Well this is awkward.
Remember the time Jay Leno retired from The Tonight Show, and then a few months later had massive regrets then un-retired, screwing over Conan in the process? Well other than the inclusion of a spurned, lanky redhead I feel like both mine and Jay's stories share a lot of similarities. I wonder if Medibank Private covers chin implants.
It's been 9 months since we closed the door on ParmaDaze, and what a 9 months it has been. Now I'm not saying that wrapping up a chicken parma review blog was directly related to the world going to shit, but, well, I'll just leave this here and let you draw your own conclusions…
No need to harp on about what a year 2020 was, we all lived it, we all know. I don't know how we possibly could have kept ParmaDaze running during lockdown (there are only so many tinfoil boxes of thoroughly steamed Uber Eats parmas a man can eat) so in a way the timing of us calling quits on parma reviews when we did worked in our favour.
However now that we're coming out of lockdown I realised how much I miss it. Countless times over the last 9 months I have told people that I used to run ParmaDaze and every time it has left a sour taste in my mouth. Every time I hear about a new pub that has opened with a parma on the menu I think to myself "oh we should check that out" before remembering that's not something we do anymore and spiralling into sadness. I spent ten years as “the parma guy” and godamnit I’m not ready to give that up!
Then something occurred to me. I still have the website. I'm still paying Squarespace's exorbitant hosting fees and other than my dramatic "End of Daze" post there's absolutely nothing stopping us spinning things back up now that Victoria is returning to a sense of normality.
So that's exactly what we're gonna do.
Now it won't be exactly as it was, part of the reason for the shut down was that I was getting burned out on being locked into a weekly update schedule, so going forward there won't be any set time, more of a "when we feel like it" laissez faire management style rather than being beholden to a weekly update (So be sure to follow on Facebook or Twitter for notifications, I might even straight up cross-post to Facebook this time around to make things a bit easier to find).
I also haven't run any of this by the ParmaDaze review team. They are more than welcome to rejoin our little adventure of course, and no ill will to them at all if they're still enjoying retirement and have no desire to return, so I’m guessing that from here on out it’ll mostly be a solo adventure (other than Reviewer Nikki who is legally obligated via marriage to stay involved, sucks to be her lol).
I'm still plugging away at the oh so mysterious "PD 2.0" project, things are progressing (albeit slower than expected) and that will still appear eventually, although possibly with a slight re-brand to keep the current ParmaDaze page in tact.
So that's it! I haven’t got a review pre-written or anything so it might be a week or so before the next update. Apologies for the emotional roller-coaster that these two consecutive blog posts have been, hopefully our return can be seen as sliver of good news in the clusterfuck that has been 2020. The break over the last nine months has recharged my batteries and I am ready to get out there and see what kind of amazing parmas Melbourne has to offer.