#646 - Hey Patty!!

Theo opens solo with a St. Patrick's Day riff — the childhood 'Hey Patty' who dressed up in her mama's lipstick to take the garbage out becomes the episode's running catchphrase — and a travelogue from Albuquerque, where he watched his friend Diego's sister Abby Pavia play in the state basketball tournament at the Pit and learned that every conversation in New Mexico eventually arrives at 'have you tried the green chilies?'

The check-in section is unusually raw. Theo is taking a deliberate break from dating and interacting with women to work on himself and his relationship with his higher power, admits he's stopped praying and isn't sure why, and wonders aloud whether he's scared that taking care of himself would mean having to change. He also addresses why he doesn't speak up about every cause people ask him to — burnout, not knowing enough, the algorithms that 'ruin you' — before making an exception: an extended, emotional statement of his fear and distrust of the Israeli government and America's relationship with it, which he frames as him exercising a voice he worked hard for, right or wrong.

The centerpiece is Busboys. Theo and David Spade bonded over both having bussed tables in Arizona, wrote a movie together starting during COVID, and when directors, agencies and studios wouldn't back it, put up their own money — a roughly $3 million budget — and shot it themselves, losing their first day to the California fires. The cast includes Tim Dillon, Nate Diaz, Jay Pharoah, Trevor Wallace, Jimmy Gonzalez, Michelle Ortiz and Brent Morin; tickets go on sale March 16 at busboysmovie.com ahead of an April 17 release, with more theaters unlocking as the first hundred sell out. He frames the whole thing as a bet on making things outside the gatekeeper system.

It closes with listener voicemails from fellow busboys: a 16-year-old redhead propositioned on behalf of a customer's wife, a Denny's worker who claims a graduation party beat him up over all-you-can-eat pancakes, a barback who did two hours of real work a night for a year and a half, the legendary secondhand-oyster story — a regular who sucked the flavor off his oysters and spat them back — and Jason V's saga of chauffeuring Plinko, an unlicensed, kid-hating clown paid in alcohol, which leads to selling cable descramblers out of Detroit Rick's van.