If, like myself, you happen to be a child of the 80s, unless you grew up in a cave or some cavelike state, you probably watched a fair amount of Full House while you were growing up.  For those of you who don’t remember, Full House was what he Olsen Twins did before they turned into uber-skanks and developed complementary lifestyle dysfunctions.  On a completely unrelated note (or so it would seeeeeem!), I saw the Dukes of Hazzard movie this week, which, if you don’t remember it, is kind of scary, since it’s been out for like, a week, and if you can’t remember that far back, your brain’s probably busted or something (you’d better call tech support now, it might still be under warranty).  “What do these two seemingly antithetical things have in common?,” you may ask.  No, not the presence of gratuitous mullets (though the Gratuitous Mullets would indeed be a sweet name for a band), nor the fact that both are cited by Kim Jong Il of North Korea to be indicators of Western decadence (don’t laugh, he can make avalanches happen!).  Give up?  It’s Uncle Jesse.  Not the same Uncle Jesse, mind you, one was played by Lord of the Damned, John Stamos, the other by the only white guy who can have pigtails and still look cool in spite of his Pippi-Lomhstockitude, Willie Nelson.  This of course begs the question: Which one makes a better Uncle Jesse?  Let’s find out.

            First let’s take a look at Full House Uncle Jesse.  To his credit and his shame, he had a big goofy 80s mullet, which in one episode got caught in the wheels of a cable car, dragging him more than a mile before Bob Saget could gnaw him free with his mighty incisors.  He also believed himself to be Elvis, though obviously he wasn’t, since there’s really only one true Elvis (and I am he).  He lived in the basement, subsisting off of small rodents and things that people threw at him whilst he was on stage.

            In the course of the show, Uncle Jesse accomplished a number of significant feats (3) that one him the admiration of all those who dwelt in the accursed house of Bob Saget.  For instance, there was that one time that he found out that there were actually no fewer than three different Olsen Twins who were all just dressing alike and pretending to be one person so that the other two could go sell third world refugee children on Ebay and snort Pixie Stix.  Upon being found out by Uncle Jesse though, they all flew into a harpy-like fury and attempted to set his mullet ablaze.  Thinking quickly though, Uncle Jesse picked up one of the three, Zlognar Smacktropolis Olsen, and threw her into a conveniently located bottomless crevasse or eternal torment, which pretty much put an end to the shenanigans of the other two for the duration of the show.  Then there was the time when Uncle Joey ran away to join the circus but was abducted by Iranian terrorists who offered him a new bike if he got in their van.  Upon learning this news, Uncle Jesse took his power pills, and using the awesome powers that they granted him, flew off to Iran like Ross Perot and single-handedly rescued Uncle Joey from the evil clutches of Ayatollah Khomeini and his hordes of flying monkeys.  Finally, there was that time when DJ got arrested by Federal Agents for helping Kimmy Gibler to smuggle pandas into Quebec, and Uncle Joey had to use his awesome Mullet-Fu skills to break into the secret caves underneath the Lincoln Memorial to rescue her from a legion of zombie orangutans.  So yeah, John Stamos Uncle Jesse is pretty cool, when taken in isolation.

            But now let’s consider for a moment, the virtues of Willie Nelson Uncle Jesse.  For one thing, he’s an infinitely better guitarist than John Stamos Uncle Jesse ever was.  For another thing, he’s got greatly superior car chase experience and knows the importance of not letting one’s babies grow up to be cowboys (nor letting one’s cowboys grow up to be babies, which happens just as often nowadays).  Finally, he’s way more gritty than John Stamos Uncle Jesse.  Like, if there was a nuclear war, and both Uncle Jesses somehow survived and had to drive around the post-apocalyptic wasteland in freaky-looking battlecars while fending off mutants, does anyone truly doubt that Willie Nelson would quickly demonstrate atomic survival skills and panache of Mel Gibsonesque proportions, while John Stamos would last about as long as a one-legged possum on Route 95 (which is, after all, infamous for its great rate of possum squashage).  And suppose that that time that DJ had locked the keys in her car during an ill-planned Chinese fire drill she called on Willie Nelson Uncle Jesse rather than the other one, instead of merely pretending to be Elvis and getting everyone killed again, Willie Nelson would have just made a Molotov Cocktail out of some moonshine and thrown it at the offending car, and then sung a soulful yet bitchin’ song about it.  And instead of living in the basement with a bunch of old pizza boxes and hair control products, Willie Nelson would have built a still, so everyone in the house would have always been drunk off white lightning and bootleg Smirnov Ices, which honestly, would have made the show far more interesting.  Finally, Willie Nelson is just inherently more awesome.  Like, if you had to go on a coast to coast road trip, and you had to choose between the two Uncle Jesses, only mullet fiends and other weirdoes would pass up a chance to travel across our great nation with Willie Nelson.

            So, in conclusion, Willie Nelson just straight up makes a better Uncle Jesse than does John Stamos.  Therefore, when they finally get around to making Full House: The Next Generation, make sure you cast your vote in favor of Willie Nelson, otherwise, should you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland with no one to help you out but a guy with a mullet and delusions of grandeur, you’ll have only yourself to blame.