I'm playing with a demo of 3DS Max 7 and I'm interested the whole 3d animation stuff. I've read some magazines and some of the things i understand, and some things are bewilldering. so where's a good place for an amature to start with 3d graphics?

max or maya are a good point to start with, theres tons of tutorials, forums and literature around to help you progress, they are also industry standard within the game dev world.
best of luck

personally, i like lightwave...

I guess im the opposite, I can model 100X quicker in maya then I can in MAX, then its a matter of importing into max or something else for animation.