iPod - Didn't show in iTunes!!!

I'm sure you've heard this all before, but my ipod is crazy!! It mounts on my desktop, but anything else I try to do with it, it crashes. If I try to open iTunes so I can open up my iPod, it just spins and doesn't respond. More so, I can't even eject my ipod without getting the beach ball effect. I have no idea what to do! All i want to do is get iTunes to recognize it so i can hit the restore button and get things back to normal, but if iTunes won't allow me to do that, I have no other way of restoring my iPod. I've reset it a dozen times, and nothing works. Literally anything i do with it mounted to my Mac, makes the beach ball; so I know the iPod is what's wrong - just have no way of restoring it and starting over. Any help??

Thanks

Localfruit