December 22, 2025 • 41 mins
Episode Summary
In this raw, old-school final episode of 2025, host Jhae Pfenning reflects on the holiday season, shares personal updates (including ongoing backyard remodel frustrations and a near-miss sewing machine purchase), dives into car news (stock C8 Corvette ZR1 running a 9.2-quarter mile), and gets introspective about life changes inspired by Tupac's "Staring at the World Through My Rearview."
He discusses podcast growth in 2025 (going full video, technical challenges), goals for 2026 (studio refresh, better quality), a personal conspiracy theory moment, and wraps with sponsor thanks, supporter shoutouts, and holiday well-wishes.
A reflective, rambling, end-of-year solo episode blending cars, life stories, and gratitude.
Chapters
- 00:00 - Intro & holiday vibes
- 05:20 - Backyard remodel nightmare saga
- 12:25 - Car news: Stock Corvette ZR1 9.2-second quarter mile
- 17:20 - Tupac "Staring at the World Through My Rearview" reflection & past life stories
- 22:21 - Podcast growth in 2025 & challenges for 2026
- 28:17 - Personal conspiracy corner (simulation theory & weird coincidences)
- 31:17 - Squid Game talk & reality TV thoughts
Main Show Sponsors
- Right Honda: https://righthonda.com/
- Right Toyota: https://www.righttoyota.com/
- Arcus Foundry: https://arcusfoundry.com
- Autocannon Official Gear: https://shop.autocannon.com/
Contact Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning
- Email: Info@HardParking.com
- Website: www.Hardparking.com
- Patreon: www.patreon.com/hardparkingpodcast/
- Instagram: instagram.com/hardparkingpod/
- YouTube: youtube.com/@HardParking
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, so now we are officially recording and we're
going to jump into this. This is it guys.
This is it. This is Hard Parking brought to
(00:20):
you by Right Hunt and right Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ.
This is your first time tuning in.
My name is Jay and I'm recordingfrom my home studio, home built
studio, literally in my house, like quite literally in my house
here in Gilbert, AZ. It is a holiday season, so let's
just get that out of the way right now.
Happy holidays to everyone who celebrates the holidays,
(00:41):
regardless of your religion. It's a great time of year.
Hell, this is the week of Christmas.
It's not even just an American thing.
It's kind of a global thing, which is great.
Let's talk about my Christmas list a little bit.
I should have asked for a sewingmachine.
It's funny, but like I have a hoodie that I wear, a VF1S and a
(01:03):
sex hoodie, which was the old school.
So if you've been following me for a while, that's the old car
kind of the one right behind me on the wall.
But I made a hoodie with the cartoon drawing.
I paid for the drawing, commissioned someone.
It's very similar to the logo for hard Parking.
Same artist and it's ripping. You know how we always make fun
of women for always wearing their yoga pants all the time?
(01:25):
If you've been around me long enough, you would notice that I
am always wearing Adidas, those Adidas warm up pants that are
kind of tight and now they're starting to make them a little
short, which I don't like where they kind of, I kind of want
them to touch the top of my shoe.
I don't want them to hover around my ankles.
That looks just weird to me. But anyway, I was sitting here
the other day and I'm like, OK. And I realized I have a like a
(01:47):
vagina sized slit in the crotch of one of them that I wear all
the time. I know I noticed that before and
I thought I threw it in like thedonation.
Yes, I was going to donate it, but it's something I could quite
simply fix with a sewing machine.
I also wear these jogger or rather kind of like these hiking
(02:11):
parachute esque pants. I have three pair.
I have a Gray pair of black pairand a tan pair.
And so 99% of the time when you see me, I'm wearing those or
Adidas joggers in the pocket of one of those, it's coming apart.
The Gray ones, no, the Gray oneshave a stain on them.
The khaki color one, the tan ones.
(02:32):
So now I have to shift everything to my other pocket
because I don't want my keys to fall out.
I don't want my wallet to drop. It's not the hole is itself is
not big enough for my phone to fall out.
But I just started thinking, man, I got hoodies that are
coming apart. I got pants that are coming
apart actually, those Adidas joggers, those are one of like 3
(02:54):
that I have that I found weird holes and weird seams.
So maybe I should get a sewing machine.
Kind of silly, right? Oh, before we go any further,
let me go ahead and do this. I want to kind of give you guys
the old school. This is a raw old school,
probably the last episode of theyear.
I want to take this time to justkind of reset a little bit.
(03:18):
That doesn't mean anything majorfor the podcast.
If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll notice that my
opening video is a little dated in resolution and content.
I don't really talk about car parts nearly as much anymore.
I don't talk about electronics at all.
I don't really do car reviews anymore.
I always plan to get back to that space.
I just never did. And so I've been living with the
(03:40):
720P opening in a 4K world. And so I'm going to rework that.
I'm going to rework the office around me.
You know, it's time to feature some of my guests behind me when
I have books from guests or autographed pictures from guests
and just kind of cool things, you know, kind of change up the
background just a little bit. The good thing is all my major
sponsors and supporters are still here and have signed on
(04:03):
for 2026. So with that being said, we're
going to go old school here. Quick story, listener lost a big
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(04:46):
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tomorrow's profits. Decided to sit here and pour
myself a drink. I have some Blanton's Gold that
I'll be sipping on throughout the course of this episode.
(05:06):
Last real episode of the year. That's good.
Before we get to some car news, kind of want to let you know
it's been a while since I've kind of talked about stuff going
on in my personal life as it relates to my house.
A little over two years ago, we we paid a lot of money to get
the backyard redone. Those of you who follow me on
social media or that know me personally that I've been here,
(05:29):
I've seen the dramatic transformation of our backyard.
We have marble tile and we've had to get it fixed twice now
around the swimming pool twice in two years, 2 year.
We have a two year warranty thatexpires in in March.
Not going to say the name of thecompany but I tried to reach the
owner once and I couldn't get a hold of them and I ended up
(05:49):
filing a complaint with the state, the Arizona Register of
contractors, which ended up smoking the owner out and he he
got a hold of me from a different number.
Long story short, we set a date for the state inspector to come
out here and the company had with the complaints, they were
able to come out and try to fix the issue and then try to close
(06:10):
and cancel the inspection. I go, no wait, we're not going
to cancel this inspection. We still want the state
inspector to come out. So state inspector comes out and
at this point I'm kind of armed and done a shit ton of research
of how the job should be done because every time they touch
our yard, the warranty extends for two years, two more years,
(06:32):
which is great. The owner of the company said
he's trying to sell the company so it's in their best interest
to fix our issues because you don't want to sell a company
with a strike on it against the state.
This is why it's important to gowith somebody who's bonded and
insured when you're getting workdone in your house.
The shitty thing is most people,myself included, have no idea
what's really involved when it comes to remodeling, which is
why we pay people to do it. Through some discovery, I found
(06:57):
out that with a very high probability, they didn't do it
fundamentally correct the first time, which is why we keep
having these issues. Sure as shit state inspector
comes out, verifies that they didn't do it right the first
time, and so they had to redo the whole thing, not the entire
thing. So what we had is we had a Baja
shelf put on our pool. And if you don't know what that
(07:17):
is, that's that little very popular thing where you can put
chairs on it, pool lawn chairs and you sit in the water and the
water is usually about 8 to 8 inches to like a foot deep and
you can just chill in the on theBaja shelf.
So we had a Baja shelf added to our existing pool.
It shows it away. All the old Pebble tech sprayed
new Pebble tech because you haveto, because they had a Baja
(07:38):
shelf, which is the structural part of the pool.
And we got brand new decking. We got all fake turf in the
backyard trees. We have 12 trees back there.
We have a raised platform. So we basically did the entire
backyard. So what they had to redo was
everywhere that they put the marble tile, there's a pad.
When you first come into the backyard, there's the pool deck
(07:59):
area which extends all the way to the basically the back door
to the back wall. And then there's another pad on
the other side, which is where our BBQ grill is in smoker and
things like that. They had to redo both pads.
Well, actually all three pads, the race platform, which is a
pad, the entrance pad and the BBQ pad and all the decking
(08:19):
around the pool. So they had to pick all that up,
trench down, put this stuff called aggregate base, which is
called AB or ABC, aggregate basecompound.
And you have to compact that. And then they put the sand on
top and then they put the tile on top of that and set that.
So it's kind of shitty. I've been working on it for a
little bit. It's a nightmare.
(08:40):
It's a little stressful. It's a little stressful because
I have to, even after the state has told them to do it
correctly, they're still trying to cut corners.
So I'm out there, thank God I work from home, but I'm out
there every day taking pictures,walking around, using my
translator app to talk to some of the people that are working
here because no, all blindness. But there's times where I've had
my wife come out there with me and translate or I've had my
(09:02):
mother-in-law, heaven forbid, come out there with me and
translate. And it's been kind of a
headache. But this time around, I don't
trust that it's going to be done100% right.
But I can live with 98% at this point.
I've had to go out and buy stuffand in some cases do it myself.
The last time they were here, they installed a drain channel
because we were having problems with the water sitting on top of
(09:24):
the tile and the ground was moving and shifting because of
that, because they didn't use the proper foundation for the
tile, they didn't dig. They didn't dig down at all.
They just removed the top layer of soil and put some quarter
minus, which is some material and a little bit of sand.
And so the tiles are the pavers on it, but they put a drain
(09:44):
channel and I noticed something was up with the drain channel.
It's like, you know what? It's, it's working right after
they installed it, it started raining like hell.
This year it's working, but something's not right.
It's every morning I look out and the tires are, the tiles are
Gray, like dark Gray, which means they're damp.
And I went out there a few days ago actually and started
investigating the channels. And what it is, is there's 4
(10:09):
segments, there's an end piece. And then they, what they did is
they, they built like a rock drain pit at the end of it with
a little grate. Visually not ideal, but
functionally it seemed to work. But what I noticed is in
between, like the two pieces, the four, the four connecting
pieces, there was nothing in themiddle to connect those pieces.
Imagine those of you with kids, imagine doing the Hot Wheels
(10:33):
tracks or those of you who have no the Hot Wheels tracks of the
orange Hot Wheel tracks. There's always these little blue
connectors that you have to connect one piece of the track
to the other. If you just lay them next to
each other, the car is going to crash, not really roll properly.
These drain channels had no connectors in the middle of them
and there was nothing on the beginning either.
It was wide open. So-called around, got the
(10:54):
missing parts, fortunately got them for free.
Once I showed a picture of what I was doing.
Maybe they just thought, I work for a pool company and then I
spent two hours in the backyard fixing it myself.
Why did I fix it myself and not have them do it?
Because they couldn't do it right the first time.
And it's my backyard and it's such a fundamental thing.
There was so much sand in those in in the drain.
(11:17):
I had to dig all the sand out. It had a bunch of what's called
polymetric sand in there, which kind of gets hard a little bit.
You put polymetric sand when you're doing pavers outside, you
kind of you, you sprinkle it on your pavers and you sweep it in
there and you wet it down and itkind of gets hard enough just a
little bit to hold the pavers inplace.
But not like cement. You don't want it cement because
with cement it can't shift and if it can't shift a little bit,
(11:39):
then it's going to crack the channel.
Was the drain channel just filled with all that shit?
So we're going through that right now.
We're guessing that they will bedone with this being Christmas
week. And next week is, is obviously
New Year's week. I think they'll be done by New
Year's. I don't think they'll be done by
Christmas because you really have three working days this
(12:00):
week. And I mean, those guys are out
there busting their ass. They have families.
I my fear is they're not going to get paid.
Honestly, I can't be worried about that, but I am.
I wish I just had a few money. I'd buy them a 12 pack of
Modello and and slide them a couple hundreds.
You know, I just don't trust that their employer is going to
pay them. But that's kind of the bullshit
(12:22):
I've been going through. Let's get in some car news.
If you've heard of drag dragtimes.com, you may have
heard of Brooks Weisblatt. I apologize if I'm saying his
last name wrong, but Brooks Weisblatt just drove a stock
Corvette ZR1, obviously AC-8 rana 92-ON street tires with a
(12:45):
stock ZR1 Michelin Pilot 4SS. That is insane.
No mods. That's fast.
He ran a 927 at 153 mile an hour.
You know, that kind of reminds me that you know what with with
my old NSX and even my new one, we'll just talk about the new
(13:05):
one. I can get these pure 900 turbos
from science to speed. They're expensive.
They make your car sound badass.They're bigger turbos.
In fact, I have said of my good friend Kyle Nielsen, who has the
same car as me, a blue one, thathis is the only new NSX that
sounds better than my NSX. When I was at Salt Lake City a
few months ago for NS Expo. Obviously you heard me.
(13:28):
I stopped by, I hung out with, with Kyle and we went and had a
nice dinner and he drove his carand met me up with my car and my
God, his car sounds nice. I'm getting off course here.
But my point is, no matter what you do to your car, there's
always somebody out there who's faster.
No matter how much you work out,there's always somebody who's
stronger. No matter how good looking you
(13:49):
think you are, there's always somebody who's better looking
than you. You know, with the old NSX, I'd,
I had significantly modified it.I made it very fast.
I could have dumped even more money into it, made it even
faster. But why?
I was happy with where it was at.
Plus the reality of pulling up to a light with, let's say, a
Tesla Model 3 and somebody in the car that didn't give two
(14:12):
shits about cars. They don't care about cars.
They're just picking up groceries or just doing their
thing in any given time. They just hit that gas and blow
you away no matter what you are driving.
For a vast majority of people onthe road, well over 99.99% of
the cars on the road, I thought it's going to blow you out of
the water, your average E VS going to blow you out of the
water. And that's when you realize none
(14:33):
of this matters. Just build it for you, right?
But then you get this car, this Corvette ZR1, brand new Corvette
bone stock 92. You know how much money you'd
have to dump into most cars running a 92.
Even if a car runs A10 and we'retalking quarter miles for non
core people, even if a car runs like a, a 10/3 or 10/1 or a 99,
(14:55):
just getting it from A99 to a nine two, you're talking big
money and you're rolling the dice and blowing your engine.
You may be able to run once or twice down the drag strip before
before having to rebuild something.
And we got Corvettes that run a 92.
You know, last week we talked about hypercars.
Was it last week, 2 weeks ago, whenever I had Charles Worden on
what's the difference between a supercar and a hypercar, an
(15:16):
exotic sports car, We never talked about Corvette.
I would say that a Corvette AC-8, Corvette AZO 6, or AZR 1,
you have to call those exotic sports cars and they're
absolutely supercars because they can run with anyone and in
many cases beat most cars out there on the road stock for
(15:38):
stock. There's almost nothing out there
they can beat. AZR One that's a supercar,
that's damn near hypercar, except for it's not $1,000,000.
And I think that's where you might draw the line.
Something that's going to cost like 1,000,000 or 2 million.
There's like 10 of them in the world and you have major FU
money. Then you buy hyper cars.
That's my thought. Slight self correction.
(15:59):
Last week when I was talking about the Jas Motorsports
designed by Pinion for Rita NSX,I had mentioned the senior cars,
the senior Porsches. And you know, I've posted this
online and people have talked about it and kind of given their
opinions about what the car is worth to donating an NSX to.
And then you got the guys like, well they do it with Porsche all
the time. They do it with GTRS all the
(16:20):
time. It's like, you know how many of
those cars there are, you can dothat.
But what the self, the self correction part comes with a
senior Porsche. It's going to cost you 234500
grand just to Commission one. The market on those is 1 to
$2,000,000. So I said that you can get a
senior Porsche and you know they're for a couple 100,000.
(16:43):
No, no, no, no, no. It's going to cost you at least
a couple 100,000 to get the build done, probably closer to
half a million. So I was a little off on that.
When I got done saying it and listened back to it, I thought
to myself, no, there's no way. They got to be way more
expensive than that. So I looked it up and I was
right. And then it's it for the car
news. I was a big Tupac guy and I like
(17:08):
watching reaction videos. I have a reaction channel, but
not music. I just recently went down a
rabbit hole of people reacting to Biggie, Tupac, Bone Thugs.
But some of you may have never heard this song, so I encourage
you to look it up and maybe listen to it.
But Tupac and the Outlaws had a song called Staring at the World
to My Rear View, and that used to be my favorite song.
(17:30):
I used to drive around to that song, like that song spoke to
me. And those were times, we're
talking mid 90s, ninety, 596-9697.
You know, those are rough years for me.
And there was a time it remindedme of a time when I didn't
really, believe it or not, I, I didn't really care if I lived
past a certain age, you know, I,I just didn't.
(17:53):
And it's, it's a weird mindset. You know, I've gotten to like
debates with my wife about cultural issues and mindsets and
how things have to change. You can't expect everybody to
change it for you. You have to change it yourself.
If you're able to not sometimes you're not able to.
I don't care what you say about it.
Sometimes you're just not able to pull yourself in situations.
And I was living a life nonviolent, but I flirted with
(18:15):
danger all the time. And there was an incident one
night when we were hanging out in a very bad part of Dallas.
When we had showed up, I just got my Acura Integra.
At the time, I had a 1998 'causeI had a 98 and a 99, but this
was my 1998 Integra GSR. So we rolled to the hood, me and
(18:36):
the homies, and we pulled up to we pulled up around this to the
corner of this house and rolled out a window of my one of my
friends put his hand out the window and he was like, Hey,
what's up, mother Beep. And then I noticed, and some of
you have heard this story before, but I noticed there were
people coming at us from all different angles with guns in
(18:58):
their hands. And I said, hey, yo, you better
say some I don't think they knowwho you are.
And he's like, hey, it's me, it's me, it's me.
Well, come to find out earlier that night, someone had had
drove driven by and was firing shots at their houses.
Now, this is the part of town where the police aren't there.
I mean, you do that shit here inGilbert, and the cops are going
to be there for a while trying to figure out what's going on.
(19:20):
Not here. It was just normal stuff.
And that night, we're hanging out.
My car was parked right in frontof this house, and we're kind of
standing in the front yard smoking what's called wet, which
was weed, like wasting embalmingfluid and some other stuff.
Yeah, I it was. It was an interesting time for
sure. Makes you a little nervous every
time a car rolled by everyone we're kind of duck and kind of
(19:41):
scattered and we're just standing there and I'm like, OK,
what? Where am I going to go if
whatever happened earlier just happened to happen again?
I didn't have a gun. So my friends had guns.
I didn't have a gun at the time.Eventually got one.
That's that's for another story.I remember thinking kind of
standing back, looking in my car, kind of casing the scene,
(20:03):
like what am I doing here? If something, if, if something
happens to me, if something happens to any of my friends, if
something happens to my car, howam I going to explain this to my
dad? How am I going to explain this
to my best friend's parents? Because he lived right behind
me. And that was the second to the
(20:23):
last time I was in that neighborhood.
But that was the last time I wasthere at night.
And I think when I listened to some of those Tupac songs, that
was a time in my life where things are just so different.
Here I am now. I have a 2022 Acura NSX Type S
#130 of 350 in the world, have anice house, have a good job,
been married for 21 years, wife has a great job.
(20:46):
I got grandkids. Things are different.
And I listen to those songs and they just, they just immediately
teleport you back to a time. But staring at the world to my
rearview was one of my frustrating songs that you would
just drive around at night by yourself in your Acura or
whatever you're in and just blast the radio.
(21:07):
Dallas was good for that. Dallas was good for getting in
your car and and going for drives.
I don't do that here, but I don't my mindset's not the same.
I don't have those times. I just have to get in my car and
go for a drive. Hell, I probably why I have this
podcast. I just come up here in the
studio if I have to blow off some steam or I have friends
circles. Now, I can call up people and
just bitch to them about certainthings, but my mindset is
(21:28):
different, you know? And God, it's like it's funny
because Beastie Boys Sabotage was one of those songs.
You get in your car and just blare it and you drive
Crockett's theme, Miami Vice, Crockett's theme.
If you don't know that song, go ahead and pull up Crockett's
(21:49):
theme, Miami Vice, Crockett's theme, that that song, that song
to me is kind of like staring atthe world to my rear view.
It's just, it's a song that you just listen to when you're just
going through some shit and you just need to think, go stand on
the go stand on the hillside, overlook the city at night and
think to these this one of thosesongs.
(22:11):
That's the shit. But you know, I guess where I'm
going with all that is things change.
And you know, this year's 2025, I challenged myself, I challenge
this podcast, like, what can I do to try to get this podcast to
a, to the next level? You know, the the goal if I
wanted to go out and chase big names, I mean, I think that's
(22:33):
probably the goal of going viral, getting somebody on your
podcast and get the next famous person, the next famous person
and then go viral, have someone say something stupid or say
something stupid yourself. That's not me.
And my responsibility is keepingthis podcast going and giving
(22:54):
peers and other people a stage to tell their story like Tyler
Patterson. I just went to Tyler Patterson's
meet this weekend. It's called proper like a proper
car meet. TSB media, you guys, Tyler
Patterson was sitting right there in front of me a couple
months ago. Didn't really know him.
He wanted to come on the show. Didn't know what to expect.
One of my favorite conversationson this show all year.
(23:14):
It's the Tyler Patterson's of the world that that I, you know,
embrace having this podcast. But one of the challenges also
was it's time to get on video. If you guys recall that I wasn't
always on video, only on rare occasions.
This year I'm on video all the time.
Every week I challenge to do a video podcast and it's easy to
(23:39):
do here in the studio in my house.
The challenge is when I go otherplaces and I've had issues this
year, I've had growing points, I've had, I've had times where
I've had to adjust. There's times I've gone
somewhere and I forgot a piece of equipment and I just, you
know, with, with the young motorcars and Matt O'Connor, the
camera kept focusing in and out.It was overexposed.
(24:01):
I eventually went out and got APL filter that I end up using
at the next time that I went out, but I didn't have my mic
stands with Matt O'Connor. So we had to hold these
microphones. These aren't the type of
microphones you sit there and you're holding your hand.
These are not designed to do that.
But that's what we did, and I hated it every second of it.
(24:22):
But the podcast itself was great.
I just hated that. And most people would have no
idea. And I wouldn't call myself a
perfectionist, but I know how itshould be.
And the fact that it wasn't drove me to make adjustments.
Now I do equipment checks beforeI leave.
Sometimes I'll do a mock setup. I will set everything up here in
the office and break it all backdown and take it with me next
(24:45):
time. I went to Ron Evans in the
vault. Great episode.
Ron Evans, great guy, had him infocus.
He gets up to take a drink, sitsdown out of focus, gets up, take
a drink, sits down in focus, gets up one more time, remains
out of focus. Probably 90% of the interview I
was in focus because I didn't move.
That was just another challenge.Other growing point, very
(25:06):
frustrating. John Rivers, Mr. John Rivers of
Acura, you guys don't understandhow grave an opportunity that is
to get somebody like Jonathan Rivers on this podcast twice.
It's two years in a row, camera goes out of focus on me.
That's fine. We got John Rivers that stayed
on him the whole time. But those little things, those
are the little things that I keep beating myself over the
(25:28):
head with because quality, for me, it's got to be quality
first. And for those of you who listen
to this podcast instead of watchit, you never see those things.
The only reason, you know, that even exists because I cry about
it at the beginning of every episode when it doesn't go the
way I want because I just pushedmyself.
And it could be these cameras. I mean, they have focal
settings. I've gone through them all.
(25:48):
Tyler Patterson, when he was sitting in front of me in
studio, he kind of taught me a few different things on these
cameras, which helped a little bit.
And I, I adjusted it since he adjusted it because I was still
searching for a certain look. But that in itself helped a
little bit, helped significantly.
But we'll see what 2026 holds. I don't feel like going out and
buying new cameras. I have two, They're about $800.
Cameras. They're fine for this.
(26:11):
But you know, when you get out of the studio, at times you can
struggle or the equipment can struggle.
Mobile lighting, that's a challenge.
Mobile lighting, you know I don't, I take these wands with
me. Now.
I shouldn't have a wand right infront of me right here, right?
Look at this whoop. You have this whole lightsaber
that I'm handling up. That's one of the lawn, the
lawns. That's one of the wands that I
use now when I go remote, I set those up in front of people
(26:33):
instead of these giant ones thatI have in the studio because
they're kind of a pain in the ass.
If you're here local, I'll take the big ones with me.
But when I went to Albuquerque, I had to use the wands with
Randy early this year. You didn't notice?
I noticed. So you know, 2025 is was the
year I just challenged myself toget better.
(26:53):
You know, my cousin, every year she sends us a card now, card
stock, really hard thing and hasa word on it.
The word this year was better. What can I do to be better?
What can I do to be a better person?
What can I do to be a better husband?
What can I do to make my podcasteven better?
You know, I just looked at the word earlier.
It's in our restroom. It's in our bathroom, you know,
(27:15):
in my in in the master bedroom. But we have a desk in there.
OK, But I look down at it better.
It's right better. So then what happens with 2026?
Better. Like I said earlier, the studio
is going to look a little different.
The intro to the podcast is going to look a little bit
different. It's going to be better.
(27:37):
You know, one of the things thatthat I talked about, what I talk
about every year is the guests. I always have these guests that
I'm going to bring on and then it just the timing just doesn't
work out or I never get the guests, but that just gives me
2026 to chase them down. One of my disappointments
though, this year that I experimented with was the
Conspiracy Corner and I only hadtwo Conspiracy Corner segments.
(27:59):
It's one of those deals where everybody's excited to do it.
I even made shirts for it. Everyone's excited to do it.
It's just so hard to get people to find the time to do it.
I don't want to say that people want to do it, but then they
don't want to do it. It's just hard to get people to
find time to do it. So I'm going to break in with a
conspiracy of my own. Do you guys believe in the
(28:19):
simulation theory? I'm not entirely sure I believe
in the simulation theory, but every once in a while there's
some weird shit that happens that makes you think.
For instance, a lot of times when I look at the clock, it's
1234, it is 1/2, 3/4. I always thought that was weird.
I think I talked about that before, but according to, I
(28:41):
don't know, I'm gonna call it numerology.
I don't know what it's called, but I have some good friends
that are kind of into it. Well, my buddy Jeff's wife Anna
is into it more than he is. But it means that you're on the
right path. That's what that that's what
that number very specifically means.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
You're on the right path. And I look up and I see 1234 or
(29:03):
two, 3-4 a lot. My wife will tell you it's
'cause I'm always looking at theclock.
I maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I don't know if I am, I look at
it a lot, but it's not like it'slike, OK, it's, it's 12, it's
1233. Let me just look back in a
minute. Oh, it's 1235.
Shit, I missed it. No, it's just the weirdest
thing. But where I guess where I'm
(29:26):
going with that is the last three times I went to our
storage facility, we have one across the street.
The last three times there's been a car parked out.
So here's the deal. You go in the gate.
I'm sure many of you have been to storage stores, maybe not
all. You go in the gate and there's
(29:46):
two main doors in the back and each main door has enough
parking for two vehicles. So people usually back their
trucks up or their whatever, andyou put in your coach in the
sliding door. And so these doors, there's 2
doors because one of them is going to be closer in proximity
to your rented space than the other one, right?
Logically, that's why there's 2 doors.
Ours is the far door or the neardoor if you come to the other
(30:09):
entrance. But for the main, the entrance
that we consider the main entrance because there's two
entrances, our door is a furthest door.
It's not unusual to see other people at the storage space
battling for those parking spotsor parking a little off.
It's very common. But the last three times I've
been there, up to and including today, there's a vehicle parked
(30:30):
outside. Now there are, I have to say,
thousands of storage. My storage is on the 2nd floor.
It's in the 2000s is the number.The last three times I've been
there, there's been a car parkedoutside and their storage space
is within four or five spaces ofmine.
In fact, today when I went there, it was right across the
(30:52):
way and they had all their stuffand they had to move their stuff
out of the way. So I can even get to mine, which
was right by there's thousands of storage spaces.
Three times in a row it's someone near my storage.
Now, I'm not talking down the way like 12 lockers down.
I'm talking within five of my own.
Now that's crazy. It doesn't make any sense when
(31:14):
we're the only two in the building.
Make it make sense. And finally, I'm trying to get
my sister-in-law to watch Squid Game the show like the Netflix
drama because now was you guys know that and I've worn it
before here on the podcast. I was a Squid Game character
#130 which is the my car number 1336350.
(31:36):
Sorry, but I was that for Halloween.
I didn't know that at the time that Mister Beast had started a
Squid Game Game show. Like a game show, like a Squid
Game. I play a video game called Squid
Game or iOS game called Squid Game Unleashed.
So I'm always playing it. That's my my new thing.
(31:57):
And what I love about that game is there are just bots, but
there's also other real people you're playing with and you
can't buy anything. Thank God Netflix gets it
because most apps you have to buy stuff, right?
You want to buy fake money to unlock a skin or unlock a level.
You can't buy, you have to earn every single coin in this game
(32:18):
to unlock stuff. And it's it's cool, but they
have a new challenge where they're like, hey, watch along
with this thing that's on Netflix.
I'm like, OK, well, I did the other one post after watching
the whole series of all three, you know, all three seasons of
the Korean drama show Squid Gamethat now they have one and I'm
(32:42):
start, I'm starting to watch it 'cause you can play along to
unlock stuff. I'm like, what is this season 2?
It's and it's a Squid Game show called Squid Game Challenge.
And what it is, if you haven't seen it, is it's a bunch of
people basically dressed like the Halloween costume I have
with a Squid Game jumpsuit. And it's a, it's a reality
survival TV show. And I'm looking at it and I'm
(33:05):
seeing some of the stuff from the video game on there and it's
just, I'm not big on reality TV.There's a few I've seen.
I think I want to say Outlast. Have I talked about Outlast
where they take people up in theAlaskan wilderness and they have
team captains and there's Alpha,Beta, Charlie and Delta.
(33:28):
So there's four teams and you pick your, the team captains
pick their teams almost like picking, pick a basketball, like
I'll take you. I'll take you based on their
skills. And Long story short, the
surviving team wins $1,000,000, right?
And that's a really good one. OK, that's the type of reality
show I could watch. It's almost like Survivor,
right? Get voted off the island type of
deal. But I would say not the same
(33:49):
drama, but it probably is the same drama.
But I usually don't watch it like that.
So I'm, I'm watching this Squid Game challenge on my phone and
I'm like, this is stupid. Because what happens is you
can't, you can't emulate the intensity of the TV show.
Spoiler alert, on the TV show, you get kind of tricked into
(34:12):
competing because you're a loseressentially, or you owe a debt.
And if you don't pass, you're dead.
They kill you. There's one season 1, they have
a tug of war on this giant tower, so the losing team falls
like 500 feet to their death. That's Squid Game.
(34:32):
So I'm watching this thing on myphone and you can, I could watch
on Netflix too. But anyway, Squid Game challenge
and when they don't pass, they get hit with like unless it's
already in their chest, they getshot with like a black paintball
is what it looks like. And they have to lay there and
act like they're dead. And then the other players are
like, I can't believe Bobby was Bobby was.
(34:53):
I love, I miss Bobby. He was he's the reason why we're
here. And I'm looking at I'm just
like, man, like I guess it wouldn't suck so much to me if
they didn't have to pretend likethey were shot and dead.
Just be out. The thing went out last.
The survival game is you, they have flare guns and you can
(35:13):
flare out. And so the other teams look and
they see a flare shot like, oh, where'd that flare come from?
Will that come from team, Team Charlie?
Oh, team Charlie's down a player.
We're going to win. We're going to win.
You flare out or if you get sick, you can flare out or you
can get voted off your team and you have 24 hours to get with
another team. If they don't accept you, you
flare out. Like to me, that's a lot more
drama and exciting than getting hit with a paintball and just
(35:35):
laying there like you're dead. That's just dumb to me.
First world problems, first world complaints.
I know. All right, I'm actually going to
do the official closing to this too.
So if look, I don't look if you like what you've watched, which
why would you not? If you like what you listened
(35:56):
to, if for some reason this is your first time, consider
subscribing on whatever platformyou're listening to it and or if
you're watching it on YouTube, hit subscribe.
You become a member, which I think it's like buy me a coffee
or something you get access to. I would say you get access to
episodes early, but I really have them early.
In fact, I'm usually up to like 2:00 AM on Sunday getting them
ready for Monday. But if you really like this,
(36:17):
consider doing it. And if you don't have to,
because you know, first, I'll say this before I got on this
list of people, I'm thankful formany of you watch this show,
this podcast, many of you listento this podcast.
And for that, I mean, I thank you.
You don't have to listen all thetime or watch it all the time,
but you know who you are. You're awesome.
You motivate me to keep moving. You don't have to become a
(36:40):
member. You don't have to become a
Patreon. I'm not trying to shame you for
not doing so. I'm just glad you're here.
But what I will say is I mean, well, let me just read this
really quick. You know, I haven't received a
review in a long time on Apple either.
So if you haven't gone to Apple,I don't think you have to have
an account. But if you have an iPhone, find
the podcast and go click write areview.
(37:02):
Give me a four, give me a 5. Don't give me a two, Don't give
me a three, don't give me a one star.
But those reviews have to help. Been listening to the Hard
Parking for five years. You know, they started in 2019,
guys, we're going on six years, seven years toward the middle of
next year of 2026. So you can say, hey, I've been
listening to this thing for years.
(37:23):
This show is really good, talks about everything, everything.
So do it. But with that being said, one of
the right Honda and right ToyotaSparkforge AI brought to you by
Arcus Foundry. One login, one platform, all
under your control, Auto cannon,officially licensed Honda and
Acura gear. Thank you so much.
Can't forget Patreon business supporters.
(37:45):
Automotive specialty troll of Owings Mills, MD, Corey
Automotive out of Winter Garden,FL, The Lucky Breaks sports
breaks out of Caledonia, MI, Bighouse small home design out of
Ashbury Virginia and Traverse City MI Shape mix success
Treasure Valley out of Boise, ID.
It's funny, I have automotive specialty troll in here twice.
(38:07):
Special shout out to Mark Stoneman, Catherine Cox, City
Ramos, Richard Graves by our Joe's Bojang Oscar media
drewbunkleyanddrebolensemailtheshowhardparkingpodcast@gmail.comGuys just got also subscribe to
me on on Instagram right at hardparking pod.
But yeah, I want a special thankyou.
So this year, so every year I buy my supporters, my financial
(38:30):
supporters a gift. I don't need the money, but when
I see those supporters there, itjust, it helps push me to keep
moving, you know, 'cause sometimes I just don't feel like
doing a podcast Every week. Pretty much since January of
2021. Before that it was every two
weeks. But this year I bought this
(38:52):
really cool hard parking mug. You can see it's kind of like
reverse negative, almost like a rubber stamp.
And then on the back, it's got, you know, 2025, but the
supporters just got their names.Everyone who was eligible as a
supporter received one. This includes, of course, Jane
(39:16):
and Joe of of Wright Honda, Wright Toyota Arcus foundry.
Nate, thank you so much for giving me the platform and
supporting me. And of course, Michael and
Dennis of Max boost. And well, I can't say Max boost
because they technically don't do this, but it is auto cannon.
So Dennis of auto cannon and andMichael, thank you so much for
(39:38):
everything you guys have done for this show and the support.
And again, thank you everybody else who's watched this listen
to this. And if you're still listening,
thank you so much. I know you probably could have
checked out like 10 minutes ago or somewhere in the ramble about
the backyard, which at this point would have been about 30
minutes ago, but I will see you guys officially in January.
(39:59):
Again, I don't know if I'm goingto do.
I know I'm not going to do an Apple another episode this year,
but I don't know if I'm going todo a couple classic episodes.
I guess when they pop, you'll see them.
I'm going to try to pick something with video from
earlier this year or something that's that I felt was some of
the best that this podcast has done.
Or maybe maybe I will put one ofthe early episodes so people can
(40:22):
see how far this podcast has gone.
You tell me if you're a Patreon,I don't want to hear from you,
but if you're not to say if you're not a financial supporter
of this show, tell me. Do you want to?
Do you want me to post somethingsuper old?
Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll post something in the
beginning. Some of those first episodes are
(40:43):
rough. But anyway, I will catch you
guys on the flip side, have a Merry Christmas, have a safe new
year. Go Texas.
Texas versus Michigan in the Cheez its bowl.
I'm going to get me a nice bowl of white cheddar Cheez its I
lived in Michigan. I really like the Michigan
Wolverines, but I love the TexasLonghorns.
(41:05):
See you guys later. So I will catch you on the flip
side. Shut up.
All right, so now we are officially recording and we're
going to jump into this. This is it guys.
This is it. This is Hard Parking brought to
(00:20):
you by Right Hunt and right Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ.
This is your first time tuning in.
My name is Jay and I'm recordingfrom my home studio, home built
studio, literally in my house, like quite literally in my house
here in Gilbert, AZ. It is a holiday season, so let's
just get that out of the way right now.
Happy holidays to everyone who celebrates the holidays,
(00:41):
regardless of your religion. It's a great time of year.
Hell, this is the week of Christmas.
It's not even just an American thing.
It's kind of a global thing, which is great.
Let's talk about my Christmas list a little bit.
I should have asked for a sewingmachine.
It's funny, but like I have a hoodie that I wear, a VF1S and a
(01:03):
sex hoodie, which was the old school.
So if you've been following me for a while, that's the old car
kind of the one right behind me on the wall.
But I made a hoodie with the cartoon drawing.
I paid for the drawing, commissioned someone.
It's very similar to the logo for hard Parking.
Same artist and it's ripping. You know how we always make fun
of women for always wearing their yoga pants all the time?
(01:25):
If you've been around me long enough, you would notice that I
am always wearing Adidas, those Adidas warm up pants that are
kind of tight and now they're starting to make them a little
short, which I don't like where they kind of, I kind of want
them to touch the top of my shoe.
I don't want them to hover around my ankles.
That looks just weird to me. But anyway, I was sitting here
the other day and I'm like, OK. And I realized I have a like a
(01:47):
vagina sized slit in the crotch of one of them that I wear all
the time. I know I noticed that before and
I thought I threw it in like thedonation.
Yes, I was going to donate it, but it's something I could quite
simply fix with a sewing machine.
I also wear these jogger or rather kind of like these hiking
(02:11):
parachute esque pants. I have three pair.
I have a Gray pair of black pairand a tan pair.
And so 99% of the time when you see me, I'm wearing those or
Adidas joggers in the pocket of one of those, it's coming apart.
The Gray ones, no, the Gray oneshave a stain on them.
The khaki color one, the tan ones.
(02:32):
So now I have to shift everything to my other pocket
because I don't want my keys to fall out.
I don't want my wallet to drop. It's not the hole is itself is
not big enough for my phone to fall out.
But I just started thinking, man, I got hoodies that are
coming apart. I got pants that are coming
apart actually, those Adidas joggers, those are one of like 3
(02:54):
that I have that I found weird holes and weird seams.
So maybe I should get a sewing machine.
Kind of silly, right? Oh, before we go any further,
let me go ahead and do this. I want to kind of give you guys
the old school. This is a raw old school,
probably the last episode of theyear.
I want to take this time to justkind of reset a little bit.
(03:18):
That doesn't mean anything majorfor the podcast.
If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll notice that my
opening video is a little dated in resolution and content.
I don't really talk about car parts nearly as much anymore.
I don't talk about electronics at all.
I don't really do car reviews anymore.
I always plan to get back to that space.
I just never did. And so I've been living with the
(03:40):
720P opening in a 4K world. And so I'm going to rework that.
I'm going to rework the office around me.
You know, it's time to feature some of my guests behind me when
I have books from guests or autographed pictures from guests
and just kind of cool things, you know, kind of change up the
background just a little bit. The good thing is all my major
sponsors and supporters are still here and have signed on
(04:03):
for 2026. So with that being said, we're
going to go old school here. Quick story, listener lost a big
job, missed the call, never saw the DM.
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I don't know if this is the same10, sorry.
(04:46):
Jump into a 30 day trial using code hardparked at.
Get sparkforge dot AI and stop letting yesterday's tech eat
tomorrow's profits. Decided to sit here and pour
myself a drink. I have some Blanton's Gold that
I'll be sipping on throughout the course of this episode.
(05:06):
Last real episode of the year. That's good.
Before we get to some car news, kind of want to let you know
it's been a while since I've kind of talked about stuff going
on in my personal life as it relates to my house.
A little over two years ago, we we paid a lot of money to get
the backyard redone. Those of you who follow me on
social media or that know me personally that I've been here,
(05:29):
I've seen the dramatic transformation of our backyard.
We have marble tile and we've had to get it fixed twice now
around the swimming pool twice in two years, 2 year.
We have a two year warranty thatexpires in in March.
Not going to say the name of thecompany but I tried to reach the
owner once and I couldn't get a hold of them and I ended up
(05:49):
filing a complaint with the state, the Arizona Register of
contractors, which ended up smoking the owner out and he he
got a hold of me from a different number.
Long story short, we set a date for the state inspector to come
out here and the company had with the complaints, they were
able to come out and try to fix the issue and then try to close
(06:10):
and cancel the inspection. I go, no wait, we're not going
to cancel this inspection. We still want the state
inspector to come out. So state inspector comes out and
at this point I'm kind of armed and done a shit ton of research
of how the job should be done because every time they touch
our yard, the warranty extends for two years, two more years,
(06:32):
which is great. The owner of the company said
he's trying to sell the company so it's in their best interest
to fix our issues because you don't want to sell a company
with a strike on it against the state.
This is why it's important to gowith somebody who's bonded and
insured when you're getting workdone in your house.
The shitty thing is most people,myself included, have no idea
what's really involved when it comes to remodeling, which is
why we pay people to do it. Through some discovery, I found
(06:57):
out that with a very high probability, they didn't do it
fundamentally correct the first time, which is why we keep
having these issues. Sure as shit state inspector
comes out, verifies that they didn't do it right the first
time, and so they had to redo the whole thing, not the entire
thing. So what we had is we had a Baja
shelf put on our pool. And if you don't know what that
(07:17):
is, that's that little very popular thing where you can put
chairs on it, pool lawn chairs and you sit in the water and the
water is usually about 8 to 8 inches to like a foot deep and
you can just chill in the on theBaja shelf.
So we had a Baja shelf added to our existing pool.
It shows it away. All the old Pebble tech sprayed
new Pebble tech because you haveto, because they had a Baja
(07:38):
shelf, which is the structural part of the pool.
And we got brand new decking. We got all fake turf in the
backyard trees. We have 12 trees back there.
We have a raised platform. So we basically did the entire
backyard. So what they had to redo was
everywhere that they put the marble tile, there's a pad.
When you first come into the backyard, there's the pool deck
(07:59):
area which extends all the way to the basically the back door
to the back wall. And then there's another pad on
the other side, which is where our BBQ grill is in smoker and
things like that. They had to redo both pads.
Well, actually all three pads, the race platform, which is a
pad, the entrance pad and the BBQ pad and all the decking
(08:19):
around the pool. So they had to pick all that up,
trench down, put this stuff called aggregate base, which is
called AB or ABC, aggregate basecompound.
And you have to compact that. And then they put the sand on
top and then they put the tile on top of that and set that.
So it's kind of shitty. I've been working on it for a
little bit. It's a nightmare.
(08:40):
It's a little stressful. It's a little stressful because
I have to, even after the state has told them to do it
correctly, they're still trying to cut corners.
So I'm out there, thank God I work from home, but I'm out
there every day taking pictures,walking around, using my
translator app to talk to some of the people that are working
here because no, all blindness. But there's times where I've had
my wife come out there with me and translate or I've had my
(09:02):
mother-in-law, heaven forbid, come out there with me and
translate. And it's been kind of a
headache. But this time around, I don't
trust that it's going to be done100% right.
But I can live with 98% at this point.
I've had to go out and buy stuffand in some cases do it myself.
The last time they were here, they installed a drain channel
because we were having problems with the water sitting on top of
(09:24):
the tile and the ground was moving and shifting because of
that, because they didn't use the proper foundation for the
tile, they didn't dig. They didn't dig down at all.
They just removed the top layer of soil and put some quarter
minus, which is some material and a little bit of sand.
And so the tiles are the pavers on it, but they put a drain
(09:44):
channel and I noticed something was up with the drain channel.
It's like, you know what? It's, it's working right after
they installed it, it started raining like hell.
This year it's working, but something's not right.
It's every morning I look out and the tires are, the tiles are
Gray, like dark Gray, which means they're damp.
And I went out there a few days ago actually and started
investigating the channels. And what it is, is there's 4
(10:09):
segments, there's an end piece. And then they, what they did is
they, they built like a rock drain pit at the end of it with
a little grate. Visually not ideal, but
functionally it seemed to work. But what I noticed is in
between, like the two pieces, the four, the four connecting
pieces, there was nothing in themiddle to connect those pieces.
Imagine those of you with kids, imagine doing the Hot Wheels
(10:33):
tracks or those of you who have no the Hot Wheels tracks of the
orange Hot Wheel tracks. There's always these little blue
connectors that you have to connect one piece of the track
to the other. If you just lay them next to
each other, the car is going to crash, not really roll properly.
These drain channels had no connectors in the middle of them
and there was nothing on the beginning either.
It was wide open. So-called around, got the
(10:54):
missing parts, fortunately got them for free.
Once I showed a picture of what I was doing.
Maybe they just thought, I work for a pool company and then I
spent two hours in the backyard fixing it myself.
Why did I fix it myself and not have them do it?
Because they couldn't do it right the first time.
And it's my backyard and it's such a fundamental thing.
There was so much sand in those in in the drain.
(11:17):
I had to dig all the sand out. It had a bunch of what's called
polymetric sand in there, which kind of gets hard a little bit.
You put polymetric sand when you're doing pavers outside, you
kind of you, you sprinkle it on your pavers and you sweep it in
there and you wet it down and itkind of gets hard enough just a
little bit to hold the pavers inplace.
But not like cement. You don't want it cement because
with cement it can't shift and if it can't shift a little bit,
(11:39):
then it's going to crack the channel.
Was the drain channel just filled with all that shit?
So we're going through that right now.
We're guessing that they will bedone with this being Christmas
week. And next week is, is obviously
New Year's week. I think they'll be done by New
Year's. I don't think they'll be done by
Christmas because you really have three working days this
(12:00):
week. And I mean, those guys are out
there busting their ass. They have families.
I my fear is they're not going to get paid.
Honestly, I can't be worried about that, but I am.
I wish I just had a few money. I'd buy them a 12 pack of
Modello and and slide them a couple hundreds.
You know, I just don't trust that their employer is going to
pay them. But that's kind of the bullshit
(12:22):
I've been going through. Let's get in some car news.
If you've heard of drag dragtimes.com, you may have
heard of Brooks Weisblatt. I apologize if I'm saying his
last name wrong, but Brooks Weisblatt just drove a stock
Corvette ZR1, obviously AC-8 rana 92-ON street tires with a
(12:45):
stock ZR1 Michelin Pilot 4SS. That is insane.
No mods. That's fast.
He ran a 927 at 153 mile an hour.
You know, that kind of reminds me that you know what with with
my old NSX and even my new one, we'll just talk about the new
(13:05):
one. I can get these pure 900 turbos
from science to speed. They're expensive.
They make your car sound badass.They're bigger turbos.
In fact, I have said of my good friend Kyle Nielsen, who has the
same car as me, a blue one, thathis is the only new NSX that
sounds better than my NSX. When I was at Salt Lake City a
few months ago for NS Expo. Obviously you heard me.
(13:28):
I stopped by, I hung out with, with Kyle and we went and had a
nice dinner and he drove his carand met me up with my car and my
God, his car sounds nice. I'm getting off course here.
But my point is, no matter what you do to your car, there's
always somebody out there who's faster.
No matter how much you work out,there's always somebody who's
stronger. No matter how good looking you
(13:49):
think you are, there's always somebody who's better looking
than you. You know, with the old NSX, I'd,
I had significantly modified it.I made it very fast.
I could have dumped even more money into it, made it even
faster. But why?
I was happy with where it was at.
Plus the reality of pulling up to a light with, let's say, a
Tesla Model 3 and somebody in the car that didn't give two
(14:12):
shits about cars. They don't care about cars.
They're just picking up groceries or just doing their
thing in any given time. They just hit that gas and blow
you away no matter what you are driving.
For a vast majority of people onthe road, well over 99.99% of
the cars on the road, I thought it's going to blow you out of
the water, your average E VS going to blow you out of the
water. And that's when you realize none
(14:33):
of this matters. Just build it for you, right?
But then you get this car, this Corvette ZR1, brand new Corvette
bone stock 92. You know how much money you'd
have to dump into most cars running a 92.
Even if a car runs A10 and we'retalking quarter miles for non
core people, even if a car runs like a, a 10/3 or 10/1 or a 99,
(14:55):
just getting it from A99 to a nine two, you're talking big
money and you're rolling the dice and blowing your engine.
You may be able to run once or twice down the drag strip before
before having to rebuild something.
And we got Corvettes that run a 92.
You know, last week we talked about hypercars.
Was it last week, 2 weeks ago, whenever I had Charles Worden on
what's the difference between a supercar and a hypercar, an
(15:16):
exotic sports car, We never talked about Corvette.
I would say that a Corvette AC-8, Corvette AZO 6, or AZR 1,
you have to call those exotic sports cars and they're
absolutely supercars because they can run with anyone and in
many cases beat most cars out there on the road stock for
(15:38):
stock. There's almost nothing out there
they can beat. AZR One that's a supercar,
that's damn near hypercar, except for it's not $1,000,000.
And I think that's where you might draw the line.
Something that's going to cost like 1,000,000 or 2 million.
There's like 10 of them in the world and you have major FU
money. Then you buy hyper cars.
That's my thought. Slight self correction.
(15:59):
Last week when I was talking about the Jas Motorsports
designed by Pinion for Rita NSX,I had mentioned the senior cars,
the senior Porsches. And you know, I've posted this
online and people have talked about it and kind of given their
opinions about what the car is worth to donating an NSX to.
And then you got the guys like, well they do it with Porsche all
the time. They do it with GTRS all the
(16:20):
time. It's like, you know how many of
those cars there are, you can dothat.
But what the self, the self correction part comes with a
senior Porsche. It's going to cost you 234500
grand just to Commission one. The market on those is 1 to
$2,000,000. So I said that you can get a
senior Porsche and you know they're for a couple 100,000.
(16:43):
No, no, no, no, no. It's going to cost you at least
a couple 100,000 to get the build done, probably closer to
half a million. So I was a little off on that.
When I got done saying it and listened back to it, I thought
to myself, no, there's no way. They got to be way more
expensive than that. So I looked it up and I was
right. And then it's it for the car
news. I was a big Tupac guy and I like
(17:08):
watching reaction videos. I have a reaction channel, but
not music. I just recently went down a
rabbit hole of people reacting to Biggie, Tupac, Bone Thugs.
But some of you may have never heard this song, so I encourage
you to look it up and maybe listen to it.
But Tupac and the Outlaws had a song called Staring at the World
to My Rear View, and that used to be my favorite song.
(17:30):
I used to drive around to that song, like that song spoke to
me. And those were times, we're
talking mid 90s, ninety, 596-9697.
You know, those are rough years for me.
And there was a time it remindedme of a time when I didn't
really, believe it or not, I, I didn't really care if I lived
past a certain age, you know, I,I just didn't.
(17:53):
And it's, it's a weird mindset. You know, I've gotten to like
debates with my wife about cultural issues and mindsets and
how things have to change. You can't expect everybody to
change it for you. You have to change it yourself.
If you're able to not sometimes you're not able to.
I don't care what you say about it.
Sometimes you're just not able to pull yourself in situations.
And I was living a life nonviolent, but I flirted with
(18:15):
danger all the time. And there was an incident one
night when we were hanging out in a very bad part of Dallas.
When we had showed up, I just got my Acura Integra.
At the time, I had a 1998 'causeI had a 98 and a 99, but this
was my 1998 Integra GSR. So we rolled to the hood, me and
(18:36):
the homies, and we pulled up to we pulled up around this to the
corner of this house and rolled out a window of my one of my
friends put his hand out the window and he was like, Hey,
what's up, mother Beep. And then I noticed, and some of
you have heard this story before, but I noticed there were
people coming at us from all different angles with guns in
(18:58):
their hands. And I said, hey, yo, you better
say some I don't think they knowwho you are.
And he's like, hey, it's me, it's me, it's me.
Well, come to find out earlier that night, someone had had
drove driven by and was firing shots at their houses.
Now, this is the part of town where the police aren't there.
I mean, you do that shit here inGilbert, and the cops are going
to be there for a while trying to figure out what's going on.
(19:20):
Not here. It was just normal stuff.
And that night, we're hanging out.
My car was parked right in frontof this house, and we're kind of
standing in the front yard smoking what's called wet, which
was weed, like wasting embalmingfluid and some other stuff.
Yeah, I it was. It was an interesting time for
sure. Makes you a little nervous every
time a car rolled by everyone we're kind of duck and kind of
(19:41):
scattered and we're just standing there and I'm like, OK,
what? Where am I going to go if
whatever happened earlier just happened to happen again?
I didn't have a gun. So my friends had guns.
I didn't have a gun at the time.Eventually got one.
That's that's for another story.I remember thinking kind of
standing back, looking in my car, kind of casing the scene,
(20:03):
like what am I doing here? If something, if, if something
happens to me, if something happens to any of my friends, if
something happens to my car, howam I going to explain this to my
dad? How am I going to explain this
to my best friend's parents? Because he lived right behind
me. And that was the second to the
(20:23):
last time I was in that neighborhood.
But that was the last time I wasthere at night.
And I think when I listened to some of those Tupac songs, that
was a time in my life where things are just so different.
Here I am now. I have a 2022 Acura NSX Type S
#130 of 350 in the world, have anice house, have a good job,
been married for 21 years, wife has a great job.
(20:46):
I got grandkids. Things are different.
And I listen to those songs and they just, they just immediately
teleport you back to a time. But staring at the world to my
rearview was one of my frustrating songs that you would
just drive around at night by yourself in your Acura or
whatever you're in and just blast the radio.
(21:07):
Dallas was good for that. Dallas was good for getting in
your car and and going for drives.
I don't do that here, but I don't my mindset's not the same.
I don't have those times. I just have to get in my car and
go for a drive. Hell, I probably why I have this
podcast. I just come up here in the
studio if I have to blow off some steam or I have friends
circles. Now, I can call up people and
just bitch to them about certainthings, but my mindset is
(21:28):
different, you know? And God, it's like it's funny
because Beastie Boys Sabotage was one of those songs.
You get in your car and just blare it and you drive
Crockett's theme, Miami Vice, Crockett's theme.
If you don't know that song, go ahead and pull up Crockett's
(21:49):
theme, Miami Vice, Crockett's theme, that that song, that song
to me is kind of like staring atthe world to my rear view.
It's just, it's a song that you just listen to when you're just
going through some shit and you just need to think, go stand on
the go stand on the hillside, overlook the city at night and
think to these this one of thosesongs.
(22:11):
That's the shit. But you know, I guess where I'm
going with all that is things change.
And you know, this year's 2025, I challenged myself, I challenge
this podcast, like, what can I do to try to get this podcast to
a, to the next level? You know, the the goal if I
wanted to go out and chase big names, I mean, I think that's
(22:33):
probably the goal of going viral, getting somebody on your
podcast and get the next famous person, the next famous person
and then go viral, have someone say something stupid or say
something stupid yourself. That's not me.
And my responsibility is keepingthis podcast going and giving
(22:54):
peers and other people a stage to tell their story like Tyler
Patterson. I just went to Tyler Patterson's
meet this weekend. It's called proper like a proper
car meet. TSB media, you guys, Tyler
Patterson was sitting right there in front of me a couple
months ago. Didn't really know him.
He wanted to come on the show. Didn't know what to expect.
One of my favorite conversationson this show all year.
(23:14):
It's the Tyler Patterson's of the world that that I, you know,
embrace having this podcast. But one of the challenges also
was it's time to get on video. If you guys recall that I wasn't
always on video, only on rare occasions.
This year I'm on video all the time.
Every week I challenge to do a video podcast and it's easy to
(23:39):
do here in the studio in my house.
The challenge is when I go otherplaces and I've had issues this
year, I've had growing points, I've had, I've had times where
I've had to adjust. There's times I've gone
somewhere and I forgot a piece of equipment and I just, you
know, with, with the young motorcars and Matt O'Connor, the
camera kept focusing in and out.It was overexposed.
(24:01):
I eventually went out and got APL filter that I end up using
at the next time that I went out, but I didn't have my mic
stands with Matt O'Connor. So we had to hold these
microphones. These aren't the type of
microphones you sit there and you're holding your hand.
These are not designed to do that.
But that's what we did, and I hated it every second of it.
(24:22):
But the podcast itself was great.
I just hated that. And most people would have no
idea. And I wouldn't call myself a
perfectionist, but I know how itshould be.
And the fact that it wasn't drove me to make adjustments.
Now I do equipment checks beforeI leave.
Sometimes I'll do a mock setup. I will set everything up here in
the office and break it all backdown and take it with me next
(24:45):
time. I went to Ron Evans in the
vault. Great episode.
Ron Evans, great guy, had him infocus.
He gets up to take a drink, sitsdown out of focus, gets up, take
a drink, sits down in focus, gets up one more time, remains
out of focus. Probably 90% of the interview I
was in focus because I didn't move.
That was just another challenge.Other growing point, very
(25:06):
frustrating. John Rivers, Mr. John Rivers of
Acura, you guys don't understandhow grave an opportunity that is
to get somebody like Jonathan Rivers on this podcast twice.
It's two years in a row, camera goes out of focus on me.
That's fine. We got John Rivers that stayed
on him the whole time. But those little things, those
are the little things that I keep beating myself over the
(25:28):
head with because quality, for me, it's got to be quality
first. And for those of you who listen
to this podcast instead of watchit, you never see those things.
The only reason, you know, that even exists because I cry about
it at the beginning of every episode when it doesn't go the
way I want because I just pushedmyself.
And it could be these cameras. I mean, they have focal
settings. I've gone through them all.
(25:48):
Tyler Patterson, when he was sitting in front of me in
studio, he kind of taught me a few different things on these
cameras, which helped a little bit.
And I, I adjusted it since he adjusted it because I was still
searching for a certain look. But that in itself helped a
little bit, helped significantly.
But we'll see what 2026 holds. I don't feel like going out and
buying new cameras. I have two, They're about $800.
Cameras. They're fine for this.
(26:11):
But you know, when you get out of the studio, at times you can
struggle or the equipment can struggle.
Mobile lighting, that's a challenge.
Mobile lighting, you know I don't, I take these wands with
me. Now.
I shouldn't have a wand right infront of me right here, right?
Look at this whoop. You have this whole lightsaber
that I'm handling up. That's one of the lawn, the
lawns. That's one of the wands that I
use now when I go remote, I set those up in front of people
(26:33):
instead of these giant ones thatI have in the studio because
they're kind of a pain in the ass.
If you're here local, I'll take the big ones with me.
But when I went to Albuquerque, I had to use the wands with
Randy early this year. You didn't notice?
I noticed. So you know, 2025 is was the
year I just challenged myself toget better.
(26:53):
You know, my cousin, every year she sends us a card now, card
stock, really hard thing and hasa word on it.
The word this year was better. What can I do to be better?
What can I do to be a better person?
What can I do to be a better husband?
What can I do to make my podcasteven better?
You know, I just looked at the word earlier.
It's in our restroom. It's in our bathroom, you know,
(27:15):
in my in in the master bedroom. But we have a desk in there.
OK, But I look down at it better.
It's right better. So then what happens with 2026?
Better. Like I said earlier, the studio
is going to look a little different.
The intro to the podcast is going to look a little bit
different. It's going to be better.
(27:37):
You know, one of the things thatthat I talked about, what I talk
about every year is the guests. I always have these guests that
I'm going to bring on and then it just the timing just doesn't
work out or I never get the guests, but that just gives me
2026 to chase them down. One of my disappointments
though, this year that I experimented with was the
Conspiracy Corner and I only hadtwo Conspiracy Corner segments.
(27:59):
It's one of those deals where everybody's excited to do it.
I even made shirts for it. Everyone's excited to do it.
It's just so hard to get people to find the time to do it.
I don't want to say that people want to do it, but then they
don't want to do it. It's just hard to get people to
find time to do it. So I'm going to break in with a
conspiracy of my own. Do you guys believe in the
(28:19):
simulation theory? I'm not entirely sure I believe
in the simulation theory, but every once in a while there's
some weird shit that happens that makes you think.
For instance, a lot of times when I look at the clock, it's
1234, it is 1/2, 3/4. I always thought that was weird.
I think I talked about that before, but according to, I
(28:41):
don't know, I'm gonna call it numerology.
I don't know what it's called, but I have some good friends
that are kind of into it. Well, my buddy Jeff's wife Anna
is into it more than he is. But it means that you're on the
right path. That's what that that's what
that number very specifically means.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
You're on the right path. And I look up and I see 1234 or
(29:03):
two, 3-4 a lot. My wife will tell you it's
'cause I'm always looking at theclock.
I maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I don't know if I am, I look at
it a lot, but it's not like it'slike, OK, it's, it's 12, it's
1233. Let me just look back in a
minute. Oh, it's 1235.
Shit, I missed it. No, it's just the weirdest
thing. But where I guess where I'm
(29:26):
going with that is the last three times I went to our
storage facility, we have one across the street.
The last three times there's been a car parked out.
So here's the deal. You go in the gate.
I'm sure many of you have been to storage stores, maybe not
all. You go in the gate and there's
(29:46):
two main doors in the back and each main door has enough
parking for two vehicles. So people usually back their
trucks up or their whatever, andyou put in your coach in the
sliding door. And so these doors, there's 2
doors because one of them is going to be closer in proximity
to your rented space than the other one, right?
Logically, that's why there's 2 doors.
Ours is the far door or the neardoor if you come to the other
(30:09):
entrance. But for the main, the entrance
that we consider the main entrance because there's two
entrances, our door is a furthest door.
It's not unusual to see other people at the storage space
battling for those parking spotsor parking a little off.
It's very common. But the last three times I've
been there, up to and including today, there's a vehicle parked
(30:30):
outside. Now there are, I have to say,
thousands of storage. My storage is on the 2nd floor.
It's in the 2000s is the number.The last three times I've been
there, there's been a car parkedoutside and their storage space
is within four or five spaces ofmine.
In fact, today when I went there, it was right across the
(30:52):
way and they had all their stuffand they had to move their stuff
out of the way. So I can even get to mine, which
was right by there's thousands of storage spaces.
Three times in a row it's someone near my storage.
Now, I'm not talking down the way like 12 lockers down.
I'm talking within five of my own.
Now that's crazy. It doesn't make any sense when
(31:14):
we're the only two in the building.
Make it make sense. And finally, I'm trying to get
my sister-in-law to watch Squid Game the show like the Netflix
drama because now was you guys know that and I've worn it
before here on the podcast. I was a Squid Game character
#130 which is the my car number 1336350.
(31:36):
Sorry, but I was that for Halloween.
I didn't know that at the time that Mister Beast had started a
Squid Game Game show. Like a game show, like a Squid
Game. I play a video game called Squid
Game or iOS game called Squid Game Unleashed.
So I'm always playing it. That's my my new thing.
(31:57):
And what I love about that game is there are just bots, but
there's also other real people you're playing with and you
can't buy anything. Thank God Netflix gets it
because most apps you have to buy stuff, right?
You want to buy fake money to unlock a skin or unlock a level.
You can't buy, you have to earn every single coin in this game
(32:18):
to unlock stuff. And it's it's cool, but they
have a new challenge where they're like, hey, watch along
with this thing that's on Netflix.
I'm like, OK, well, I did the other one post after watching
the whole series of all three, you know, all three seasons of
the Korean drama show Squid Gamethat now they have one and I'm
(32:42):
start, I'm starting to watch it 'cause you can play along to
unlock stuff. I'm like, what is this season 2?
It's and it's a Squid Game show called Squid Game Challenge.
And what it is, if you haven't seen it, is it's a bunch of
people basically dressed like the Halloween costume I have
with a Squid Game jumpsuit. And it's a, it's a reality
survival TV show. And I'm looking at it and I'm
(33:05):
seeing some of the stuff from the video game on there and it's
just, I'm not big on reality TV.There's a few I've seen.
I think I want to say Outlast. Have I talked about Outlast
where they take people up in theAlaskan wilderness and they have
team captains and there's Alpha,Beta, Charlie and Delta.
(33:28):
So there's four teams and you pick your, the team captains
pick their teams almost like picking, pick a basketball, like
I'll take you. I'll take you based on their
skills. And Long story short, the
surviving team wins $1,000,000, right?
And that's a really good one. OK, that's the type of reality
show I could watch. It's almost like Survivor,
right? Get voted off the island type of
deal. But I would say not the same
(33:49):
drama, but it probably is the same drama.
But I usually don't watch it like that.
So I'm, I'm watching this Squid Game challenge on my phone and
I'm like, this is stupid. Because what happens is you
can't, you can't emulate the intensity of the TV show.
Spoiler alert, on the TV show, you get kind of tricked into
(34:12):
competing because you're a loseressentially, or you owe a debt.
And if you don't pass, you're dead.
They kill you. There's one season 1, they have
a tug of war on this giant tower, so the losing team falls
like 500 feet to their death. That's Squid Game.
(34:32):
So I'm watching this thing on myphone and you can, I could watch
on Netflix too. But anyway, Squid Game challenge
and when they don't pass, they get hit with like unless it's
already in their chest, they getshot with like a black paintball
is what it looks like. And they have to lay there and
act like they're dead. And then the other players are
like, I can't believe Bobby was Bobby was.
(34:53):
I love, I miss Bobby. He was he's the reason why we're
here. And I'm looking at I'm just
like, man, like I guess it wouldn't suck so much to me if
they didn't have to pretend likethey were shot and dead.
Just be out. The thing went out last.
The survival game is you, they have flare guns and you can
(35:13):
flare out. And so the other teams look and
they see a flare shot like, oh, where'd that flare come from?
Will that come from team, Team Charlie?
Oh, team Charlie's down a player.
We're going to win. We're going to win.
You flare out or if you get sick, you can flare out or you
can get voted off your team and you have 24 hours to get with
another team. If they don't accept you, you
flare out. Like to me, that's a lot more
drama and exciting than getting hit with a paintball and just
(35:35):
laying there like you're dead. That's just dumb to me.
First world problems, first world complaints.
I know. All right, I'm actually going to
do the official closing to this too.
So if look, I don't look if you like what you've watched, which
why would you not? If you like what you listened
(35:56):
to, if for some reason this is your first time, consider
subscribing on whatever platformyou're listening to it and or if
you're watching it on YouTube, hit subscribe.
You become a member, which I think it's like buy me a coffee
or something you get access to. I would say you get access to
episodes early, but I really have them early.
In fact, I'm usually up to like 2:00 AM on Sunday getting them
ready for Monday. But if you really like this,
(36:17):
consider doing it. And if you don't have to,
because you know, first, I'll say this before I got on this
list of people, I'm thankful formany of you watch this show,
this podcast, many of you listento this podcast.
And for that, I mean, I thank you.
You don't have to listen all thetime or watch it all the time,
but you know who you are. You're awesome.
You motivate me to keep moving. You don't have to become a
(36:40):
member. You don't have to become a
Patreon. I'm not trying to shame you for
not doing so. I'm just glad you're here.
But what I will say is I mean, well, let me just read this
really quick. You know, I haven't received a
review in a long time on Apple either.
So if you haven't gone to Apple,I don't think you have to have
an account. But if you have an iPhone, find
the podcast and go click write areview.
(37:02):
Give me a four, give me a 5. Don't give me a two, Don't give
me a three, don't give me a one star.
But those reviews have to help. Been listening to the Hard
Parking for five years. You know, they started in 2019,
guys, we're going on six years, seven years toward the middle of
next year of 2026. So you can say, hey, I've been
listening to this thing for years.
(37:23):
This show is really good, talks about everything, everything.
So do it. But with that being said, one of
the right Honda and right ToyotaSparkforge AI brought to you by
Arcus Foundry. One login, one platform, all
under your control, Auto cannon,officially licensed Honda and
Acura gear. Thank you so much.
Can't forget Patreon business supporters.
(37:45):
Automotive specialty troll of Owings Mills, MD, Corey
Automotive out of Winter Garden,FL, The Lucky Breaks sports
breaks out of Caledonia, MI, Bighouse small home design out of
Ashbury Virginia and Traverse City MI Shape mix success
Treasure Valley out of Boise, ID.
It's funny, I have automotive specialty troll in here twice.
(38:07):
Special shout out to Mark Stoneman, Catherine Cox, City
Ramos, Richard Graves by our Joe's Bojang Oscar media
drewbunkleyanddrebolensemailtheshowhardparkingpodcast@gmail.comGuys just got also subscribe to
me on on Instagram right at hardparking pod.
But yeah, I want a special thankyou.
So this year, so every year I buy my supporters, my financial
(38:30):
supporters a gift. I don't need the money, but when
I see those supporters there, itjust, it helps push me to keep
moving, you know, 'cause sometimes I just don't feel like
doing a podcast Every week. Pretty much since January of
2021. Before that it was every two
weeks. But this year I bought this
(38:52):
really cool hard parking mug. You can see it's kind of like
reverse negative, almost like a rubber stamp.
And then on the back, it's got, you know, 2025, but the
supporters just got their names.Everyone who was eligible as a
supporter received one. This includes, of course, Jane
(39:16):
and Joe of of Wright Honda, Wright Toyota Arcus foundry.
Nate, thank you so much for giving me the platform and
supporting me. And of course, Michael and
Dennis of Max boost. And well, I can't say Max boost
because they technically don't do this, but it is auto cannon.
So Dennis of auto cannon and andMichael, thank you so much for
(39:38):
everything you guys have done for this show and the support.
And again, thank you everybody else who's watched this listen
to this. And if you're still listening,
thank you so much. I know you probably could have
checked out like 10 minutes ago or somewhere in the ramble about
the backyard, which at this point would have been about 30
minutes ago, but I will see you guys officially in January.
(39:59):
Again, I don't know if I'm goingto do.
I know I'm not going to do an Apple another episode this year,
but I don't know if I'm going todo a couple classic episodes.
I guess when they pop, you'll see them.
I'm going to try to pick something with video from
earlier this year or something that's that I felt was some of
the best that this podcast has done.
Or maybe maybe I will put one ofthe early episodes so people can
(40:22):
see how far this podcast has gone.
You tell me if you're a Patreon,I don't want to hear from you,
but if you're not to say if you're not a financial supporter
of this show, tell me. Do you want to?
Do you want me to post somethingsuper old?
Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll post something in the
beginning. Some of those first episodes are
(40:43):
rough. But anyway, I will catch you
guys on the flip side, have a Merry Christmas, have a safe new
year. Go Texas.
Texas versus Michigan in the Cheez its bowl.
I'm going to get me a nice bowl of white cheddar Cheez its I
lived in Michigan. I really like the Michigan
Wolverines, but I love the TexasLonghorns.
(41:05):
See you guys later. So I will catch you on the flip
side. Shut up.
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