There no doubt are those who believe that figure skater Johnny Weir should have a "d" on the end of his name. Or maybe a "do."

There certainly are those -- namely officials at U.S. Figure Skating -- who wish Weir was a little more tightly wired.

But the skating world, and perhaps the sports world in general, would be the lesser for it if Weir were conventional and politically correct.

Earlier this month, Weir, 21, won his third national championship in a row to earn his first trip to the Olympics.

"My mom is getting drunk already; and my dad is sitting home with my dog, and they're watching it on TV," he said in the heady minutes after he clinched a gold medal and one of the three men's singles spots on the Olympic team.

That's what you get with Weir, whose wit and tongue can be as sharp as his blades.

If you can watch him next month in Turin, and if you get a chance to listen to him while he's at the Games, you're bound to be entertained.

Although Weir's season leading up to nationals had been a bit below his standards, he shone when he got there, particularly with his short program, where he earned the highest marks in every gradeable category -- skating skills, transitions, performance/execution, choreography, interpretation, factorized program component score and total element score.

He seemed to come into his own at talking with reporters.

In the afterglow of his short program, he explained the difference between his lyrical skate to "The Swan" and Ryan Bradley's audience-clapping skate to "Zorba the Greek."

Weir said his program evoked sitting back with cognac and a cigarette, while Bradley's was more in line with vodka and a line of coke. Some reporters might have been laughing too hard to hear Weir follow up with, "Sorry for the drug references."

Still, the quote earned him a call and finger-shaking from U.S. Figure Skating honchos. It wasn't the first time.

"They're always fun," Weir said two days after the latest censure, just after he had won the nationals gold medal. "I love hearing bad things about myself and people reprimanding me. ...

"But they have their interests to uphold, and I have mine. Some people have different agendas. They often clash. That's all it is. They have spoken to me .... I can understand because there are young people [who] watch the sport and I don't want to offend anyone who might give money to the federation.

"They reprimanded me, and that's the end of it. I let it go in one ear, and I think about it before I say things, so I won't make any drug references today. And that's that. I'm going to do it my way, but maybe think a little bit about what they said."

The guy doesn't come off as arrogant or anti-establishment so much as uninhibited.

Asked to characterize himself, "I'm me," he said. "I don't put on a face. I don't make statements that are fake. ... I'm not going to sugarcoat anything or change the way I speak ... just because I'm a figure skater.

"If I appeal to myself and my mother, I'm happy."

Weir understands and relishes that others might be taken aback by his personality.

"If anything, it's refreshing in this modern world we live in where everybody has a front to the world, that I'm exactly the same, if not a little more outrageous, when I'm at home as when I'm talking to [a group of reporters] -- and I don't really know any of you that well," he said. "That's just me. That's how I was brought up."

Weir, raised in Quarryville, Lancaster County, but now living and training in Delaware, is still young, still excited about going to the Olympics because, "It's something I've watched on TV and gotten goose bumps over and thought, 'Wow, I really want to be there.'"

He's not forsaking his Olympian's responsibility. He plans to add a quadruple jump and get physically stronger so he can raise scores on all his steps and finish with panache in the short program Feb. 14 and the free skate Feb. 16.

He just isn't willing to be another cookie-cutter athlete.

At the medalists' exhibition skate to close the U.S. championships, Weir stated his case of which he was certain.

His music that day? Frank Sinatra's "My Way."