I've had no problem getting DATE, DATETIME, and TIMESTAMP fields into and out of MySQL here (my database of choice at the moment). Let the database do the work for you. Here's one example:

$sth  = $dbh->prepare 
        (qq{SELECT article_title, article_author,
            DATE_FORMAT(article_date, '%W %M %D %Y') as my_date,
            article_body from news_articles 
            where article_id = ?});

$sth->execute($article);
$sth->bind_col (1, \$article_title);
$sth->bind_col (2, \$article_author);
$sth->bind_col (3, \$article_date);
$sth->bind_col (4, \$article_body);
$sth->fetch;
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article_date in this case, is a DATETIME field in MySQL, and presents itself with a date stamp similar to:

2001-09-22 17:09:20

The above code lets me present that date in a more human-readable format, as:

Saturday September 22nd 2001

Does that help you a little?