[eDebate] DCA Debater #9: Alex Q Iftimie

[Shawn Powers]

The Story of how Alexandru “I was the coolest kid at Harker High  
School” Iftimie became the “Alex m-f’in Iftimie that gets m-f’in down.”

Disclaimer: 40 percent of the following is entirely made up. 90  
percent of what’s left over is exaggerated. 100 percent is done with  
love. 0 percent is endorsed, approved, signed off on, or legally the  
responsibility of the University of Southern California, the  
Annenberg School for Communication, the Trojan Debate Squad, any  
random TDS member or coach, any specific TDS member or coach, the  
author and/or authors of this bio.

29 total votes, 9th place overall. Upon hearing the news that he was  
9th, Alex said the following: “Well, at least I beat Jennings.” Also:  
“9th? That’s not what Yale said.” More recently: “Conor’s going to OU  
for law school? I didn’t realize they even had a law school.”

Turns out, making fun of Alex is not a simple feat. We can’t use  
puppets, poop jokes are apparently no longer kosher, he actually  
dresses quite nicely, and, well, true conversation:
Us: “We’ve been asked to run this by you to ensure that you/we can’t  
get sued, etc.”
University legal team: “You know you go to USC, right?”
Us: “Well, didn’t you catch the ‘this entire thing could be made up’  
part of the bio? If nobody knows which parts are ‘true’ or ‘false’,  
then you can’t get sued for them, right? That’s how this shit works,  
no?”
University legal team: “no”
Us: “well fuck”

The beginning: March 24th, 1985. A cold night in Bucharest, Romania.  
The wind is howling, the revolutionaries are marching, and Roxana and  
Bogdan have just welcomed our little darling AI into a future of  
academic success, debate fame, a deep love of ABBA, and peerless  
fashion sense. Though it is hard to determine for certain, rumor has  
it that he was conceived in a bathroom stall. Or, as McBride once  
described it, “the only classy way to do it.”

When soliciting stories for the DCA, the most prevalent comment was:  
“well, his girlfriend is pretty hot.” And, while Alex has urgently  
communicated to us that talking about Brenda is offlimits, he never  
said we couldn’t make fun of him for being in a relationship with her.

SP tells the following story:

When I moved to Los Angeles, Alex would usually sit around the debate  
office, doing schoolwork, playing poker, and talking to Brenda. They  
would discuss their hopes and dreams, love of the color purple, gold  
chains, the awesomeness of identity politics, how cool it was to not  
be born in America, and, my favorite, their feelings for each other.  
And for some reason people put up with it. That was until I showed  
up. Learning from me that you don’t actually have to talk about your  
feelings to convince women to sleep with you, the debate team quickly  
turned on Alex and his relationship, making fun of everything he said  
to her. All day. Every day. No joke. A particularly brutal day  
culminated with one Michael Smith taking over Alex’s IM and repeating  
baby talk to Brenda that was indistinguishable from Alex talk. That  
was not good. After two weeks to non-stop Ceren-Powers give and take  
ridicule, Alex walked into the office with a “Spanish for Dummies”  
book. This is the story of how Alex learned to habla the espanol. I  
have never seen someone learn to speak a foreign language so fast,  
and within a month, we never heard him or her have a conversation in  
English again. Unfortunately for Alex, he failed to realize that SP  
hablo the espanol too. Especially the dirty words. Only the dirty words.

Speaking of espanol, one of the greatest ideas Alex ever had was that  
he and three of his closest (and, turns out, dumbest) friends should  
go to Tijuana to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I know what you’re  
thinking – this has got to part of the 40 percent that’s made up –  
but alas, that’s the other 40 percent. As it turns out, Alex’s Dad  
owns something of a vacation home in TJ. Cause that’s the kind of  
place Dad liked to take the kids on the weekends. Fast forward to the  
morning after [this is one of the places where the legal team had  
some real issues with the bio, by the by]. Alex and his compadres  
each wake up and join the family for some breakfast. Eating bagels,  
talking about the weather, etc. Alex is telling some story about  
debate when his stepmother looks at him and asks, “Alexandru, what is  
that you have on your glasses?” Alex takes off his glasses and  
realizes that he has some [redacted] from when [redacted] did the  
[redacted] with her [redacted] on his face. Everyone at the table  
with an IQ above 30 quickly realizes what’s what, while Alex is  
forced to come up with an explanation for why he has a significant  
amount of [redacted] on his $500 designer glasses. Meanwhile, his  
friends, his father, his siblings, and an undiscovered tribe of  
Amazonian pygmies laughed themselves into tears. Good times. Let’s  
just say, Alex’s stepmother “was not very impressed” with Alex’s  
friends.

Let’s take a step back briefly to Alex’s entrance into debate,  
courtesy of the Lusky/Ardebili's lab at Stanford. Alex was always a  
little different from the other children, an otherness he liked to  
describe as being “the coolest kid at Harker. Ever” and E! producers  
like to describe as “helpful and inspiring for that one show with the  
guys and the eye”. AI rolls into the Lusky-Ardebili lab like he  
fucking owns it. Mofo raises his hand and volunteers to participate  
in the first practice debate in front of his colleagues. Lusky,  
drawing on years of experience of ridiculing high school kids,  
reraises and asks Alex if he will first give a practice speech in  
front of everyone in order to demonstrate that he can play with the  
big kids. Alex, having entered America a mere three days earlier and  
not being overly experienced with the ingles, is nonetheless  
convinced that he both is the shit and that his shit don’t stick  
(this, incidentally, is what the psychologists refer to as a  
“personality trait”). Upon hearing Alex deliver a prolif bad card  
like he were Anderson fucking Cooper gasping for breath and sobbing  
in the midst of Katrina, Lusky led a crowd of fifteen year-olds into  
tear-inducing laughter (this is what psychologists refer to as a  
“formative life experience”).

Unable to distinguish between “laugh at” and “laugh with  
situations” (this is what psycholog—aww, fuck it), Alex pushed  
through and completed his dramatic interpretation of why crazy people  
should not be in control of technology that can kill lots of people.  
Randy Lusky, perhaps feeling a tinge of guilt, pressed Alex in the  
following manner: “Alex, why don’t you speak faster. We call it  
‘spreading’. It will help you make more arguments, which may in turn  
increase your ‘winning’ of ‘debates.’” Interestingly, Lusky would  
later find himself giving the same speech to one Dan Skwalker- 
Shalmon. Alex - being much more hygienic than Dan - replied: “I am  
not going to read like that. It will just make me sweaty. I hate  
being sweaty.”

OC tells a story: [redacted]
OC tells another story:

The first time that Alex got drunk in college – an event that I will  
assure you in advance I was nowhere near and had nothing to do with –  
the following transpired. It was a party about two blocks from a  
University campus in downtown Los Angeles. Present may or may not  
have been several of-age USC debaters who, despite their status as  
law abiding citizens legally permitted to purchase, carry, and  
consume alcohol, the school and the squad are and have never been in  
any way responsible for. They, gracious gentlemen and ladies all,  
were helping Alex get acquainted with the area, with USC, and with  
college life in general. Alex gets just fucking plastered. Hammered.  
Just filthy fucking drunk. A senior named Marissa, feeling the kind  
of pity for Alex that’s normally reserved for particularly maltreated  
puppies locked in the pound and wallowing in their own filth (as  
we’re about to find out, not an entirely inapt analogy for our young  
hero), approaches little AI. Quote unquote: “I just felt so bad for  
him, with his face leaning against the toilet bowl. He looked so sad  
and confused. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything so pitiful.”  
She gently lifts his head and pushes his (well maintained) hair back  
so he can do his business. Alex responds by launching into a part  
English part Romanian rant that included the following: “get away  
from me”, “you’re ugly,” and – swear to God – “you’re not my mother.  
Where is my mother! I want my mother.” And those were just the  
English parts.

Which brings me to the end of Alex’s career as a debater on the  
Trojan Debate Squad. Asked to give the senior speech at the banquet  
celebrating Director Damus’ service and retirement, Alex made what  
objective observers have variously described as “an example of what  
not to do”, “a stunning lesson in checking urban dictionary before  
using any phrase involving the word ‘shower’” and “a total ass of  
himself.” Suffice to say that the following is more or less true: he  
managed to insult every person in the room, he managed to alienate a  
donating alum that had been invited to celebrate Damus’ retirement,  
he told several of the anecdotes in this bio, there is a DVD of the  
speech, and one member of the coaching staff has even threatened to  
put said DVD on YouTube if Alex does not – quote unquote – “give us a  
lot of fucking money”. If you want more details about the ‘shower’  
thing, you can get details from anyone who was in the room – parents,  
little kids, family, oh, and a high level USC administrator. And let  
me tell you: he was especially psyched.

Which is to say: despite knowing next to nothing about American  
culture, sports, American subculture, how not to make McBride laugh  
at him, [redacted], music, or many other things that lots of people  
take for granted – Alex m-f’in Iftimie owns you. If not now, wait  
five years. Seriously.

Alex: you’re the tits, we love you, and keep on “you doing you.”