"I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow, casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there counting crows. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for girls and four for boys. Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told. There's a bird that nests inside you, sleeping underneath your skin. When you open up your wings to speak, I wish you'd let me in. All your life is such a shame, shame, shame. All your love is just a dream, dream, dream. Open up your eyes, you can see the flames, flames, flames. Of your wasted life, you should be ashamed. You don't want to waste your life, the way I waste my life...I walk along these hillsides in the summer 'neath the sunshine, I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me..." ~counting crows

I want this shirt:

Too bad it's $23; I don't want it that badly. I am SO on Team Bullit, though. Even though we've already lost. I'm talking about The O.C. by the way, just in case you don't watch it and have no idea what I'm talking about. This season is sooo good. Kaitlin and Bullit are adorable; they almost made me cry in this week's episode. He's such a wonderful father figure for her, and she really needs that right now. I'll be sad to see the series end in 3 weeks.
Grey's Anatomy was also fabulous this week. Ellen Pompeo will most likely use the episode as her FYC submission to the Emmys; she gave what I think is the best performance I've ever seen from her. I love her. She's amazing. And this week more than made up for her recent disasterous SAG Awards speech (which I thought was kind of adorable, although I know I'm in the minority in having that opinion).

So here's something that's been on my mind lately. I'm weird about music. Or at least I thought I was weird about it. But now I'm realizing that I'm actually not alone. There are some songs (actually, they're mostly specific live performances of certain songs) that I love so much that I can't share them with anyone else. I know that's incredibly selfish of me, but it's the truth and I can't do anything about it. Sharing one of those songs would be like tearing out a piece of my soul and putting it on display for all the world to see. I can talk about those songs/specific performances with other obsessed fans online because they "get it." But I just can't bring myself to play certain songs to people who don't know Bono and Edge's real names and how they got their nicknames, who don't know whom Anna, Elisabeth, Mary Ann, Amy, Amelia, and Maria are to Adam Duritz, to people who don't know what Brandon Flowers thinks of indie rock, to people who haven't waited outside for 10 hours in NYC in November to get a spot on the railing at a U2 concert...I'm a music snob. I know it. I can't help it, I really can't. I wish I could. And I've often thought about how crazy I am because I'm like this. But there are others like me, which makes me feel so much better. A fellow CC fan wrote the following about a particular version of a particular song: "That version means so much to me I don't like to share it with 'non-fans.'" I feel exactly the same way (regarding the same version of the same song he's talking about, too, which I was more than fortunate enough to hear performed live this summer). I love music, I listen to a whole lot of it, and I only feel that passionate protectiveness about a very, very select few songs/versions. I think they're mostly by Counting Crows (maybe one or two by U2). I don't know why we music snobs are so hesitant to share our passion with others. You'd think we'd want to show others how awesome some music can be. But sometimes I think it's because we're afraid others wouldn't recognize the awesomeness of a particular song. If they don't spend their free time learning as much about the band as possible, obsessing over little details about the origins of songs, and digging up as many live versions as they can find of certain songs (I've accumulated over 30 versions each of a few songs), will they fully appreciate a specific performance? And if they don't appreciate it, what does that say about those of us whose hearts break every time we hear it? I don't know, I'm rambling. I'm just trying to make sense of myself. Which is an impossible task.