AI Friend or Foe? Andor S2, NSX Drama & Easter Vibes
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Concept
Turo
Turo is like Airbnb, but for cars. People rent cars from other people, and the owner can earn money by listing their vehicle.
Concept
eight to 10 vehicles
They’re saying you usually need several cars before the Turo business starts working well financially. With too few cars, slow weeks or repairs can hurt your income.
Term
windshield
A windshield is the front glass panel designed to protect occupants and provide structural support. When a chip turns into a crack that propagates to the edge, many insurers and shops recommend full windshield replacement rather than repair.
Term
protection film
Protection film is a clear layer you put on glass to help it resist chips from rocks and debris. It can help, but a hard hit can still cause the crack to spread.
Term
tire pressure monitor
A tire pressure monitor tells you if your tires aren’t inflated correctly. The speaker checks it because they’re trying to figure out what’s going on while driving.
Term
four pounds lower
Dropping by about four psi means the tire is losing air. That’s enough that you shouldn’t ignore it—you should check for a puncture and get it fixed.
Company
Discount Tire
Discount Tire is a place that sells and installs tires. The speaker used them because they needed help right away after the tire started losing air.
Term
drill bit
A drill bit is basically a sharp metal object that can puncture a tire. Hitting one can make the tire lose air quickly and may also lead to other damage while you’re getting it fixed.
Concept
twisted the car
When they lifted the car, it shifted in a way that changed the stress on the body. That can make an existing crack in the windshield spread or move.
Car
Nsx Type S
The Acura NSX Type S is a high-performance Acura supercar. The speaker is saying they’ve driven it a lot and this is the first major windshield issue, so it’s not as unlucky as it sounds.
Term
tire repair
Tire repair means fixing a punctured tire if it can be safely patched. If you’re far from a shop, even a small tire problem becomes a bigger hassle.
Term
condition report
A condition report is a written record of how the car looked before/after use. It usually includes details and photos so everyone agrees on what changed.
Term
front bumper
The front bumper is the outer impact-absorbing structure at the front of a car. Even when the bumper cover isn’t visibly cracked, it can be bent, scraped, or misaligned after contact with a pole or barrier, which can affect appearance and fit of surrounding panels.
Term
took the bumper off
Taking the bumper off means removing it from the car to inspect what’s underneath. It’s often done when the damage might be deeper than just a surface scrape.
Part
AC condenser assembly
The AC condenser is the part that helps your car’s air conditioning dump heat outside. If it gets dented and refrigerant leaks out, the AC won’t blow cold air anymore.
Term
freon
“Freon” is a common (though informal) name people use for refrigerant used in car air conditioning systems. When refrigerant leaks, the system can’t circulate properly, so the AC will stop cooling and may require both leak repair and recharging.
Term
buffed out
“Buffed out” refers to using polishing compounds and a machine to remove surface scratches and restore paint finish. It typically works only for light paint transfer or clear-coat scuffs; deeper dents or structural damage require body work or replacement parts.
Part
splash shield
A splash shield is a plastic panel underneath the car that helps keep water and road grime from hitting important parts. If it gets loose after a bump, replacing it can help protect the underside again.
Concept
replacing almost everything on the front
Sometimes one small hit damages several hidden parts behind the bumper. Even if the outside looks mostly okay, the inside pieces may be bent or broken, so the repair ends up being bigger than expected.
Brand
Matt Farah
Matt Farah is a popular car YouTuber/podcast host. The point here is that people search for him and then get recommended other car content.
Concept
AI image generation morphs the subject
They’re saying the AI doesn’t just copy the photo—it changes it. Sometimes it “morphs” the car or the person so the result looks wrong.
Term
GPTs
GPTs are different AI tools built on the same general technology, but set up for specific jobs. The speaker is saying some AI setups are more specialized, but they still may not produce accurate results.
Concept
Long Beach Grand Prix
The Long Beach Grand Prix is a big race event in Long Beach, California. People who love cars and racing often talk about it because it brings a lot of motorsport energy to the area.
Company
AutoCannon
AutoCannon sounds like a specific tool or service being discussed in the show. The host is basically saying they don’t want to deal with problems related to it right now.
Brand
Honda Acura Gear
Acura is Honda’s luxury brand. “Honda Acura Gear” sounds like a branded product or sponsorship connected to those brands.
LIVE
What a disaster.
When I'm editing this podcast, this video, the video podcast, that second part gets lost
in the music and I haven't quite mastered that.
So what can I change?
I can just speak up more clearly when I'm telling you who I am.
Boy, that was emphatic.
Solo show today, which means most of you are not going to watch or listen because the thumbnail
is not attractive and I'm not going to say I'm not attractive.
I'm a damn good looking guy from what I understand.
But it's just going to be me.
This weekend is Easter and this is the house.
So we are the house.
Unfortunately, this year, my son and his lady won't be with us, but we do have his daughter,
which is my youngest granddaughter, but we are the house.
And I'm curious, you know, what are your Easter traditions?
Do you celebrate Easter?
Is it a religious thing?
Is it a cultural thing?
Do you not celebrate Easter?
Because obviously, you know, this podcast isn't religious.
It's an opinion piece podcast, somewhat carb-related.
So I can only tell you from the context of me and who I am.
I grew up in a very Christian household.
I myself, I think I'm a man of faith, but I don't go to church.
I used to all the time.
And so, you know, for me, obviously we know what the Christianity version of Easter is.
But, you know, when Easter comes around, if we didn't have children and grandkids,
it would be different for us.
It probably would just be another day.
You know, my mother-in-law goes to church and she does the Easter thing,
although this Sunday she's not, she's just going to be here with us.
But it's all about the Easter baskets and the Easter egg hunts and all about the little kids
and what they can and can get and cooking and just hanging out with the family.
And, you know, this is the house.
This is the party house.
This is the family house.
And it's myself, obviously, in the immediate family, but we also extended out to, you know,
like my son's best friends, you know, Justin, he lives out here, a London, Nina, you know,
they, they, they live here and they're part of the family.
You know, I mean, those, those are London and, and Justin are two of my son's best friends
that he's known since middle school and I'm going to be high school.
But yeah, middle school and they've moved out here.
They don't live with us.
They don't live with him.
I guess Justin does, but you know, what, what were your Easter traditions?
Because for me growing up, and there's more to this episode than this, I could
promise you that in fact, let me tell you what's coming up on this show.
So you don't turn off.
If you haven't already, I have some and or versus the Mandalorian movie reactions.
I have a movie reaction page.
I don't really ever talk about and some stuff I've been doing with Grock.
And by the way, Rebecca Kiefer, I haven't heard from you, which means maybe you've
canceled me.
I doubt she would ever cancel me.
We're friends, but I did give her a nice little shout out.
A few episodes ago and she has not answered the bell, so she must not be caught
up or maybe she missed it.
So, you know, I think my listening audience is 25, 30% female statistically,
but I think it may have just dropped if I have lost her.
But back to Easter.
In fact, I'm going to continue.
No, no, no, no, no, I'm just going to continue this.
And you're going to find out how terrible of a podcast or am when I don't have guests
or anything to rant about.
There's a lot of stuff going on right now in the world.
I have no opinion on any of it.
History will judge what's happening today, tomorrow, or in a less complicated way,
tomorrow will look back and decide if anything happening today was worth it or if
it was truly catastrophic.
Is that fair?
I think it's fair to say.
So for us Easter, like I grew up, I had a very small family.
My closest relative was 1,200 miles away.
And so it was just the four of us, my parents, myself and my brother.
And other than going to church and doing that, I don't really have many memories
of Easter, of course we had Easter baskets for a while.
We had enough.
You know, I remember one of the last Easter baskets I had, I think had a
Walkman in it because I wanted a Walkman.
That's how old I am.
But at some point they just stopped, you know, we didn't get a lot of candy.
Didn't really eat a lot of candy.
And then I don't really remember much more about Easter other than food.
You know, we had deviled eggs and, and, uh, like a roast and that's about it.
Uh, but now it's just, it's a really big deal.
We're going to probably be drinking all day Sunday, eating all day Sunday and just
kind of doing that.
And it's kind of fun because, you know, we have a house full of people and we just
do people stuff and it's just a lot of fucking fun.
So, you know, let me know what your traditions are.
If you notice I'm wearing my special shirt.
This is the conspiracy corner shirt.
I want to talk about the conspiracy corner a little bit.
That was a segment that we started last year.
We as an eye and it was very disappointing.
I kind of thought I would get like one of those in a quarter.
And I think I've talked about this before, like, I have people who said
they want to come on to the show and you can only be a guest on the conspiracy
corner if you've already been a normal guest on the show.
And of course I mask your voice and I give you 10 minutes to talk about
whatever you want.
Usually it's silly stuff, nothing that's going to get anybody canceled.
Um, and so I made a whole line of shirts and special logos and it just
hasn't taken off.
I'm not giving up on it, but hopefully here in 2026 we can get
a more of these conspiracy corners, uh, or shadow corners, you know,
taking care of, I mean, on the shirt it says conspiracy corner on one sleeve
and got hard parking.com on the other sleeve.
And I've just never worn this shirt.
I think this is the first time I've worn it.
Also, I picked a poor fabric this time around and trying to experiment and
this sucks and it's choking the shit out of me.
But I'll go back to my regular shirts if I decide to press the rest of these
logos, which I haven't even decided I'm going to do.
I might sell my shirt press.
I don't know.
But after this word from Spartforge, we will continue.
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the logins and constantly feeling like the tech side of things is heavier
than it should be, this might hit close to home.
That tech fatigue usually shows up as an outdated website, reviews
slipping through the cracks, missed calls when you're busy or social media
that's always on the back burner.
Most business owners know something's off, but fixing it feels like
a bigger project than they have time for.
Spartforge is just to take that weight off.
It handles the tech behind the scenes, helps clean up how your business shows
up online, makes sure calls and messages don't get mixed, keeps reviews
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If you're curious as a short discovery session and it comes with 90 days free
to actually see if it makes things easier, no pitch, no pressure, just a
real conversation about what's working, what's broken and what you can simplify.
So head over to getsparkforge.ai forward slash hard parking to get started.
We have a Turo vehicle.
So my kids are both, uh, they're both entrepreneurial.
My daughter has her own company.
She's an esthetician.
My son right now, he works in the, I'm going to say loose AI space, but he
also runs a Turo company.
And for a while that was his full-time job and he did very well and things
started slowing down and he made some different decisions, but he's never
completely dropped the Turo, but now he's back in the full swing with Turo and
this other job.
But what I'm getting at is we have a car.
So my wife and I decided to buy a car for tax purposes, not a very expensive
car and he's running it in his fleet of Turo vehicles.
I know a lot of people think about doing Turo as a business.
And if you look it up, they'll tell you, you need probably eight to 10 vehicles
to make a good living off of Turo.
Now, how are we defining good living?
Upper five figures, lower six figures.
I can tell you that his first year doing it, he had around 10 or 11 cars and he
cleared after taxes a hundred thousand dollars, which isn't bad.
Uh, but right now, I don't know how much he makes.
It's not a lot.
We bought it because for, you know, we wanted tax purposes and it kind of help
him with his business and in the end we all win.
So the other day I was, uh, I was, I was walking back from safe light.
Let me tell you why I was walking back from safe flight.
So two weeks ago, I went to the Anthem, um, the car show up in Anthem, which is,
you know, put on by Aaron's Ascension Garage and Modern Culture.
I think I've talked about that before.
And on the way there, I got a nasty chip on my window or the windshield of the NSX.
Now I had the film, the protection film, and it's done me great.
The four years, let's see, there's 2022 car.
So for the four years I've had it, I've had the, you know, I've had small
chips on the glass, but nothing that would move.
And this one hit through and it hit about an inch and a half away from the edge.
And by the time I was 15 minutes away from where I was going, that crack had already
moved on to the very edge of the windshield, which means you have to replace your windshield.
I was about a half a mile away from the meetup.
And I decided something told me to flip to my tire pressure monitor.
I know, you know, this is going, I know, you know, where this is going.
I usually always drive looking at the tire pressure monitoring system, just
that I've had it for my old NSX.
And I noticed the air pressure was getting lower on one of my tires, my driver side rear tire.
It was definitely lower because that's the first thing I look at in the morning.
It was probably four pounds lower than normal.
And I was fortunate that I jumped up and I look, fortunately, I used Waze and I
found a discount tire.
Now, I know discount tire, you know, mess your shit up.
But at this point, I was an hour north of my house and losing air quickly.
So I had a crack in the windshield and I was losing air on the same trip, the
same morning to an event.
Long story short, they jacked the car up.
They were able to fix the tire.
I had a drill bit in my tire.
So I ran over a drill bit and I cracked my windshield at the same time or on the
same trip.
So both within 30 or 45 minutes of each other.
And of course, the window, once they jacked it up, they jacked the car out from
the, from one side and it just kind of twisted the car just enough to make the
crack move from right in front of me across the windshield to about the middle
windshield.
So I knew I needed a new one.
Now, here's why I can't complain.
One could say that was bad luck.
I mean, how bad luck is it?
You're driving and within an hour, you get a drill bit in your tire, which is
fixable by the way thing.
Goodness, it was in the correct place and you crack your windshield on your car.
Pretty unlucky, right?
I'm going to say wrong.
And here's why I'm going to say wrong.
I'm going to say wrong because I have about 23,000 miles on my NSX type S.
I've driven that thing to California half a dozen times and back.
I've taken the car to Texas and back.
I just took the car to Tacoma slash Seattle on a road trip through Yellowstone
National Park, through Glacier National Park in Montana, beautiful roads through
Nevada, shitty roads.
And this is the first time I've got anything in my tire and that's the first
windshield replacement I've had to do on the car.
So I would say it's not bad luck.
It's just one of those things that eventually caught up to me, but I will
take that because I think a cracked windshield and or something going off
with your tire is far more preferred in town than thousands of miles away or
hundreds of miles away in the middle of nowhere or somewhere that there is no
tire repair facility that would work on a car that's been lowered.
That's a $200,000 sports car without being nervous.
So that's why I was at safe light that morning.
So now we're back at safe light, which is earlier this week.
This is would have been Monday, actually.
So I dropped my car off and my wife was supposed to get up and go with me to
safe light, but she was knocked out.
I didn't want to wake her.
It was two miles up the road.
Like how lucky is that the place is literally 2.1 miles up the same street.
I live off of.
So I decided to take my car up there early in the morning.
It was a nice, cool morning.
Coolish.
I still sweat it on the way back, but it's a very end.
And I noticed the churro app is going off and this woman who was running
the car that we have a Volkswagen Tiguan 2017 in case you're interested.
She's frantic and wants to bring the car back like an hour early.
I'm sitting there thinking, I don't think my son is up this early.
I mean, it wasn't too early.
It was eight o'clock, but I didn't think he'd be up that early.
So long story short, she hit something.
And when you look at her condition report, she said that she hit a pole
and she scraped the front bumper and that's about it.
When I looked at the photos, I go, ain't no way that front bumper.
What I said, what the hell did she hit?
Uh, the bumper wasn't cracked, but it was heavily shaped like click
and drag or go across a concrete barrier or something.
I don't know.
But once we got the photos, like the real photos, like when my son went
and took the bumper off, took a bunch of photos, long story short, we had
to file a kind of a claim and we, we got the money from her and I bought the parts.
And so that's what I'm probably going to be doing this weekend and early
in the next week when my son's out of town.
Cause he does all the maintenance on the car sports too, but, you know,
it's time for me to get in and do some stuff.
Obviously, you know, if you've listened to the show or watched
this show for a while, I have no problem doing that stuff either.
But these are the parts that I had to buy the absorber form, the absorber foam,
you know, that thing that's in front of the impact bar, um, the air vent grills,
the outer grill, the condenser assembly, the AC condenser assembly got dented
and all the freon leaked out.
And so the AC doesn't work.
And the front bumper cover is fine.
I guess we're going to try to get it buffed out.
Um, I personally wouldn't want a vehicle like that, but most people
have less standards than I do.
And of course the splash shield at the bottom, the splash shields intact,
but I think all the, all the rivet spots probably pulled.
And so I just, you know, went ahead and ordered a new one.
The AC condenser assembly, uh, a lot of damage.
It's pretty crazy, but you know, that's life.
So that's what I'm going to be doing.
But we went from, I hit a pole and scratched the bumper to basically
replacing almost everything on the front.
So hopefully that's all we have to do.
I kind of teased us earlier, and or versus Mandalorian.
I'm not going to necessarily compare them as saying one's better than the other.
Most people know the Mandalorian.
These are Disney plus shows.
If you don't know, they are in the Star Wars era or Star Wars genre.
If you don't know, but we just finished.
We as in my wife and I just finished watching and or season two.
I effing love that show so much.
I remember season one and when it first came out, people were kind of
rough on it because it didn't have all the familiar Star Wars stuff.
It didn't have the, the low hanging lore.
You didn't see, I'm not going to say you didn't see stormtroopers
because you did, but you didn't hear anything about the forest, the lightsabers
and no Skywalker's and no Wookiees and no Ewoks and none of that shit.
The story of Andor takes place just before.
So if you're really into Star Wars, you'll understand what I'm talking about.
If you're not, I'm going to try to describe it to you as if you're not.
It takes place just before the original 1976 Star Wars, which is called Star Wars
and new hope, which is actually movies four, five and six.
In the late nineties or early 2000s, they finally came out with movies.
One, two and three.
And most people hated them.
I don't know if people still hate them now or they hate the newest three, the
worst or more, but this takes place after Star Wars three of revenge of the
Sith and just before Star Wars and new hope, just before the movie Rogue one.
So if you've seen Rogue one, this character is one of the main characters in Rogue
one, that's Andor, Cassian Andor, but it's such a tough, dark, kind of Cold War,
espionage, fascist, anti-fascism stuff, which if you think about Star Wars,
the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, that's what it is.
It's fascism versus anti-fascism, but it's dark and it's gritty.
And in Diego Luna, which is one of the executive producers and also Cassian
Andor, he's such a great actor and you feel him, you feel his emotion, his anger,
his concern, you know, his panic on his face.
He's kind of built like a, like a puppet.
He's got like this permafrown, you know, you'd have to know if you watch it or
you look him up, you know, he just, he's got like this permafrown when he's
acting, but that show was just so good to me.
And when it first came out, people just didn't really take to it very well.
The critics loved it.
But when you look back at Andor season one on Rotten Tomatoes, the people
funnily caught on and Andor season two was, it was a 12 episodes.
I'm going to tell you this, it was a slow burn, the first few episodes.
And I was pretty tired as it was.
So I remember kind of falling asleep in parts of the first few episodes.
But once you get to like episode five or six and most people watching this,
listen to this, you're like, I'm not going to want to watch something if I
have to get to the fifth episode for it to be interesting.
Well, I say this for all you breaking bad fans, that move, that, that show is
so effing boring and I know it gets really good.
But I think everyone can agree season one sucked and it was slow.
And I watched half a season two and I actually started getting into it.
But just at that time in my life, I was doing other stuff and I was traveling
for work and I just never re-engage and I still have it.
And that was fucking, I'm going to say 2012.
That's when I stopped watching it.
But all I remember is it was so slow, but I do remember it starting to pick up.
In fact, one of the last episodes I remember is when Jesse Pinkman was like,
he was in some house and there was some little kid and the kid's parents were
like cracked out and drug addicts.
I think they tried to steal an ATM.
I could be wrong on that, but I think they did.
And I just remember that hit me, not emotionally sad, but I was like, God man.
When what a situation, man, this show is finally starting to get really good.
And man.
So anyway, that's kind of how Andor is to me.
But season ones doesn't take as long to get into it as season two.
Now, I'm going to compare that with Mandalorian.
I've seen all the Mandalorian seasons that there's a Mandalorian movie coming
out next month.
I don't know if it's going to be on just Disney plus.
I don't know if it's going to go to the theaters.
I think it's going to be a disaster if it's in the theaters because a lot of people
just, the problem with shows that are on streaming only is once they try to make
movies out of them, I think the movies are going to struggle because people just
don't know them.
Is this like blinking behind me?
Someone's blinking behind me.
And by the way, speaking of what's behind me and for those of you why,
watching this, you're going to see this.
And those of you listening to this, you're not.
But I know that the hard parking sign behind me is a little crooked and it
bothers me all the time.
But I have to take all this shit behind me off the shelf and I just don't feel
like I have time to do it.
But I'm going to correct it because it really bothers me how crooked it is.
It bothers me a lot actually.
So maybe the next time I record, it'll be straightened or maybe not.
But I watched Mandalorian and it's a gunslinger episodic cute little Western.
That's probably why my friend West likes it so much because he's all those Western
gunslinger shoes shows.
I wouldn't say it's lighthearted, but it is cute, right?
Because you have Groku, which people say is baby Yoda.
It's not baby Yoda.
Yoda is a completely different thing, a character, person, thing, whatever,
whatever race they are, they may have mentioned it at some point in Mandalorian,
but Groku is the same species.
That's what I'm thinking of.
Groku is the same species, I think, as Yoda.
He looks just like it, but it's not him.
So stop calling him baby Yoda for crying out loud.
But that show in itself, it's built in the main Star Wars universe.
It has nothing to do with the movies.
I don't even know when it is in the timeline, but everything is familiar.
Everything from lightsabers to just going to say there's a very significant
Albeit CGI cameo from a major character in the movies that everybody grew up
and loved and there's other things to talk about.
And so it's just a different show.
But if you haven't watched Mandalorian, it's all right.
The book above effects sucks, so don't watch it.
Um, but I, if you like a good, gritty, sci-fi drama that's going to pull you in,
I think you really should watch Andor.
Like I'm going to put Andor as probably one of my favorite shows I've ever seen.
Not favorite.
I don't know what would be the favorite, but it's up there with me.
It's up there for me for like Game of Thrones.
And for all its love and hate, The Walking Dead, you know, that's something
we watched for years and it's got some crappy shitty seasons and it has some
really good stuff.
And in the end, you're just kind of dialed into it.
But, you know, this is it for Andor.
And it's kind of sad to me because Andor season two ends as the events of
Rogue One kickoff.
So there's not going to be a season three.
There's no reason to be a season three, but man, you know, what if they,
what if they decided to make a show on Zergetta?
I don't even remember her name, but the main female lead of Rogue One,
they could make one of her too.
But it's got a lot of the people from the movie in it, especially in season two.
And it's just, it fits perfectly.
And I fucking love that show.
And I'm not going to keep talking about it because chances are most of you have
already, you know, checked out anyway.
But I still, I just wanted to say that and get it out.
Want to talk a movie or want to talk about movie reactions.
I do a movie reaction channel.
And sometimes my wife joins me.
The funny thing is she has never been on this podcast.
She refuses to come on hard parking and it has nothing to do with our politics
because we don't see, I don't know a lot of that stuff.
But she just, she goes, I don't know.
I'm a nasally person and I want to come on the podcast.
I'm like, yeah, can you, like I wanted her to join me on the, on our
Costa Rica trip recap, but instead Catherine Cox was more than happy to come
over here and sit in front of studio and, and drink up a lot of my bourbon,
which is great.
She's earned that right.
She can come over and drink my bourbon anytime she wants.
And I got my wife kind of hooked on bourbon too, but she just has never been
on the podcast, but for some reason I've convinced her to sit next to me and do
movie reactions and our page is not very good.
Uh, but if you're interested, it's called real movie flicks, real with two E's
R E E L movie flicks.
And I really wish you would go and at least subscribe to it and go ahead and
hit those playlists and hit play, make sure you like it and comment.
That's a big thing.
People don't realize those comments drive this algorithm that everyone's talking
about, but I'm not necessarily bringing that up to advertise the fact that I've
moved reaction page.
I'm bringing it up because I've been spending a lot of time this last week
and a half on GROC GROC.
It's not as well known as chat GBT chat.
GBT, I think has 80% of the market share on consumer.
Um, B to C is what they call it business to consumer.
Uh, I think they have something like 90 million or 900 million worth of
subscriptions of people who pay versus B to B, which is business to business,
which is GROC is more B to B and some of these other ones are more B to B,
but I'm on the B to C version of GROC through X, of course, right?
But I've been spending a lot of time, um, after talking to one of the reaction
friends of mine and they have a channel called the October's react and it's
fun, you know, Brooke and Danny, but, uh, they've been using chat GBT to help
them with their channel and I figured, well, I don't have chat GBT.
I already paid for GROC and then I paid for super GROC.
So let me go ahead and use GROC.
And so I'm having these long conversations and I've built these projects on
the side because what'll happen at least, I don't know if it's chat,
GPs the same way, but with GROC, what'll happen is it'll just forget about
your conversation, even when you're logged in.
And so you have to build these side projects.
So I have a project called real movie flicks and I have a project called
hard parking with Jay Finning.
And that way when I build these projects, it's never going to forget as long
as I'm logged in as me, hard lesson, learn.
And what I found is that nothing you do is ever good enough for the channel or
for, for social media or for GROC, I'm sorry, for the AI.
So you build a thumbnail and it'll tell you, Hey, this is what we love about.
This is what we don't like about it.
You should increase the opacity.
You should do this, do that, make brighter colors, do this.
And you do it exactly what it tells you to do.
And you go, how about now?
Well, it looks really good, but here's what you could do to change it.
I'm like, no, no, no, but it's not why I'm talking about it.
So you have these long conversations and it's all about trying to make the brand
better.
I don't know everything.
I don't fucking know anything because if I did, my reaction channel will be better.
This podcast will be really big, bigger than most of you think it already is.
And I don't have those answers and brand recognition is key, but I would argue
that what I'm trying to do from the podcast aspect is different than what I'm
trying to do with the reaction channels, reaction channels.
You have to kind of be someone you're not in a sense.
You have to think out loud when you're watching something, but not too much
because the people who are watching you and that's how you build your revenue.
Cause there's this thought was like, well, I'm going to be me.
Just be you, just be you, just be you.
Yeah, just be you, but you have to kind of not be you because you're also
appealing to your audience, right?
A comedian writes jokes, not for them.
They write jokes for the audience reaction and that's why they have amateur
nights so they can figure out what works and what doesn't.
And they take everything that works and they put it together on one big comedy
act and if they're catch lightning in a bottle, then you become Dave Chappelle
or this, this new guy that's out there, Matt Reif.
I've seen his clips.
He's pretty funny playing to the audience.
Ration channels are the same way from a podcast.
I don't play to the audience.
I don't play to you.
You come to me and I just try to make you happy without losing who I am.
I think everybody who knows this podcast would agree with that.
I'm going to tell you what I think, but I'm also going to be very measured
because I have a responsibility.
It is important what I say.
I don't tell you everything I'm thinking.
I sure as hell don't do that.
Man, how, how naive would I be to tell you everything?
Anything that I'm thinking about, anything that's going on, politics,
religion, hot takes, sports, AI, cars, you know, I have relationships
in the car community.
I can't tell you that Eric's Volkswagen Beetle is a steaming pile of shit
and you must be on crack to drive that car.
I could think it, but I would never say it because some things
you just shouldn't freaking say is just keep to yourself, right?
And when it comes to reaction channels, it's a lot of work.
And I don't think people who watch those channels really understand that,
nor do they care, nor should they understand it.
They just want to be entertained.
But on the creator side, and those of you out there who are creators,
you'll agree that there's things you always have to constantly change
and tweak in order to put out a better product.
That's really at the end of the day is what it is.
And so when I'm watching a movie or a show, I'm watching it in silence.
And I hate it when people are on their phones, if you're having
some other conversation, like, do I need to pause this so you can finish that?
Oh, you're going to go use a restroom.
Let me pause this so that it's exactly where it was when you come back.
Oh, no, just keep let it playing.
What do you mean, keep let it playing?
If I keep letting it playing, that means you're not interested
in what I were watching.
I need you to be locked in.
Now, my wife, she's never like, rarely, she just keep let it playing.
We will pause it.
But the point of the matter is when I'm watching it, I don't say anything.
I process and I reflect on it.
And that's what makes Andorra so damn good for me is you just reflect on it
even after the show was over.
But when you're doing her action, you got to be like, oh my God, what is that?
Are they, are they going to die?
Who is that?
Man, that's crazy.
But I would, man, I would kick you out of my house and lock the door.
If you started saying that shit when I'm watching a movie with you.
So that's what I mean by kind of putting on an act.
Like you're not you, but you're you, your inner voice has to come out
when you're doing reactions, whether they're movie,
reaction, TV show reactions, just funny video reactions.
That's more natural, but I don't care what your, your thoughts are
when you're watching this guy walk across the bridge and he steps
on a rake and it hits him in the forehead.
I just want to, I want to watch that video.
I don't want to watch you react to that video.
You know what I'm saying?
But when it comes to music, I want you to experience this song for the first time
and I'm into watching your reaction to this song because I know
how good of a song it is and I need you to know how good of a song it is.
And you think it's the best song, you're damn right.
It's the best song.
What else are you going to watch?
What other music are you watching?
I want to check that out too.
See what I'm doing.
That's how you build a fan base.
And it's the same thing with movies, but it's a lot, it's, it's really hard.
So anyway, I'm, I'm talking to, to the AI about my thumbnails and the
direction that I want to do with the show.
And it suggested that I redo my wallpaper and all that kind of stuff.
And so I've made all those tweaks.
You know, what should I put in my description for click through rate?
Cause the higher click through rates, CTRs you have, the more people they're
going to stop, they're going to see the algorithms, going to show them what you have.
If it doesn't show them what you have, then no one's going to see it.
If no one ever sees it, it's never going to grow.
It never grows.
It'll be stuck in the bottom of YouTube forever.
Like I think I have the seven millionth ranked channel in the United States or
something crazy, crazy like that.
And it's like, ah, but you know, all you can do is what you can do.
And it's the same thing with the podcast, because if you notice my thumbnails,
this wasn't on purpose, but if you, if you go through and you look at all my
thumbnails, when I have a guest in studio, I want you to, I want to, for
people to see the studio set up and I want you to see who the guest is.
And you have the episode number and you have the hard parking logo and that's
for branding and you have to keep it consistent.
But in a way, it's kind of like the Joe Rogan thumbnails, but better.
But they weren't always like that, but it's about building brand consistency.
And that's really hard as a podcast because this is what I tell all my
podcast friends here, you know, whether I'm talking to Jorge or I'm
talking to Devante or other people that have come and gone in the past, since
I've been doing this for six, almost seven years now, you know, be consistent,
build a brand and no one's looking for you.
Not as much as you think.
Like I'm, if I hear about tormenting tarmac, I'm going to look for it.
And that's true.
But if I'm like, okay, well, let me see.
I'm a big fan of Matt Farah.
I'm really not.
Sorry, Jorge.
Um, if I'm a big fan of Matt Farah, I might look up Matt Farah interview.
And then what's going to pop up tormenting tarmac.
So I'm there specifically for Matt Farah, although I'm on tormenting tarmac.
And then that's how I find tormenting tarmac.
Movie reactions are different.
People were saying, I want to watch X-Men Wolverine reactions.
I want to watch Transformers, the movie reactions.
And it's just going to, it's going to, it's going to serve you up on a platter
to them and they could pick you like looking at a menu.
You know, I want that, that, that and that.
So, you know, the, I say that to say that the direction that I take on, on AI is
going to be different than the direction that I take on the podcast, what I'm
having these projects.
And so that's taken up a lot of my time recently because I don't want to be
solely a guest driven podcast.
And I wasn't initially had a co-host.
He flamed out.
He's been on the show a couple of times since, but keeping up with the trends.
You know, saying shit that eliminates half my audience.
The numbers are there.
I mean, it shows you the numbers are there, but you have to keep going and you
have to make sure you're available on the menu and you have to make sure people
like it.
And that's when you're dealing with AI and trying to get direction on AI, you
still have to take it as an advisor.
I've told the AI, I said, you are my number one employee.
You're my number one advisor and really I like that.
But it's still not perfect, right?
And I'm going to say this about it because right now, if you look around,
there's the doomsday AI scenario and there's people who think it's going to
save the world.
I'm telling you, at this point in April of 2026 on generative AI, on consumer
consumption, normal everyday people, AI, like you probably and myself.
It's not as, as great as you think.
Like I, I'll, I'll say, here's three pictures of me, of me.
Here's this other stuff.
Here's a picture of my car.
Help me build a new YouTube wallpaper.
So it's excellent.
It generates it, doesn't look anything like me.
It just refuses to make me or it morphs the car.
So you can't say, Hey, at least for with GROC, I know chat GPT has these
little things called GPTs and there's, it's like branched out to like specialty
GPTs because it's open source and everyone's always working on it.
But for a lot of this stuff, it's, it changes what you look like.
Some of my thumbnails on the ration channel don't even look like me anymore.
And I've settled with those because I want to trust the agra.
I want to trust the AI, but I'm looking at it like that's not me.
Like I'm, I'm an even killed person.
When I'm excited, my face looks a lot different than your face when you're excited.
And so if that shows up on my thumbnail, I'm looking at that.
I'm like, that doesn't even look like me.
Like that was crazy.
But that's what the system wants, but it can't make my Honda Z.
It, it made some black dude with this, this beard, you know, and it's like,
who, who is that person in that picture?
And I've told it, I go, that's not even me.
Oh, you're right.
It isn't you at all.
You know, this is what, and you know, here's some clear copy and paste instructions.
So put this in the generator, tell it to not change who you are, but to change
everything else and it still fails.
So AI is not yet anywhere close to where they want you to think it is for consumer
level AI.
Now, I think I've talked about this before.
I use AI tools for editing now.
I use multi-cam editors, which helps.
Here's my process for those of you who are doing podcasts.
I'm going to wrap this up really soon.
When you're in studio with me, or if I'm somewhere with you and there's two
camera angles, you notice when you watch this podcast, there's always three.
There's me, my guest, and one with both of like a split screen.
It's because I take my feed, I take the guest feed and I splice it myself and
create what's called, I call it cam three for camera three.
I position is both in there and then I export that as what's own video.
So in the end, I have my camera, my guest camera and what I call cam three.
And that's how I create that third view.
But originally you go on and you chop that up as you watch the video and you
decide, should it be me?
Should it be my guest?
Should it be both of us?
Well, there's AI tools because it's AI tools.
It's analytics, video analytics, audio analytics, and you can buy these plugins
for 15, 20 bucks a month.
And it'll do it for you like quite literally within seconds.
I can pull an hour and a half conversation I've had with somebody,
three camera angles after I've made cam three, which takes me a lot longer than,
you know, the auto cutter, auto pod and auto editor.
Once I get all that stuff in there, I go use the audio for me on track one,
use the audio for my guests on track two, and on track three, it's both of us.
I hit process and 30 seconds later, I have this perfectly split up video and
then it saves a copy of it on another timeline just in case I didn't like it.
So then that point I kind of go through and decide, well, in this part, it
should be me and my guest, or it should be just me or it should just be my guest.
But that's an AI tool, but no one ever talks about those AI tools.
So that's productivity, right?
You'll hear me talk about AI productivity and efficiency versus generative and
consumer based, although that is consumer based.
Another thing I use is, and this isn't an advert Adobe, but there's an Adobe
podcast AI and I do this more for my reaction videos because I don't always
use this microphone.
Sometimes I'm in down the hall with my wife and we have these labs on or we're
just using the microphone off the camera and her room is not sound treated like
my room is.
And so I dragged the clip to podcast AI and it runs through and I can adjust a
couple of sliders and that's how I process the audio on that.
And it's quicker than anything I would do on my computer.
And then I take that and I bring it back to my computer and I adjust the
final levels and I pull it into Premiere and I, and I create the videos.
So that's, that's how I'm using AI with this podcast.
But that, even that is much more productive and easier to do than dealing
with all these prompts, these chat GBTs and these grocks.
And I'm not dissing chat GBT and I'm not dissing Grock or any of the other
things, any of these other anthropic tools and open AI tools.
But what I'm saying is it's not as easy to navigate as they make it seem.
It still requires a lot of work.
And I've, I would say that I've been dealing with this thing for hours, just
trying to fine tune.
And I actually have this conversation.
I'll end with this is I took two thumbnails from my nose is itching.
Am I lying?
Is this like a Pinocchio thing?
I took two thumbnails from these popular channels.
Popcorn in bed and addy reacts, both female channels.
And I knew what I was doing.
I was, I was gaming the system because all the direction that, that AI gives
you, I go, Hey, evaluate this thumbnail and this thumbnail, thumbnail one
with the two girls, thumbnail two with the one girl with the red hair.
One of these is far more popular than the other.
Which one is it?
So it goes through and it goes, Oh, the second thumbnail is a lot better
than the first thumbnail.
I go, Okay, well, the first thumbnail has 600,000 subscribers.
It has 268,000 views in the last year.
The second thumbnail has 161,000 subscribers and it has like 140,000
views in the last two years.
Why is this one better than that one?
And this is my thought.
I think it's because there's two blonde women.
They look vulnerable, right?
And, you know, people are, it's a psychological thing.
They're psychologically attracted to the vulnerability and what they're
seeing of certain people with a certain color of certain demographic than the
other one.
And so all this going back and forth about my thumbnails and tweak
in my thumbnails, it's true.
I was right.
It goes, you know what?
There is a psychological link between this, this, that, that they are bigger
pages and the algorithm, like they're not going to have to work nearly as
hard on their craft as you are on yours because you're a small, relatively
unknown page, you're one reactor.
Most of the time when you don't have Ivy, your wife with you, and let's face
it, I'm not a bad looking guy, but I'm not some vulnerable blonde head girl
sitting in bed watching a movie crying because someone died in the movie.
It's a psychological thing.
And to get Grock and AI to agree with my suspicions to me was valuable.
It's like, yeah, I'm not crazy.
I can make my, my thumbnail as good as it's going to get.
And from that point, it's not up to me.
It's up to the people.
It's up to the psych, psychological attraction.
It's up to all these other things that I can't control.
And that's a long way of me saying that they always say thumbnail,
thumbnail, thumbnail.
And I would argue based on my own independent research as just confirmed
thumbnail and everything.
Cause I've seen good thumbnails have no views.
I've seen shitty thumbnails have millions of views.
So be thinking about that next time people tell you what's best for whatever
it is you're working on.
Hey, you need this camera and you need this microphone.
You need this and you need that.
No, maybe you don't need any of it.
Maybe it's not up to you.
If for some reason you're miraculously still listening, thank you.
If you like what you heard today, hit subscribe.
Let me know where your favorite part of this episode is.
This is one of my solo episodes where I just rambled the whole time.
Instead of having into your guest, I do have guests coming up soon.
I had one good friend of mine cancel on me busy schedule.
We're going to try to make it work.
We have Long Beach Grand Prix coming up.
So Dre will be back on.
We're going to talk about that.
I have another special guest that I don't want to ruin because every time
I say people's names that screw stuff up, supposed to be here.
Hopefully in studio next week, not on next episode.
He, it won't necessarily be in the next episode, but he will be in studio next week.
If we get this thing working correctly, I've been trying to get this person back.
Here's a hint.
I've been trying to get them back on the podcast for a couple of years now.
And then we have someone flying in from Florida to do the podcast and then
fly to Long Beach for the Long Beach Grand Prix.
So I think that's pretty cool.
Wow.
You feel like I'm special.
One thing, right?
Honda, right?
Toyota SparkForge AI for Marcus Foundry, AutoCannon, officially licensed
Honda Acura Gear.
Again, do not bother me with your AutoCannon problems.
I will be hanging out with them at Long Beach, though.
Patreon, business supporters, Kui, Automotive, Auto Winter Garden, Florida,
Automotive Specialty Tool out of Owings Mills, Maryland.
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And last but not least, Shipping Success, Treasure Valley out of Boise, Idaho.
Check myself and West Tankersley.
Most Wednesdays at seven o'clock PM at One Drink Wednesday on Instagram.
We go live and we talk about movies and we talk about bourbon and we talk about
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You can go to the show info at hardparking.com, as always,
subscribe on YouTube and literally any platform you can find the show on.
And I will talk to you next week.
Shut up.
About this episode
Easter weekend turns into a solo rant-and-update: family traditions, Easter baskets/egg hunts, and how faith fits in without church. The host then pivots to real-world car drama—an NSX windshield replacement after a chip spread, plus a Volkswagen Tiguan front-end hit that’s turned into major front-end/AC condenser repairs. Pop culture follows with passionate reviews of Andor season 2 (slow burn payoff, ends at Rogue One) versus the more familiar, episodic Mandalorian vibe. Finally, he gets deep on using Grok/AI for thumbnails and editing, arguing AI still needs lots of tweaking and isn’t reliably “you.”
Original notes
Episode 319 Summary
In this laid-back solo Episode 319, Jhae Pfenning rambles from the Gilbert home studio about Easter at the family house, childhood memories, and what the holiday looks like with grandkids running around. Car life gets real with a double disaster on the way to the Anthem car show — a cracked windshield on the Acura NSX Type S and a drill bit in the tire — plus the fallout from a Turo VW Tiguan rental that turned into a full front-end repair. Jhae also shares why he loves Andor Season 2 so much more than The Mandalorian, reflects on AI tools that actually help with podcast editing vs. the hype, thumbnail psychology, and why staying consistent matters after nearly 7 years of Hard Parking.
Timestamps
- 00:00 – Intro from the home studio in Gilbert, AZ
- 01:00 – Easter weekend at the house: traditions, family, and grandkid chaos
- 03:17 – Teaser: Andor Season 2 thoughts + upcoming movie reactions
- 06:00 – Conspiracy Corner shirt & why the segment needs more love
- 07:02 – Spark Forge message for business owners
- 08:00 – Turo fleet stories and the NSX road-trip life
- 09:32 – The Anthem car show double whammy: windshield crack + tire damage
- 13:43 – Safelite visit and the VW Tiguan bumper-to-condenser repair saga
- 16:33 – Deep dive on Andor Season 2: dark espionage, Diego Luna, and why it hits different from The Mandalorian
- 29:23 – Reaction channels vs. quiet reflection – creator perspective
- 35:33 – AI for podcasters: the tools that save time vs. generative hype
- 41:29 – Thumbnail psychology and what you can (and can’t) control
- 44:17 – Wrap-up: upcoming guests, Long Beach Grand Prix, and thank yous
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.hardparking.com
Patreon: patreon.com/hardparkingpodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hardparkingpod/
YouTube: youtube.com/@HardParking
Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning
Jhae Pfenning
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