A hard-cover book is quite the thing. It is designed to impress visitors when displayed on a low-slung table and its luxurious format serves to inflate the worth of the contents within.

Let me tell you a few things about this book.

It was printed in Singapore or Disneyland with the Death Penalty as sci-fi author William Gibson described it. Put one foot wrong in that sparkling island nation and you’re hung using the “long drop” method, a legacy of its colonial past. Last time we were there for press checks, two drug traffickers enjoyed a grisly farewell. I had to be careful never to carry more than 1.2kg of opium or 200g of hashish on me at any time, both hang-able amounts. A necessary inconvenience if the magazine was to avail itself of south-east Asia’s cheap labour.

Would Dane Reynolds let Kelly Slater suck his dick for a million bucks? It has been the elephant in the room ever since Dane was signed by Quiksilver and joined the major league tour last year. It wasn’t until the intrepid Charlie Smith interviewed the 24-year-old reluctant superstar in June that the mystery was finally solved. ;;Dane’s answer was typically forthright and thoughtful. To illustrate the hypothetical, Steve Sherman supplied photos from a recent trip with Dane to northern Canada.

Morocco? Now, there’s a place we love. Long, sweeping beaches with no serviceable banks as far as the eye can see, wobbly points populated by Germans doing strapped-in airs and surly Muslims plotting your murder – all time. The gang from Kai Neville’s Modern Collective, Rusty Pain, Mick Colby and Dean A-Jesus, all Stab favourites, toured radical Islam’s prize recruiting ground many months ago and came away with hard-drives full of clips and photos. And with heads still rotating on their shoulders. God is Great, as they say.

I spent an entertaining few hours drinking with hardboiled internet poster Lewis Samuels of postsurf.com. Despite his initial suspicion that we might attempt to ridicule him, Lewis was soon gobbling ice-cream and cake off my teaspoon and posing nude in the adjacent studio. We later retired to cocktail lounge The Rum Diaries in Bondi for Hemingways and Hurricanes, moving even later to a secret vodka bar overlooking Tamarama. The interview touches on Lewis’ clever use of insult and the ongoing difficulty of adhering to his own ethical standards.

As for the rest of the book, I’ll let you guess. If Stab’s past form is any guide, the remainder will involve a photo spread, a few Q and As spiced up with questions about sex and drugs to make em “edgy” and a long “written piece” about money, sexual predators, ice dealers or teddy bear men who used to be pro surfers.

But, it’s a book. And if it’s in a book the contents must be respected, at all costs.