put the whammy on

Because you’re so inspired they put the whammy on, they’re allergic to you, and they have hard feelings.

One look from her heavily made-up eyes — presented in jolting close-ups to the accompaniment of zither-sounding “Zings!” — is all it takes to put the whammy on her victims and turn them into mewling mooncalves.

The real reason they had taken the pressure off M. was that, as he put it, “the Zetas don’t want God to put the whammy on them.”

My friend the Dean assured me that the bats were for dramatic effect only; that they did not intend to use them and that they only wanted to put the whammy on my head in a metaphorical sense.

So, flying back from his $75,000 Puerto Rico beach house, Powell put the whammy on his Harlem friends.