guys are mentalists.

[Snowbike Mike]

We're not making friends with these.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah. These guys exist just to be dominated by us. These are fox water.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And so we play. It comes down to the wire.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, down to the wire.

[Blessing Adeoye]

The. When. When you're playing in, like, this kind of format, what happens if you run out of time? Because we ran out of time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. You get 45 minutes on the clock.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Best of three.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And when you. When you run out of time, basically it is. All right, these are. This is your last three turns.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And so we hit that point.

[Snowbike Mike]

We're getting Nancy. You know what I mean? Like, this was supposed to go from 1 to 5. It's probably 5:30, and we still have a whole nother game to play. Play.

[Nick Scarpino]

Do you think that if you hadn't eaten the pretzel and the hot dog, you guys could have squeezed in one more game?

[Snowbike Mike]

Well, here's the cat. Well, no, we were gonna still play more, but, like, we would have had more time to play against these kids a couple more times.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so the guy goes, okay, last call. You get three turns. Like, we gotta make this happen. You're on to your next game. And me and Bless are up, like, 17 to 3 on this.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Like, we're.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We found. We found a groove and we started, like.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so now the cool cousin is, like, adding it up. He's like, oh, I. Three turns. So they're over here.

[Nick Scarpino]

Here.

[Snowbike Mike]

Like, we could beat them. And I'm looking at Bless. I'm like, we got this.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm like, oh, we got this.

[Nick Scarpino]

We got this in the bag, bro. Like, we teenagers up.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It had. We had gotten to the point of, oh, we went on this turn. Like, there's not really much they can do here. Like, here it is in three turns. You cannot turn this around. Like, this is us. And when I tell you the cranky cousin. Cranky cousin cannot Let it go. He's, like, doing everything he can to be like, oh, but what if you do this?

[Snowbike Mike]

What if he's on his phone looking up rules? Yeah, he's trying.

[Blessing Adeoye]

He's trying to dispute our car.

[Nick Scarpino]

Like.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Like, you know, rules. That. That the way our cards work.

[Snowbike Mike]

Just let it go. It's all right. We'll play the next game. It's all fine. Just let him win, cousin. Absolutely.

[Nick Scarpino]

And usually got some obsessive compulsive tendencies.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. And usually, you know what?

[Snowbike Mike]

That kid's gonna go pro. Gets it. That kid.

[Nick Scarpino]

He's gonna have zero friends and be the best magic the gather player ever.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And for me, it's the thing of, like, okay, well, these are two, like, you know, te. Like, teenagers are 13, obviously. Like, you know, you. You grow and you get those social skills and hopefully you develop and all that stuff. Right? Not. I was hoping to come out of this being like, hey, kids, you did good. Yeah, that was a fun time.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Instead I came out of this. I looked at Mike. I was like, yo, we them up got there.

[Nick Scarpino]

We got their ass.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We. We destroyed these kids. I've never felt such a good feeling.

[Snowbike Mike]

It was a win. That was a win.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was so good. Like, the amount of salt that that kid had. Oh, man.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, man. Fortnite. Emote on him. You know what I mean? I need that high with him.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, man, we got those tickets. I would even. Maybe I would have, like, even given the tickets.

[Snowbike Mike]

So Blessing got the tickets now, right? And so Blessing saw the prize box before we walked in. Massive stage. All these different prizes that you can get. And Blessing looked at me. He's like, they're promoting the card, and I need that card, Mike. I want that card. And I was like, blessing, what did I tell you? Said, take all the tickets. But I want. I want a ticket to put in my phone.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Like, after you cash the tickets, ask the guy, if I keep the tickets.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Do you let you keep it?

[Snowbike Mike]

No, he didn't let.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Okay. I was like, I was gonna be surprised if he did.

[Snowbike Mike]

I just wanted to keep the ticket for memories.

[Blessing Adeoye]

But, yeah, that was us doing ticketed play.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Which is very fun.

[Snowbike Mike]

That was us super ticket. And they do that all day. So there's, like, set. There's three sessions every 30 minutes to an hour that you can sign up from 10 to midnight. I mean, this is happening non stop for three days straight. So you will always have a fun, organized way to play. If you want to sign up, you want to get, you know, Cards that you buy, of course, but, like, you get your own packs to keep with you. And they have all different styles. There was this one called the Unknown, Nick, and everybody was talking about the Unknown. You got to play in this unknown. This guy puts together this awesome thing, right? And so that was happening on day two, that Blessing missed out on. And so day two was the Unknown event, which is like this crazy commander setup, but with play test cards that aren't real. And so these cards are all like different sort of rule sets and fun ways. Ways. And I went down and I talked with our PR agent and they were like, oh, yeah, the kids just went to go play. Like, if you want to get involved, I can help you. And I was like, no, no, but I'll check it out. And she looked at me, she goes, there's 900 people playing this right now, Nick. When I walked over into that room, it first off didn't even make a dent in the giant belly of the beast room. That's how big this room was. But at the same time, 900 people was amazing to see. It was like, oh, my God, look at how many human beings are here right now, all about to play the same event. It was sick.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's awesome.

[Snowbike Mike]

It was sick.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's wonderful. So wait, what is. What is the. What was the event? This is the Unknown.

[Snowbike Mike]

The unknown. Well, the unknown are the Unknown cards.

[Nick Scarpino]

Oh, okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

So you just get a special play test cards that you don't know about. That is the whole.

[Nick Scarpino]

She's got to like, you know.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Never seen these cards before.

[Snowbike Mike]

You've never seen.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Nobody's ever seen this? No.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's crazy. So you just basically have to, like, on the fly.

[Snowbike Mike]

You gotta be on the fly, be able to work it out, figure it out and master it.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's crazy.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, it's cool. It was sick.

[Blessing Adeoye]

That's awesome.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so that's the end of day one for us, where now we're going to Portillo's hot dogs. Get this right. So blessings already out. He texts me, he goes, I'm going to get an Uber. And I'm like, well, let me get with you. You know what I mean? Like, don't leave me behind.

[Nick Scarpino]

That was his way of saying, I've had enough of you. I don't need to be around you.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Because I knew the meetup was coming up, a kind of funny meetup.

[Snowbike Mike]

We had about 30 minutes of play here to, like, hotel, quick change, drop your shit off, go. So for me, just ride till the moment.

[Blessing Adeoye]

For me, I'm like, if I'm gonna make it back to the hotel to freshen up real quick and then go, then I'm going right now. Got it.

[Snowbike Mike]

So now I'm trying to get with Bless cuz I'm, you know, me.

[Nick Scarpino]

And where was the meet and greet at here?

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm finger.

[Nick Scarpino]

It wasn't Port.

[Snowbike Mike]

So I'm finger gunning people. I'm high fiving and I'm like, oh, where's Bless? He's like, I'm. I'm moving. And I was like, all right, I'll meet you there. And then I get a text from Bless. I had to go get my coat check for.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I forgot about my coat.

[Snowbike Mike]

Now I'm stumped cuz technically the front door is this way. Blessings underneath me, behind me at coat check. So I'm. I'm stuck in this awkward middle and I've only been. We've only done it so many times. Times where I only know one staircase. So I text Bless and say I'm at the top of the staircase. I'll wait for you. Right now. Group of kind of funny best friends show up. I'm like, oh, like Bless is about to walk up this staircase right now. Don't go. And they're like, we got an event at 7. I'm like, well, it's 6:45. Like you wait for Bless. I'm dapping them up. I'm doing the thing of like, where the is Bless? I keep looking down this escalator and then Bless is like, I've walked through a different staircase. I was like, where the is a different staircase?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, there was a quicker staircase.

[Nick Scarpino]

Wow. You mean there's more than one staircase? Biggest conventions.

[Snowbike Mike]

Has to run the mile to go catch up the flexing at the front door before he leaves me.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was so hectic too. The whole time my Uber was called.

[Snowbike Mike]

Exactly. The Uber was called. I show up and he goes, the Uber is here. Like goes, thank God. You know what I mean? Thank God arrived.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. So we go, we go back to hotel, freshen up. And then it is. We get to Portillo's meet and greet time. Meet and greet's awesome.

[Snowbike Mike]

And you know what? The Midwest showed up.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, the best friends.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So many people.

[Snowbike Mike]

We had so many, many. We probably had 60 jabronis up in this.

[Nick Scarpino]

I love that for us.

[Snowbike Mike]

And what did I do? I bought seven hot dogs for everyone. Nobody bought a single. Nobody ate a single anything.

[Blessing Adeoye]

No one ate a single hot dog.

[Snowbike Mike]

They all looked at me like I.

[Nick Scarpino]

Was nuts at Portillo cuz Me and.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Mike have been talking the whole time about going to get some deep dish pizza.

[Snowbike Mike]

We got to get.

[Blessing Adeoye]

After Portillo's, me and Mike were going to go to Illuminati's. But then it was also the thing of I was hungry, I was starving. But when you're at a meeting, meeting, group street, like, I'm shaking everybody, you.

[Nick Scarpino]

Don'T want to eat.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm not. My hands coming nowhere near my mouth.

[Nick Scarpino]

No.

[Snowbike Mike]

Because all day I was hungry, Nick, and I wanted to eat Portillo's. Greg has talked about it so much. And so I walk up to the counter, say, give me seven hot dogs, four french fries. Like, I'll order around for some people, see if they're hungry. You know what I mean?

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Takes way too long because I ordered way too much.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah, you ordered 700.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so then I grabbed the bags, I put it on. There I go, everybody, I got a hot dog for you. And they looked at me like, I don't want a hot dog, Mike.

[Nick Scarpino]

I'm like, okay, they want to talk to you.

[Snowbike Mike]

No, the bags are in there. So now, did I try the hot dog? I took one bite. So I can't even tell you if this place is good or not. I have no idea. Wow.

[Nick Scarpino]

Don't let Greg Miller hear.

[Snowbike Mike]

You didn't even get the chocolate milkshake.

[Nick Scarpino]

And you know, you got to get the milkshake with the chocolate cake in it. Buddy. You that up. What you got to do. And just a pro tip for the Portillo.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Is that, I think the last time we did it, if memory serves quickly, we showed up like an hour early so that we could eat Portillos first and eat in. And then as people started to show up, we had a table that was. Everyone can kind of come around. That was the one that we did, I think, in Bu Part Park. But it's tough. You also have to. You also have to realize, like, when you're doing these meet and greets, you gotta just know that people just want to talk to you.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And, well, I was thinking, yeah, there's no downtime.

[Nick Scarpino]

It's an opportunity for them to say hi.

[Blessing Adeoye]

It was a good time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

You're standing on your feet the whole time. You're not doing anything.

[Snowbike Mike]

We had security, like, you got so many up in here. Get out of the doorway. We took them all up and said it was a blast.

[Nick Scarpino]

Like, that's fine.

[Snowbike Mike]

Shout out to the best friends. All of you made such a big impact on me. And blessed. We had an absolute talk to.

[Blessing Adeoye]

So Many people shout out to David shout outs. Give me the Pog Tillos sticker.

[Snowbike Mike]

He gave me a full on Pokemon set, like a card set. He's like, I watched you play some Pokemon. Open up some cards. Here's some of your favorite cards. They had all my favorite age, way above and beyond. Thank you so much. Let's give some.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I also do want to shout out. I did warn Portillo. Somebody in chat did bless everyone for those I did call.

[Nick Scarpino]

You know.

[Snowbike Mike]

Did they care?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Absolutely no, absolutely not.

[Snowbike Mike]

They were like, like we didn't even, weren't even there.

[Nick Scarpino]

Weirdly enough, the last time we did a meet and greet at Portillo's in Chicago, not only was Greg's mom, I think was. Was associated with that particular Portillo's, but the other Nick Scarpino.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Was like the V. Well that's the thing for Portillo's and he hooked us the fuck up.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I think I, I left this part out of the story when I was talking about it. When we first introduced the. The idea of doing a meetup is that Greg was attempting to contact. I think that other Nick Scarpino doesn't work there anymore.

[Nick Scarpino]

No. He is now this. The chief marketing officer at Giordano's. Yeah, the pizza. So if you'd have done that, I could have put you in contact with him and he probably would have hooked you guys the up.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. Because Greg basically was like, oh, you know, our contact Nick Scarpino isn't there anymore, but I'll hit up Nick to say who I shouldn't hit up. And then nobody got ended up getting back to us. But that was gonna be the plan to like, you know, tell somebody, oh, we want to do a meet up here. I knew it wasn't gonna be a thing because I've done meet up before and I know about how many people show up. Yeah, it's like a quick warning of like, hey, you know, we might bring in 40 people. Obviously is always great for.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's a nice heads up for them.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, yeah. But it was never going to be a thing of like we were going to shut the building down. I think people were kind of scared.

[Nick Scarpino]

Well, but I did do that in New York one time and got in trouble with the nypd.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, were you there for that? No.

[Nick Scarpino]

Did you work with us then when we did our New York meet and greet, neither of you were there. Yeah. We found a nice bar and whoa. So many people came out. Really the point where the, the, the cops were like, you guys have to take this somewhere else.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And then. Yeah, I remember. I think, Cool. Greg edited that vlog where it's like, y'all just, like, went on, like, a little mini parade to find somewhere else.

[Nick Scarpino]

We walked out to the. Basically to the bay and sat in, like, this nice, beautiful, like. Like, I guess, park area and finished it out as the sun went down. And then all of us just kind of scattered. It was super fun.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah. Gentlemen.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, no, we got more.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay, let's keep going here.

[Snowbike Mike]

We got stories to tell. So a couple of shout outs. Shout out to everyone that showed up. Thank you so much. I want to shout out, captain Tom. Tom, Captain Tom. You know who you are. I'm sorry I backed out of that flight. Captain Tom offered to fly with me. And you know me, I'm taking to the skies. So, Captain Tom, I apologize. Thank you for the offer. A shout out to Dalton out there. Nicki once made a fun of Dalton for not ever watching Roadhouse. And you teased him. Dalton now is put on the roadhouse.

[Nick Scarpino]

Absolutely.

[Snowbike Mike]

And also shout out to Count and his family. Great family. Taught me about the golden triangle. I'm living in it, you know what I mean? Because those two, Dalton, his brother in the roommate, they taught me how to play commander. Count and his family taught me how to play commander. Made me feel comfortable. Great time. Did they let me win? Of course they did.

[Nick Scarpino]

Of course they did.

[Snowbike Mike]

You know what I mean? You gotta let people win.

[Nick Scarpino]

Just like we let Andy win sometimes.

[Blessing Adeoye]

We went to Illuminati's.

[Snowbike Mike]

So now I'm. Get this, Nick. I know I only have one night with bless, and I want everything with Bless, right? I want to go to Portillo. Then I want us on the vlog to taste test both staples of the Chicago deep diss industry. Lou Malmonati's and Giordanis. And I told. I told Bless. I said, I know you're tired, but what if after this, we go eat pizza? And he goes, yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yes. So we go again. This is where I say, I stop. I actually know how the story ends. But if I were to guess. Yeah, I would guess that you went to both places, but at the first place, you ordered so much pizza, you weren't even hungry.

[Snowbike Mike]

We go to lose. Illuminati's girl walks up, says, what you want? I said, get us a medium, by the way.

[Nick Scarpino]

Medium.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And before he says a medium, we were looking at the menu, and it tells you how many people are served by each side.

[Snowbike Mike]

Sure. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And so a small will serve two people.

[Snowbike Mike]

Did I get us Appies as well.

[Nick Scarpino]

What did I get?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Bruschetta. Yeah, that's what it was.

[Snowbike Mike]

Fancy garlic bread.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And they gave us like 20 pieces of bruschetta and we ate like three.

[Snowbike Mike]

Garlic bread is unbelievable, right?

[Blessing Adeoye]

So like, a small feeds to a medium feeds like four people.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so Blessing is dying by now.

[Blessing Adeoye]

And so. And I'm dying.

[Snowbike Mike]

We left the. We left it because, like, he's like, mike, my social battery is up. Like, let's just go recharge. Let's chill. Let's call it a night. I said, bless, let's do this, but do me one favor. Let's go to both. And he was like, let's eat one. So see where this goes.

[Nick Scarpino]

I'm tired. I don't want to go to this restaurant.

[Snowbike Mike]

Cool.

[Nick Scarpino]

How about we go to two restaurants.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Instead of one restaurant when we sit down? And I'm like, all right. Right. Small sounds like the way to go. She comes. Mike's like, let's get the medium and get a spetta. And I'm like, we're not going to the second place. We're not going to the second.

[Snowbike Mike]

More carbs.

[Nick Scarpino]

It's like a drier pizza die in here.

[Snowbike Mike]

The pizza bomb, though. Zesty sauce.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I like luminati.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, we liked Lou. Lou Lou brought. Didn't know they were chains. Classic.

[Nick Scarpino]

No, I think it started as. And memory is correct, I think, Greg. It started as like, individual places. And I think throughout the years, they. Jerdon and Illuminatis became like branches.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

I thought it was like Tony's here in the bay.

[Nick Scarpino]

Tony's also. Same thing.

[Snowbike Mike]

A little bit higher, upscale, seated area. You know what I mean?

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah. No, I think if Tony's could. They would be. There'd be 30 Tonys.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, yeah. I think a couple of them. But like.

[Nick Scarpino]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

So we went to lose. Fantastic.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I do wish we could have gone to Giordano's.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Cuz like, I lose. I liked. I don't know if it was my favorite deep dish pizza I've ever had, though.

[Snowbike Mike]

I agree. Bless. I agree. I think if we tried both. There's also another one with a P that everybody was talking about. That is just the one location that's. Well, not Pisanos, maybe. Patches. Patches.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Paches.

[Snowbike Mike]

Paches, yeah. That's the one. Everybody talks.

[Blessing Adeoye]

There's also pe.

[Nick Scarpino]

We have a pachis here.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Several.

[Snowbike Mike]

They were talking about. They were hyping pe. Quads.

[Nick Scarpino]

Pequods. Okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so I'm begging. Bless. Let's do this. He's like, mike, let's get some rest. I said, okay. But then it set in. We get to the elevator and it really set in. My homie, my best friend is leaving and I'm. I'm all by myself now.

[Nick Scarpino]

You're by yourself with your thoughts now I'm not happy. What are you gonna do?

[Snowbike Mike]

So now everything's changed. Ok. The game is. The game has changed. I'm not happy about.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I. I felt a euphoria.

[Nick Scarpino]

What was that like?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, bless saying goodbye to the. To Mike in the elevator. I was like, I'm about to have so much peace and quiet.

[Nick Scarpino]

The weight lifted off your shoulders.

[Snowbike Mike]

Relax.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Get in my bed. Get on Tik Tok.

[Nick Scarpino]

Just scroll through for a couple hours, 20 minutes.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so I apologize to Captain Tom who I should have taken you up. Captain Tom. One day I'll be back. I hope that I can take out your offer to go take to the skies with you. Because you're the best fast. And so now I'm lost. What do I do, Nick? And I said, you know what? I talked about it on kind of funny games Daily. Where's that fire? Where's that ignition? To get up and go explore even when you're solo. And there was a year where I captured that. There's been recent weeks now where I'm not feeling it right. I. I'm looking for an adventure, buddy. I miss that. I want an adventure buddy. But sometimes I have really good moments where I adventure solo. And it reignites the flame of like, I can do this. You're a human being, Mike. Being outside is nice. And so what did I do? I stood up, I walked to the Willis Tower. And I'm looking up at this monstrosity, this incredible human engineering marvel that we built. And I'm looking up at this beautiful building going, humanity is a beautiful thing. Like I'm in. I'm back right? Brisk winter weather on my face. And I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna walk down this river and I'm gonna follow the river all the way down. And so what did I do?

[Blessing Adeoye]

Do?

[Snowbike Mike]

I followed the Riverwalk and I'm seeing these beautiful sites of Chicago. I see the pods building. You know about that where it's like this crazy like I've seen that. Yeah, yeah, it looks. It's beautiful, right?

[Nick Scarpino]

It's like a 60s style look.

[Snowbike Mike]

You know what it looks like?

[Nick Scarpino]

The pods from the smaller map in. In Warzone.

[Snowbike Mike]

It does look like a little bit like that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

A little bit like that.

[Nick Scarpino]

But it's more beautiful stuff. I think you might. Did you meet the Sears Tower. When you said this, which tower?

[Snowbike Mike]

The All Black Tower, I believe is the Willis Tower.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay. The Willow.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Nick Scarpino]

Some people were saying it was a Sears Tower.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. No, no.

[Nick Scarpino]

I didn't know if you were confusing that with Bruce Willis from Die Harden.

[Snowbike Mike]

No, no, no. Yeah, they're all the.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I think the Sears Tower is the Willis Tower.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, I think they changed the name. Oh, they're doing the thing when they change the names like that.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah. It used to be this year's Tower, but then I think they changed it to the Little Sour.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so, yeah, I see that beautiful. Walk the river. I see the Chicago Tribune, I think.

[Nick Scarpino]

Nice.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

I almost sent him a message. You know what I mean? I was gonna say I'm thinking about you. Oh, you should have, because it was beautiful. You got the cool pods, you got the bridge, the iconic bridge. And then you see the Tribune, and this building is beautiful. Beautiful giant clock, cool architecture. It was happening, right? And then I keep walking, you know, I see the lake. I'm like, holy. I know. The lake was this beautiful. I'm getting caught up in Chicago. Then I take a right. I go to Millennial Park. I see the Bean. Everybody and their mama's at the Bean. That's why I call the Uber. I'm like, you know what? I've had enough. It's time to go back to Magicon. And I rip Magicon. I'm buying Jurassic park cards. Okay? I'm sitting down and playing all by myself. Myself. I'm dapping people. I'm having the time of my life, Nick. I end the night. And I said, mike, you got one rule. You're gonna go somewhere where everyone loves to go, but before anyone wakes up, cheers. Where they know my name. And I said, I'm gonna go to the bean at 6am to get the most epic photo of this awesome tourist attraction with no one there.

[Nick Scarpino]

Okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

6Am the alarm. Alarm beeps. Sun's not even out yet. And I'm like, it's my last day. I should be. I should sleep before this flight. I shouldn't do this. I get up, Nick, tie my shoes. Mind you, my Tim's the best.

[Nick Scarpino]

Walking shoes.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Wrong city.

[Snowbike Mike]

My feet hurt. Okay. Don't ever let me wear the half size.

[Nick Scarpino]

Too small. That's fine.

[Snowbike Mike]

Okay. Get up. I tie my shoes. It's 6:15. The Uber picks me up. We start driving. Beautiful pink skies. The sun is coming up. He drops me off. He laughs. He goes, goes, I think you're the only person here. And I look at him I go, sir, this is exactly what I wanted. I walk up the steps of Millennial Park. I look at the Bean sun radiating off of it.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Come on.

[Snowbike Mike]

Pink everywhere. And I am now looking at the backside where it reflects all the city skyline. And I am the only at the bean at 6:30.

[Blessing Adeoye]

How cold was it at this moment?

[Snowbike Mike]

Cold, cold, but it gets five degrees. It was worth it. And let me tell you what, it reignited the flame. Bless. I love that it got me going of like, I'm ready to explore.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Let me tell you, Chicago is such a good city.

[Snowbike Mike]

Chicago is a cool.

[Blessing Adeoye]

How do we pick up this company, move it to Chicago? I feel like we can get Greg Miller on that side.

[Nick Scarpino]

Let's go to Chicago. That would be a little bit tougher. Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen, closing thoughts on Magicon.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I mean, I want to go back. It was such a good time.

[Nick Scarpino]

So this is something that's going to happen yearly.

[Snowbike Mike]

I want to go to Magicon every single year. Once a year, I would like to go. It is is something that is so inviting, welcoming, fun and exciting. You are. You are part of it. And you were able to sit down at any table and play. It reminds me of going to kind of funny live back in the day where you are around people that love the similar things. Everybody is there for one reason and they're having fun together and it was so rad. So, yeah, I hope me and Bless can go back again and do another fun one. I would love to see Chicago again. Shout out to Chicago, go. And also, I went to Commander Night for the first ever time by myself on Thursday. We talked about this. Blessing has been playing Commander with his friends. And I've always wanted to learn Commander because that's the play style now, Nick.

[Nick Scarpino]

That's what I want.

[Snowbike Mike]

When you talk to everybody, everybody plays Commander. Nobody's playing standard. There's drafts that are popular, but it's. And so Bless has been playing Commander. He's been learning Commander with his friends. And I, I've been excited and I want to learn. And Blessing has done really well trying to teach me. But every time we play play, we get interrupted.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Somebody comes and we stand up and.

[Snowbike Mike]

Blessings like you're gonna leave the cards. We'll just come back. I go, no, no, no. And I pack up all the cards, which means we have to reset everything. And so I finally did it. Blessing was like, mike, just go. And I was riding the high off of Magicon Chicago. I went to my local card shop again. Guy's a dick. Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Oh, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

What'd you call him? The. The. The crappy cousin.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yeah, yeah, the cranky cousin.

[Snowbike Mike]

Cranky cousin. This guy. Every time. Time. Okay. It's a beautiful Thursday night. The sun is setting on the ocean is where this card shop is. You can see the ocean with the sunset. And this guy has never smiled, has never greeted me in the 20 times I've walked in. Every time, I feel awkward talking to him because he never wants to talk to me. Right? Like, this is fantastic. This is my first night. I got my little book bag. Like, I look like an idiot. You know what I mean? It's hard. Awkwardly walk in and I don't know what to do, do. And so I walk up, I'm like, you know what? It's my local card shop. I'm gonna support. I'll buy something before commander night to show that, hey, I'm here to support. I want to be part of it. I walk up, I'm like, hey, how you doing today? It's fine. You know, he's doing numbers like, okay. Talk about magic. You want to, you know, help direct me at all? No love from this guy ever. Except for the one time when his boss was there, made him be a little lovable. Okay? So that guy, one day, I'm g break that guy. I'm g get him to love me.

[Blessing Adeoye]

I'm with you on this mission, all right? I believe in you.

[Snowbike Mike]

I sit down, I'm all by myself, and this group of two looks at me. They go, would you like to play? I go, I would love to. And I sat down, shout out to Lily, shout out to my main man, Marlo. And they, they were welcoming. They taught me. They let me learn how to play while playing. They had fun. We laughed. We put a fourth in there. We had a blast with this guy name Shad. Not Shade, not Chad. Shad.

[Nick Scarpino]

Shad.

[Snowbike Mike]

Shad. Cool name. Cool, cool name, bro.

[Nick Scarpino]

Cool guy said.

[Snowbike Mike]

And so then Marlo had to leave. And it's like getting 8, 30, 9 o'clock. 13 year old kid sits down. Freak kid dominated us, dude.

[Blessing Adeoye]

These. Every single time I go to a magic pre release event, it's always the kids, like they are into magic.

[Snowbike Mike]

I had the time of my life, Nick, where I left that I left magic harm with bless. And I said, I want to play magic once a week for now, for forever.

[Blessing Adeoye]

Yep.

[Snowbike Mike]

So we will figure that out because it was so much fun.

[Nick Scarpino]

Ladies and gentlemen, that has been your magic. The gathering. Gathering con. Magic con review, guys. Thank you so much for that. Of course, if you Want some fun stories about Blessings family trip which was very, very endearing and awesome. Go over to the kind of Funny podcast this week where we talked about that and really got the truth out of what Mike was doing at Magicon the entire time. Time Mike. Don't bother listening to that. Of course a couple super chats came in I want to shout out before we let you all go. I have no idea what time these came in so I'm just gonna start reading them. Not like us. Isn't Beat Saver fantastic? I've gotten Manny Bagel boy Sanchez says I gotten into Magic and Yu Gi oh again and taking care of my health. More soccer, more gym. Feeling happier.

[Snowbike Mike]

Glad to hear that out to Manny.

[Nick Scarpino]

Who is Kirk says it's smooth, it's cool, it's matcha. And then a couple of these were from five days ago but they're still relevant. I'll just say now Count Chrisco says it's so cool meeting Mike and Blessing. Have a blast. Including Mike in the fam and playing playing some commander. Hashtag the golden triangle. Bubby Jubby says bummed you guys. I didn't see you guys at Portillo's that Friday. I hope you guys had fun. Fun time in Chicago. And our final one comes from Dean Hacker says blonde it was a college town. Mike would have thrived. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been your Kind of Funny Games cast for February 28, Friday 2025. Remember, we are going to be doing a Monster Hunter marathon stream right after this just on Twitch. It's exclusive on Twitch. So if you guys are on the YouTube.

[Snowbike Mike]

YouTube.

[Nick Scarpino]

We love you very much. Head over to Twitch. Twitch. Hang tight right now. We'll be right back. Cheers.