Numbers, Strings, and the Date

Sorry for the really simple question, but I forgot something. Let’s say I’m trying to display the date. For the minutes thing, I have:

minutes = my_date.getMinutes()

First, I think I need to convert that second thing into a string.
Second, do I need to introduce my date variable earlier? That’s kind of weird.
Thanks.

By the way, I believe that this AS shows up as undefined. (not NaN, whatever that is).