“Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston’s stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.”

“Bell’s a heartthrob. Tall and handsome, he’s got a Donny Osmond-like dose of the cutes. He’s single and straight, a fact not lost on some of his fans. In Boston, as he performed Max Bruch’s dour Violin Concerto in G Minor, the very few young women in the audience nearly disappeared in the deep sea of silver heads. But seemingly every single one of them — a distillate of the young and pretty — coalesced at the stage door after the performance, seeking an autograph. It’s like that always, with Bell.”

Ok, so that being said, here’s the experiment:

Bell was asked if he’d be willing to don street clothes and perform at rush hour. He played a Stradivarius violin built in 1713 worth millions of dollars. Bell played some of the world’s most difficult and beautiful violin solos with symphonic perfection. The result? “In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.”

If you think back on the documentary, imagine Davecat is a famous rapper or the lead singer in a hair metal band. Think of Everhard as having just completed an interview for the BBC about a new hang gliding DVD. What if the guy in Texas with eight dolls was actually a real estate expert doing soundbites for CNN? And in each case you didn’t know about the dolls? Now how odd or creepy are they? They suddenly cease to be, when you place them into a different context. Just like Joshua Bell. People didn’t pay attention because he was just a “street musician”. Was his music somehow not as good because he wasn’t at Carnegie Hall just then? No, of course not. What if Joshua Bell had posed a fully dressed doll in a wheelchair to listen to him (the setup for the movie “Lars and the Real Girl”)? Would that make him creepy? Why? His music would be the same.

My observation is that some people think it’s creepy to own a life size doll, and therefore assume the owners must be creepy. This is very similar to clown phobia. Will the clowns eat you in your sleep? No, of course not. Likewise, there is no reason to fear the dolls or the people who own them. It’s not creepy, it’s just unusual, and people do fear things that they don’t understand. We need to get past this as a society.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

I spent too many years married to women that revealed really sinister sides to themselves, and this also happened with a number of girlfriends.  The damage is more than emotional though, because financial disaster is also a real and terrible consequence in many cases.

This has nothing to do with “absolute control over a woman” as I have seen so many women state.  This is, at the bottom line, a simple and non-destructive means of satisfying a simple need.  Wow, no yelling, no badgering, no monumental expectations like “you will now pay me for the rest of my life!”

My life has taken three or four bad turns and in every single case, it was a woman with desires for what she did not work for, or the desire to control me.  I am not a financial resource to be exploited.  I am a loving, caring, and intelligent person with simple enough goals.

This may sound very cynical but for myself and many other people I know (and that is male AND female) this can be a means of short-term gratification with nothing in the way of disease, lawsuit, pregnancy, or mental stress.  Do I have a “love doll”?  No.  But when I am confronted with another whiny, greedy, mental case I start to think that the option looks mighty damn good sometimes.  I’ve pretty much given up on finding a reasonable, intelligent woman.

So while some of the guys in the documentary strike me as odd or creepy, there is a part of their story that people can identify with.

Men love lots of inanimate things, like cars and boats. Women too. A doll is not so different. It’s the incredible realism of the current generation of dolls that has people disturbed, but there’s no real reason to be frightened of their place in society. A lot of people assume that a doll is the end of a man’s or woman’s relationship with the living. Far from it! Many owners are happily married, or have had relationships with real men/women, buy a doll, then later on, enter into other relationships with men/women. It’s not like it’s the end of the world. But even for those who choose that path, it’s not so bad. The doll will remain good looking forever as long as it is cared for properly. How many people can say that for themselves? None. That’s important in a world that places such a high value on looks. The doll will outlive its owner in that sense.

Dolls have the ability to contribute a great deal of positivity to people’s lives, and that’s a good thing. We should be happy for doll owners’ happiness! And it’s not just a bunch of “sad, lonely guys” who own them. Lots of women own dolls too. And they’re not all sad and lonely. It’s just like a guy or gal who loves his or her car. We should all be so happy.

The thing about dolls being able to “take abuse” refers to their durability. They don’t self-heal, you know. Heavy silicone dolls have their own set of problems, like joints becoming floppy and requiring “surgery” – to open up the internal metal skeleton and tighten up nuts and bolts. Finger wires poke through and have to be fixed. Sometimes the silicone tears and has to be glued back with epoxy. They have to be undressed, cleaned, carried about, dressed again, etc. It’s a little like caring for the infirm. There’s a lot of responsibility.

There’s more to doll ownership than meets the eye. If you want to see what it’s really all about, join The Doll Forum and see for yourself because all this negative, armchair psychology, calling doll ownership/companionship pathological, is absurd. Think through what I’ve said and please don’t fall for the knee-jerk reactions. This is serious. There’s a lot of good to be had here if only you are willing to see it.

Just my opinion.