And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #145: Chubby Checker v The Chubby Checker

By | Published on Friday 15 February 2013

Chubby Checker

Singer Chubby Checker, best known for popularising the twist dance style in the 1960s, is suing tech giant Hewlett-Packard and its subsidiary Palm Inc for half a billion dollars, law firm Gary Williams Parenti Watson & Gary PL announced on Tuesday. Checker’s grievance is with the recentish appearance of an app on Palm’s mobile operating system called The Chubby Checker, which estimates penis length based on shoe size.

The hastily thrown together free app’s maker, Magic Apps Online, proudly proclaims: “Any of you ladies out there just start seeing someone new and wondering what the size of there [sic] member is. Well now you can right now from your phone. All you need to do is find out the man’s shoe size and plug it in and don’t worry where your [sic] from because The Chubby Checker supports shoe measurements of different regions and types. Now with The Chubby Checker there is no need for disappointment or surprise”.

Checker’s lawsuit claims that the availability of this app (which, as far as I can tell, almost no one had heard of until he launched this legal challenge) has caused him “irreparable damage and harm”, and he has been forced into action due to HP’s refusal to remove it from the Palm app store. Available since 2011, it “continues to perpetuate degrading and derogatory content directly linked to Chubby Checker”, apparently.

It’s alright though, Checker has ensured that he’s hired a lawyer with a suitably funny name for the job, Willie Gary. Says Gary: “This lawsuit is about preserving the integrity and legacy of a man who has spent years working hard at his musical craft and has earned the position of one of the greatest musical entertainers of all time. We cannot sit idly and watch as technology giants or anyone else exploits the name or likeness of an innocent person with the goal of making millions of dollars. The defendants have marketed Chubby Checkers’ name on their product to gain a profit and this just isn’t right”.

Given the app is free, it’s not clear who is profiting exactly. Unless it’s believed that HP – as the main defendant – is benefiting because people are buying its Palm mobile devices purely on the basis that doing so will enable them to get hold of this entirely pointless app.

Or maybe it’s just the pointlessness of the app that has irked Checker. Maybe he’s just annoyed that his name is being associated with a clearly unreliable system of penis size measurement. Perhaps he could instead license the rights to his name to the people behind the Condom Size iPhone app, it seeming to offer a more accurate solution. Though I wouldn’t want to call anyone on a phone that’d had Checker’s chubby pushed up against it.



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