Congratulations on Getting an Entire Bar to Sing Black Betty!

Most trained hypnotists choose one of two careers. They either become licensed therapists who sexually abuse their clients without any repercussions or they become trade magicians who amuse large audiences with their hilarious antics. You’re the latter kind and your conscience is clean because of it.

But your entire life is spent amusing others. Sure, you get a kick out of bending the occasion drunk to your will or planting suggestions in the heads of impressionable co-eds so that they later murder the man they’ve taken home that night for anonymous sex, but rarely do you just get to have a laugh all to yourself.

That’s why tonight you’re going to go into a crowded bar with karaoke and step up on stage. You’ll select “Died In Your Arms Tonight” as your song, but after the opening bars you’ll begin the super secret process (pocket watch) of placing the entire audience, including the MC, into a deep hypnotic trance. Once they’ve been settled you’ll run them through the basics just to be sure they have it down.

They’ll cluck like chickens for you, strip naked, and a few of them will fellate one another while you laugh. But after the test run the main event will begin. You’ll commandeer the karaoke machine and get it to start playing the Ram Jam classic Black Betty, imprinting them all with the compulsion to sing the song in its entirety, slowly coming out of the trance as they do so.

As the music comes up the entire group will monotone “Whoa, Black Betty, Bam Balam,” a group of hard rocking zombies. They’ll stare straight ahead as they churn out the lyrics mechanically. It’ll be as if an entire crowd was spontaneously transformed into robots, and it’ll all be the fruit of your efforts.

Watching them chant will give you a nice chuckle, and you’ll be impressed at your own grasp of the human mind. But a part of you, however small, will feel a little sad that the whole thing isn’t funnier and that there’s no one there to share it with you. As the patrons of the bar come out of the trance one by one you’ll quietly finish your whiskey, wondering if you want to do something else before you leave.

Congratulations on Getting an Entire Bar to Sing Black Betty!