Ernest Borgnine

Who is the first person who encouraged you to be a writer?

With beginnings like mine, and with the necessity to apply Hollywood-style spin to beef up one's bonafides, it'd be easy to tie this week's question back to some well-meaning teacher back in Chicago Public Schools who saw better in me than I believed lay within. Maybe she'd resemble Michelle Pfeiffer. Read from the classics and explain them to us in our own street semiotics.

Is it a Gangsta's Paradise, Coolio? Is it, really?
"So, like, K...