I'm Not Up On Criminal Euphemisms

I'm encouraged that yesterday's post went up as planned. It means they got the auto-publish function working consistently again. That'll come in handy when Internet access is spotty the next 2 months. Which is also, I guess, a heads up that posting may assume a more irregular schedule the next 2 months. Now you know.

Moving on.

Back when I watched Once Upon a Time In America, I took about a page worth of notes. For some reason I was looking back over them earlier this week and I saw I'd made a note, '"roll the drunk" means rob him?' Which references a scene from the early stages of the movie, when they're all kids, and the local mob guy offers to pay them if they'll do just that. This is how they meet Max (the character JAmes Woods plays as an adult), when he interrupts their attempt and makes off with the watch himself.

Which is a little odd. That feels like the sort of thing I should have known already, but apparently not. I was taking it literally. The guy's too drunk to have any more, but you don't want him taking up space, so it's time for him to go. But he's too drunk to stand (or too belligerent to take the hint), so you drag/toss/roll his drunk butt out the door.

I figured the kids were trying to prove they were tough and/or clever enough to work for this guy by removing some rummy that was annoying the head honcho. Maybe that's the original meaning, and criminals appropriated it for themselves?  I imagine there's a bit of that going both ways. Criminals taking seemingly innocent phrases and uses them to refer to something illegal, non-crooks adopting criminal terminology because it sounds cool.