DANNY GRADUATED, I ALMOST MISSED IT AND THE ONLY DECENT PICTURE I GOT FROM IT ALL IS THIS SHAKEFACE:

That means, I need my good friend Sarah and/or Duke to send a few pics of Danny (Newox, City Fence) actually graduating, maybe some party pics. I would appreciate it. I was in charge of the videotaping.

Oh yeah, about the videotaping. So Saturday morning, we all crawl out of bed and head to the Spirit Arena in good ol' Lubbock to go see Danny walk. Danny had asked me to videotape it for his brother David who is serving over in Germany. Of course, I was happy to oblige. We get there just in time for the opening procession so we plant it where we're standing and start shooting photos and videoing. At this point, I panic to find Danny walking into the floor of the arena. I spot his huge beard from across the floor and start rolling the tape. He takes his seat and we proceed to the upper deck to find ours.

Once we arrive at our seats up top, the ceremony and the (ugh) speech begins. Tired, hungry and a little agitated by the superuncomfortable seats, I lean over to Duke and Sarah and tell them, "We could totally go get breakfast if we leave right now." They laugh. I'm serious. I mean, these things get pretty long-winded. I've sat through my share and, despite my responsibilities, by my approximation, we could leave, eat breakfast, come back and no one would have ever known that we left except for the fact that we couldn't recall a single word of the keynoter's speech. But then again, most people who sat through it couldn't recall a single word either. We bolt in hopes we could make it back in time to see Danny walk across the stage. Not only because I wanted to see him walk, but if I didn't get it on tape, it'd be my ass.

We go to Picante's for a breakfast burrito ("taco" as our folks in Austin call them). We're not rushing, but we're not loafing either. We just do our thing knowing we needed to get back soon. We arrive back at the Spirit Arena and make our way back through the parking lot, up the steps to the entrance and through the concourse and, at that point, I start panicking. I get the nervous sweats. It's like being two hours late for a test. I started getting rattled. I thought, "What if we missed this? How would I explain that?" We make our way up to the upper deck where we were before, I look down at the floor. I'm having a hard time hearing the speaker because we were up so high, but as I peer down to the floor, I see Danny's row is gone.

Crap.

Crap.

Where is he?

Did he already go up?

I follow a line of people all the way up to the front and there's our boy, five from the front. He was five people from going up and walking across. I freak out, plant my butt in the closest seat, grab the camera and start rolling. The rest is history and it's all documented on the video like we were there the whole time. The truth is we came really close to screwing up BIG time. After Danny sat back down, I looked at Sarah and Dale and just chuckled lightly in relief.

I told the story a couple of times that afternoon because, well, since it all worked out, I thought it would serve as a rather humorous story. It seemed everytime I told that story, I was met with a blank stare and a look like their eyes were saying, "Whatta jerk." Yeah, not that a breakfast burrito was worth missing my boy walk, but we caught it. I just call it another insanely clutch performance.

I've been up since 3:45 this morning. I'm not sure why. Just couldn't sleep. So you gotta pretty nice update this morning. Scroll down for more. More from this weekend as pics become available.