Parade Should Give Macy’s a Leg Up

Here’s something a lot of people don’t know about me. I’ve been in costume as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade participant. Yep, those aren’t real actors escorting the floats. They are volunteer employees of Macy’s and their families and friends.

Don’t be jealous of me, I haven’t done it since my wife’s first go-around with the retailer. Last year I recovered from cervical fusion surgery as my wife, Ursula, escorted Ashley Tisdale. This year I’ll be covering a high school football game while Ursula escorts Miley Cyrus (and fights off twice the paparazzi that she had to last year).

My co-workers though it would be cool to tell the world about my parade experience. But really, I can’t until I make this post blogworthy. So here it goes.

More than 44 million people will tune in and watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Sure, there are other sponsors, other advertisers, etc., but if you think about it, that makes it one of the most popular infomercials going. And with this holiday season gearing up to be one of the worst ever financially, maybe three straight hours of Macy’s talk on Thanksgiving morning may help keep the department store top-of-mind in many households.

Until, of course, the turkey is done being served and all the newspaper inserts for every store imaginable are passed around the table. And then the next morning, when shoppers hit the malls at 3 a.m. only to window shop for the largest imaginable clearance sales.

There, I did it.

No digital photos are available, and I think my scanner only works with Windows 2000. But prints of me as a herald (pretty much a card), as a train conductor and as a bee exist somewhere, maybe even in my own house.

And each of those three years, there was no bigger thrill than walking down Broadway and realizing that millions of eyes were on you. People in apartment buildings several floors up with their windows open, families going to office buildings to get a glimpse of the parade. It’s an awesome feeling.

Now I was on a celebrityless float in 1998 (the rocking horse), had the cast of Freaks and Geeks on it in 1999, and some up-and-coming country group called Rascal Flatts on it in 2000 (Three guys who were actually thrilled to be there, did their own singing, and talked with us all before the parade began).

But the story everyone wanted me to tell was the one involving Christina Aguilera in 1999.

I was in my bee costume, trying to stay dry on a rainy morning, and was walking around with two guys from the Albany store who were coming down from an all-nighter. We suddenly saw a squeaky-clean Aguilera sitting on a float, waiting for the parade to start. The two Albany guys went up to her and asked her to sign their stingers. Which, of course, freaked her out a little bit.

The Albany guys took off, and it was just me, Christina, and her body guard. So I rolled up the spandex costume sleeve on my right arm and said “I don’t have any paper, could you please sign my arm?”

So in this bubble-gum genie-in-a-bottle voice she says sure, and did her best to sign my arm, after rubbing it with her shirt sleeve to dry it a bit.

So when she’s done signing it, I look at the damp autograph and said to her, “Thank you, Britney [Spears], I’m your biggest fan!”

And that was it. Pop-princess Christina Aguilera was pissed. And I got the first glimpse of the bad-ass Xtina persona she showed the world a few years later. I was laughing, the body guard had to keep her from killing me, and later, she slipped on the wet float while lip-syncing in Herald Square in front of a national audience.

Yeah, I know, I probably ruined her Thanksgiving. But it’s too late to turn back time. And she’s gone on to one heck of a career… while all I can do is blog about harassing her and getting away with it.