problem with date and to_char

I am a little stumped.
postgresql 7.1.3
suse linux 7

I have a database with

CREATE TABLE "fc_communication" (
"acode" character varying(12),
"conversation" text,
"contactdate" date

CREATE TABLE "comm_date" (
"lastcontact" timestamp with time zone DEFAULT 'now' NOT NULL,
Constraint "comm_date_pkey" Primary Key ("lastcontact")

When I update fc_communication I also (without a trigger) update
comm_date with a sep

update comm_date set lastcontact = 'now';

it works beautifully if I do a psql
'select * from comm_date;'

2002-01-08 16:16:03

I always get the last moment that someone updated the communications file

however what I want to do is:
SELECT to_char(lastcontact, 'Month DD, YYYY HH:MM') from comm_date;

January 08, 2002 04:01

why is this 04:01?

Every time I do this I get the very first date (that no longer exists).
Why do I get different results. I expect 'select *' is the base and
everything else is a varient.

Ted
tedpet(at)symcom(dot)com