Last Tues­day, I was drawn like a fly to a pile of fish­heads to the Over­seas Ter­mi­nal for the launch of Fish­Head mag­a­zine. I had to sort out the Mol­lusc for try­ing to step into my ter­ri­to­ry. How many anony­mous trou­ble­mak­ers does this town need, after all?

The adven­ture start­ed with a boat ride from Queen’s Wharf, where enter­tain­ment came in the form of giraffe-esque mod­els in ridicu­lous heels try­ing to clam­ber into the trawler. They still man­aged the task bet­ter than one Welling­ton­ista whose flail­ing arm knocked the lens out of some unfor­tu­nate gen­tle­man’s glass­es. Per­haps she was unsteady on her feet because of being unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sober?

The sev­en minute voy­age across the har­bour seemed to have been planned entire­ly so the hip­sters could get their “on a boat” badge on Foursquare. Oh hip­sters and their adorable need to col­lect things. Any­one would think that their lives were hol­low and emp­ty or some­thing. Things got more live­ly on land, where we were wel­comed by Batu­ca­da, fish­heads firm­ly in place.

fish head battacuda
The band sound­ed great out­side, march­ing back and for­ward and hit­ting their per­cus­siony bits. When they came inside lat­er on, it was a lit­tle too loud though, so this Fly was­n’t suprised to see guests slip­ping out­side to get their Titan­ic on.

I'm the king of the world
It was a beau­ti­ful day out­doors, but things were pret­ty inside too, espe­cial­ly as the wine and beer flowed freely. Kudos to the venue staff who brought bot­tles to the tables. Kudos also for the amaz­ing wood­fired piz­za that kept com­ing around. Good host respon­si­bil­i­ty there.

inside the venue
Things were going well with the speech­es, until Ker­ry Pren­derghast­ly took the stage. When she asked if we could hear her, this Fly heard some­one yelling out “No — maybe you should build anoth­er road to our ears”. Not a pop­u­lar lady. Espe­cial­ly not when her stan­dard “Welling­ton is awe­some and it’s all thanks to me” speech mor­phed into an attack on Ray Api­hene-Mer­cer and how she’s going to win the next elec­tion. I’m a fly, and I flour­ish in shit, but that was way out of line, even by my lack of stan­dards. In fact, I was so dis­gust­ed that I had to buzz off then. But thank you Fish­Head, for an oth­er­wise great launch, and we wish you all the best. Except for you, Mol­lusc — I’ll deal with you anoth­er time…