It’s always great to find something that the kids like and that you like watching too. Those old Monkees episodes really take me back. Smirk about The Monkees if you will, but in 1967, they outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. My little girlfriends and I loved singing the main theme song: “Here we come… walking down the street…” wherever we went. Everyone had their favorite Monkee. As a kid, mine was Davy (like 95% of girls, and the show clearly pushes Davy Jones as a heart throb to the exclusion of the others.) Aunt Judy’s favorite was Peter–she always did favor the underappreciated!

A big point in favor of taking The Monkees on vacation: all three of the kids, from little Jack-Jack (3 1/2) to going-on-jaded Violet (almost 10) really enjoy them. The Monkee goofiness works on several levels. Watching them now, I realize The Monkee’s most lasting contribution to culture is as a precursor of… Scooby Doo, another favorite of the niece/nephews!

We watched a couple of episodes of The Monkees each night. They are short, they won’t cause bad dreams, and they have absolutely NO sexual innuendo! (Have you watched some of the shows aimed at kids lately? Sheesh…)

(The Monkees, Season 1, packaging is also cool: it’s designed to look like the old compact record players.)

Aunt hack ratings:

Age group: 3 and up.

Duration of activity:The episodes are about 20 minutes long. There’s no commercials, but the final credits run with big boxes of Corn Flakes and Apple Jacks plastered next to the boys’ faces. Old school!

Cost: $78 for the set on Amazon. Also available on eBay, for less in most cases. I paid around $45.

Child/aunt fun ratio: 45/55. What can I say? It’s fun for the kids, but it’s a little more fun for me. Depending on whether you love the Monkees, your ratio may vary.

We tried some of the fun animated backdrops that come with it. We could have done a better job finding a blank wall to go behind us, so Photo Booth could have more accurately inserted the roller coaster and aquarium scenes.

But that did not diminish our fun! (And it kinda reminds me of some of those ’60s psychedelic videos…)

Aunt hack ratings:

Age group: 9-12
Duration of activity: 30 minutes
Cost: Photo Booth comes free with your Mac; iMovie is part of the $79 iLife ‘08 suite
Child/aunt fun ratio: 60/40

I composed the video using iMovie ‘08. A lot of people complained that this latest version of iMovie is a step backwards, including me. But then I heard Bob LeVitus of the Houston Chronicle speak. He said that he has cut in half the time it takes him to edit family videos! So I gave it a tryout, and sure enough, you can very quickly edit a little video project. And iMovie ‘08 seamlessly uploads your video to YouTube.

I have hours of video of the niece/nephews that I’ve never edited, because it used to be a minimum 2 hour project – and usually much longer. Now I can do nice short videos in a half hour, or less. This Photo Booth movie took 10 minutes to edit, add music and transitions, and upload to YouTube.

Somewhere there is a dividing line between quality and quantity. I’d rather edit more cute little movies of the kids with iMovie ‘08 than fewer videos that are more sophisticated. I’ll always use Final Cut for documentary filmmaking. But I’ve learned to love iMovie because it takes away the barrier to just getting the kid videos done.

If you want to do even more cool stuff with your iSight camera, check out Freak Show, a cool little piece of software developed by my friend Cosmo. It’s only $12.95, and it’s quite fun. Charlotte and I did a couple YouTube pieces with that last year.

Perusing the shelves, I spotted Stardust, starring Claire Danes and Charlie Cox (a cutie I hadn’t seen before). The movie caught my attention because it also stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro. I remember seeing a preview in the theater, and mistaking it at first for The Golden Compass — it’s got a similar visually fantastic style.

I tried to decipher the review blurbs on the DVD case, knowing that to be a fool’s errand. And then I remembered I had that ultimate aunt tool with me: the iPhone. I quickly called up the Internet Movie Database, and found that Stardust had received a rating of 8.1 out of 10 from IMDb users. That’s high, and so I felt encouraged.

(High School Musical 2 just came out on DVD, but I knew better than to suggest that. When I asked her yesterday if she’d seen the first one, Charlotte sniffed, “Yes. Boring.” That’s the difference between an almost 12-year-old and a 9-year-old like Violet.)

Charlotte picked up “Christmas with the Kranks“. I seemed to remember hearing that it was terrible, but I didn’t have to convince Charlotte to take my word for it. Again using my trusty iPhone, I learned that it had a 4.6 rating. Not good. As I said to her, “I don’t trust these IMDb ratings 100%, but I do think a movie that has been rated twice as high will probably be better.”

Stardust was even better than that. It’s very funny and exciting. There’s swordplay and witches and amazingly imaginative sets, like the pirate ship dirigible captained by De Niro. “Princess Bride” meets “Pirates of the Caribbean”. It features some amusing cameos, including a fun one with Ricky Gervais which will please fans of the original British version of The Office.

It’s rated PG-13. I do think some of the violence would be too intense for Violet and Dash. A lot of knifing and stabbing and gutting of animals… There’s also a whole riff on pirates and cross-dressing that would probably go over their heads–and that’s one of the funniest parts.

Eeeek! Maybe, now that she’s 9 years old, she will not pick Care Bears II: The New Generation. Or My Little Pony: Flight to Cloud Castle. I have a hard time saying “no”. I want to be the open-minded, liberal and respectful aunt, so I hate to dictate what we can watch. (I’d rather just sneak into the video store and choose something on my own, so there’s no discussion!)

As we peruse the New Arrivals, my heart is sinking. Not only do I not see any appropriate movies, there are lots of icky ones with scary-looking covers. Then I remember hearing about “High School Musical.” I’ve always liked musicals, so I suggest it. Violet eagerly agrees.

It’s fun. The music is not bad, the story no more improbable than most movies, and some of the dance numbers are good. It’s clean cut. At a couple points, I found myself saying, “What? He’s not going to kiss her now?” Violet assures me that there’s in more kissing in High School Musical 2.

Watching cutie Zac Efron definitely takes me back to the days of my big crush on David Cassidy!

What I didn’t realize is that it would be the Ultimate Tool in the Aunt Toolkit.

Why Every Aunt Should Have the iPhone

1) Cartoons

I downloaded three episodes of Avatar: The Last Earthbender. The kids love this Nickleodeon show, and so do the grown-ups. It took me an episode or two to warm up to Avatar; the animation is pretty basic and on the surface, it seems kinda hokey. But stay with it: it’s actually pretty sophisticated–and funny. (I want my own ten-ton flying bison… Appa rocks!)

I bought the episodes on iTunes for me: I missed some shows and wanted to catch up. But luckily, I kept them on the iPhone for our family trip to the Virgin Islands. Long flights, missed connections, befuddled children. The death of the pacifier. Before they got too sad (or hysterical), I’d say, “How about an episode of Avatar?” Worked like a charm.

I know. The iPhone is a $600 gadget. (At least it was for me; now the price is down to $399.) Some may think: “You’d let a 7-year-old hold your $600 gadget?” Here’s the thing. The iPhone is surprisingly sturdy. It is difficult to scratch. It can be dropped from a low height. I got a great case for it that doubles as a little stand, perfect for airplane tray tables.

2) Photos

One night, while trying to encourage them into bed, I said, “If you get your teeth brushed and pajamas on, I’ll show you my photos from Crater Lake.” Instant cooperation. If you want to know how easy the iPhone interface is, Jack-Jack instantly figured out how to flip between photos. Of course, he was almost 3. A baby can navigate through iPhone photos as you can see on YouTube.

3) Music

The iPhone has a speaker. Last night, giving Jack-Jack a bath, I could play a Dan Zanes tune to mollify him after getting shampoo in his eyes.

Naturally, he asked: “Can I hold it?” I do let the kids hold the iPhone, as I said above. But absolutely not in the bathtub!

4) Weather

There is a surprising amount of kid entertainment value in the Weather widget. Violet and Dash take turns looking up the weather in cities around the world. Dash was overheard recently asking someone else if their phone could tell them the weather in other cities. “My aunt has an iPhone and we can do that.” (Yes! Racking up the cool aunt points!)

5) Camera

You can take photos with any camera, but with an iPhone, you can email them on the spot. To the other aunts, for example.

6) Games

You can get Bejeweled for the iPhone online. Dash loves this especially. It will distract him without engrossing him, the way a Nintendo Game Boy will.

7) Stock quotations

Just kidding. At least for now…