Thanks a lot, Longshot Magazine. In just 48 hours you imagine, write, edit, photograph, design and program a dazzling, 60-page print/web magazine and ship it out to the world, all lickety-split-like.

And frankly, it’s making the rest of us look bad.

Because you know what most of us do in the 48 hours classified as the weekend? We treat ourselves to cholesterol for breakfast, tidy up the magazines on the coffee table, maybe watch some football and/or “Hoarders” and call it a day. And we like it that way.

(Harumph.)

Well, no more. The sprint-media kamikazes at Longshot have redefined the parameters of what’s possible in a weekend. And people from the LA Times to USA Today took note. Longshot, formally known as 48 Hour Magazine until CBS decided people might confuse it with the equally young and hip “48 Hours,” even won a Knight-Batten Award for their furious efforts.

So how do they do it?

At noon on Friday, the clan picks a loose theme for the issue. (This time it was “Comeback.”) Then word goes out on the web and submitters have 24 hours to write, photograph, draw and create. Sarah Rich, co-founder and executive editor, describes what comes next as a “rolling trickle that becomes a flood in the middle of the first night.” To avoid logjam, the team is constantly reviewing, selecting and editing submissions as they come in.

After noon on Saturday, another six hours of intense editing is followed by overlapping hand-offs to the designers and programmers towards the middle of the night. They then have until noon on Sunday to bring it on home.

Once it hits MagCloud, a nifty publishing site that takes orders and prints on-demand, the Longshot experiment is complete. The result is a cohesive magazine that covers topics from butter to Hulk Hogan. In every case, attention is paid to the comeback-theme while ranging in format from short stories and reporting to lists and timelines.

Aside from the motivation and ambition Longshot represents — let’s make a magazine in 48 hours, just because — we appreciate their utilization of webtools like MagCloud and Submishmash (a submissions manager). We applaud the way they empower the masses (over 1,500 submissions) through social media. The way they ride a groundswell of talent to topple the dam of traditional magazine processes, content meetings and editorial calendars.

And we welcome anyone who inspires us to use fewer couches and more brains. Even if it’s on the weekend.