i slept in the living room, woke up with my back feeling all irregular. not that the couch isn't comfortable, but my body is used to sleeping in a bed instead and any deviation from the norm results in back pains. i got dressed and walked in the freezing cold (must've been 0 degrees fahrenheit) to porter square to catch the train to the fresh pond mall, where i was meeting alex to go watch the 10:30am matinee showing of daredevil. when i slid down the icy hill into the empty parking lot, i broke into a sprint as i saw alex' red car appearing behind me.

the theatre, like the parking lot, was mostly empty. apparently friday morning is not a very busy time for theatres, go figure. we bought our ticket, i got a regular popcorn, a can of root beer hidden in my bag. the handful of theatre patrons were all there for daredevil, most were singles, however there was one nerd couple (boyfriend in glasses and ponytail with black trenchcoat, girlfriend in glasses and overweight laughing loudly). i've never seen these before, but before and during the movie, an usher actually walked down the aisle with a piece of paper, doing a head count, making sure nobody snuck into the movie.

daredevil was entertaining, a slick comic hero action film. to be quite honest, if jennifer garner wasn't in it, i don't think i'd wake up friday morning on opening day to go see the movie. her appearance in the film was too short though, i left feeling still hungry for some more JG action. daredevil's a lot like batman, he's normal during the day, but at night he puts on a costume and becomes a vigilante out dispensing justice. bruce wayne (aka batman) is a multi-millionaire however, while matt murdoch (aka daredevil) is a poor lawyer. neither one of them has superhuman powers like spiderman or superman, although daredevil, as a result of his mutagen-induced blindness, has a heightened sense of hearing and smell, but that doesn't give him increased strength or healing. the movie makes a point of pointing that out, that daredevil is a very mortal action hero, full of personal demons, body all scarred up, has a medicine cabinet full of painkillers, loses a tooth from a battle, and sleeps in a water coffin to drown out the noises in the world. i also like the very beginning of the movie where the film establishes the fact that despite his blindness, he lives a very independent life, and does all these tricks real blind people use to get by in the world, like braille tagging their clothes or folding various denominations of money in certain ways to differentiate between the different bills. the love angle is interesting too, complicated, although it felt a bit short: elektra (jennifer garner) thinks daredevil killed her father and vows revenge, unbeknownst to her daredevil is actually the blind lawyer she's fallen in love with. the fact that their relationship doesn't end in a happy ending makes this a good valentine's movie for me. some of the situations seem kind of farfetched. as already mentioned, daredevil doesn't possess superhuman powers (other than heightened awareness of his other senses beside sight), but in the movie he possesses spiderman-like agility (likewise, so does elektra, and she's even less superhuman than daredevil, although she definitely kicks ass). i rolled my eyes for the finale as well, after elektra almost fatally stabs daredevil, the wounded hero must fight with two villains, the assassin henchman bullseye and then the boss in the form of kingpin. that's too high a mountain to climb in my opinion. nevertheless, an entertaining movie, definitely a lot better (smarter, better story) than most action movies.

alex brought me back to my place afterwards, where we hung out for a little bit before deciding we needed to get some lunch. i suggested zoe's $5/lunch menu just down the street, but alex, forever the creature of habit (for better or worse) and unwilling to change in his fixed ways, wanted to go to porter exchange to cafe mami. it was 2pm but the parking lot was still intensely crowded, but since we had my visitor's parking permit, we parked a block away down a residential street. when we walked back to the parking lot, somebody was honking at me in a car. my friend gary! he was here with his wife (inside the building), she was buying stuff while he was outside looking for parking. cafe mami has a lunch menu except for fridays and weekends, so we ended up paying full price. actually i ended up paying full price because alex didn't have any money. the food was pretty good, but it's always crowded and i have nothing but contempt for all those young asian people who frequent those establishments.

after lunch, alex drove me back to my place and went back home to malden. i spent the rest of the day watching the lizzie mcguire marathon on the disney channel until i feel asleep. i woke up at 8pm for some leftover dinner, eating the last two remaining pieces of my birthday cake.