I am quite busy at the moment, so sorry for not always responding immediately.
For this purpose, I use the free plugin "QuickPipe". You can find databases of plugins at Maxon's and cgtalk, so there you can find where you can get it from.
Distorting something can only be done if you have something to distort. Example: if the height of your cilinder is only one poly, you cannot do anything. If it is two, you can bend at the breakpoint, if there are 48, you come closer to a real distort.
Have you tried drawing a spline (objects, primitives) and a circle, and then place both into an extrude nurbs object?
Many of these things can easily be found in the manual also. Did you try all the tutorials in the tuts manual?
O, and btw: you place a deformer under an object (make it a "child", see manual), but you place objects into generators like splines.
Also you have to make the mathematical primitive editable by pressing C.
Hope this helps...