Nobody has mentioned yet Time::Piece::MySQL, which makes localtime() return an object, so you can just do this:

use Time::Piece::MySQL;
print localtime->mysql_datetime."\n";
print localtime->mysql_date."\n";
print localtime->mysql_time."\n";
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I generally prefer this to NOW() because I'm usually working with Class::DBI objects, rather than building my own queries, and you have to jump through hoops to get NOW() in there without getting quoted.