Id reccomend one of the JVC headunits, the are very nice, and have animated graphics, such as a moving sub woofer, level meters and a bunch of other crazy crap.
you can change the screen color to red, white, blue, green, yellow, orange, purple, pink and thousands of shades of them colors.
I want to say that the HU im thinking of is a JVC KDS2200 or something like that, and then there is a kds2300 or 2400 which plays mp3s also. They are last years models so im sure there on
ebay for pretty cheap.
Just a few of the decks im talking about, here are some different models
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?
ViewItem&category=50559&item=5731457317&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?
ViewItem&category=50559&item=5729728804&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=50559&item=5730217297&rd=1
Id think you would be very happy with one of these, its a great deck to start out with for what you seem to be looking for.
This is a nice one too, but not the ones I was talking about.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=39759&item=5730107864&rd=1