It's the most wonderful time of the year...

In the United States, as the start of the academic year approaches, one of the office supply companies runs the same commercial: kids in a store, shopping for school supplies, looking horribly sad, while their parents all giddily sing along to the Christmas carol "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." Here at FC Hollywood, things like this

have the four of us giddly wearing our Bayern kits and counting down the days (39, if you were curious) until the 2011-12 Bundesliga season officially kicks off. Not that we're excited or anything...

While the Women's World Cup provides football on our teles, our thoughts are today at Sabener Straße with the return of the first wave of the FC Bayern boys and the arrival of a new coach and several new signings. Lots of our internationals are still off enjoying their holidays (Toni is in Spain, where apparently it's sunny, according to his latest blog update), but Basti was back today, along with new signings Nils Petersen (you may remember him from such feats as being the top scorer in 2.Bundesliga last season) and Rafinha (who says "Lahm and I have everything in order to be a superb pair of full-backs, to win many titles and to write history in Munich. I have more experience and am wiser now and I believe that I can play better at Bayern that I ever have before") and a cast of familiar faces (Contento, Gustavo, Butt).

So...39 days left. Will we sign Boateng? (Apparently, he has a physical on Wednesday with the team) Will we sign Vidal? In addition to looking forward to the start of the season, it'll be nice to be out of the transfer window where we might get an entire day without a ridiculous rumor that X player wants to go to X team or how we might buy the moon and ask him to play LB (wait...that was under LVG...nevermind).