You shake your iPhone. The well-rounded, blue-jeaned buttocks of the cartoon woman on the screen start shaking on their own.

Hours of entertainment for your inner Beavis and Butt-Head.

The idea behind this iPhone application, called "Shake That Booty," is simple. And, concludes the Tesuque resident who invented it, "What makes money are stupid things that guys buy."

And a number of guys apparently have been buying this particular thing since it was released late last month on Apple's online App Store.

Dennis Comeau said sales of his 99-cent application have been so brisk that within two days he recouped the money he spent to get "Shake That Booty" going. That was less than $10,000, he said.

It also got him lots of hate mail from angry feminists and others who weren't amused, Comeau said.

"I find it ironic that a lot of that hate mail contained obscenities," he said.

Comeau, who has lived in Tesuque for about three years, said he has received compliments about his own posterior from women at his gym. "That's never offended me," he said.

"Booty" has sold much quicker than his other apps — Fart Machine, FaceTrasher and Roach Kill — Comeau said.

Comeau and his wife, Lynne Comeau, own and work as designers at the Houston-based Bernardo shoe company, best known, he said, for its sandals. Creating iPhone apps, he said, is just a hobby.

So what prompted Dennis Comeau to invent the booty shaker?

"First of all, I'm a butt man," he said.

There was an Internet uproar when Apple rejected an application called iBoobs — which used the same idea as "Booty" except with images of another area of the female anatomy.

"I thought if we could take that idea and make it not quite as vulgar, it might be successful," he said. "We tried to make it the least offensive as possible."

Nonetheless, reaction on the Web has been less than glowing. "If this app doesn't prove that the entire Apple app approval process is arbitrary and stupid, I'm not sure what does," sniffed writer Shane McGlaun on the site iPhone Buzz. McGlaun's review has been copied and pasted all over the Internet. McGlaun noted that Apple recently censored a dictionary application over the inclusion of certain words.

The users who have rated it on the iPhone App Store have been kinder. "Hot Hot Hot," said one buyer. "And really funny, but can u give her hot pants????"

"I'm in LOVE," another wrote.

Comeau said — just to prove he's not a sexist — he'll be coming out with a version of "Shake That Booty" with a shaking male behind. "But I don't expect it to sell as well."

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com.