the AM2 mounting was very confusing to me. Apparantly from watching the AMD videos, you're supposed to use a screwdriver and push down on the side of the lever thingy that will take a screwdriver... and they make it look so easy.
I realized my motherboard is already somehow bent slightly, and I was far too afaraid to use the (in computer sense) hulk-like force needed. When uninstalling the stock cooler, I thought you had to pull that lever thing way back... and luckily ALMOST (didn't end up) slicing one of the plastic mounting things all the way through with the lever cooler.
What I ended up doing was actually removing the mounting... plastic thing from the motherboard. The stock mounting, uh, thing just easily un-screws off of the motherboard, there's nothing as far as I can tell behind the motherboard that's a part of the mounting thing, it just screwed off, I heard a popping sound (the contact between the hsf and cpu breaking), and the cooler was still latched on the mounting thing, the cpu still in the motherboard pretty much happy. I then easily got the cooler off of the mounting bracked (now in my hands with 360* of work space), screwed the mounting thing back on, installed the freezer (was kind of hard, but that's due to my case's design, there's a big piece of metal in the way that's part of the 5.25 bays that goes all the way to the back of the case and screws in)..... all's fine now
p.s. (and congrats for getting this far) how do the LGA pins get bent? they don't plug into anything, and they're kind of imbedded in the motherboard... kind of like a lake of pins below PCB level