by Deborah Rieselman

ALYSON BRISTOL has been inside Kermit the Frog's head. Not just figuratively speaking, trying to grasp how a Muppet thinks. But literally. In person. Physically walking around inside that little green head.

Well, actually, it was a great big head. The kind that gets filled with helium and goes bobbing down Broadway on Thanksgiving Day.

As vice president of Macy's annual events, Bristol, CCM '75, is associate producer of the company's annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, "the longest running show down Broadway," she says. The musical theater alumna from the University of Cincinnati traded in colleagues like Rock Hudson, Roberta Peters and Angela Lansbury to work with a frog. "The parade is an American icon," she says.

For 76 years, the parade has officially kicked off the Christmas season for many Americans who refuse to drink a drop of egg nog until Santa waves at the end of the parade. Last year, 2.5 million lined New York streets to wave back, and another 34 million watched the three-hour NBC spectacle that earned two Daytime Emmys in May.

The fall 2000 event will be Bristol's 14th parade, a responsibility she did not assume lightly, but one that caused her to give up a successful stage career. While singing and dancing were satisfying, something was missing, she says. Although she never suspected that Garfield and Bullwinkle would fill the void in her life, she eventually traded spotlights and curtain calls for the trials and triumphs of live television.

In the end, the career shift did not abandon her musical theater training, but more fully utilized it, Bristol explains. She credits her College-Conservatory of Music experience for enabling her to handle the diversity and magnitude of parade responsibilities -- producing, casting, directing, staging and dealing with music, costumes and makeup.

She still gets to work with stars, but now they are stars of stage, screen and recording studios who make guest appearances. She also gets to work regularly with big names from CCM because the parade telecast always features Broadway dance numbers. And any Broadway cast includes a CCM alum, she says. "We're everywhere. The Actors Equity (union) refers to us as the CCM Mafia."

Bristol quickly admits that working on the parade brings many joys, but just as quickly points out that it involves intense, year-round work, too. "Every day I do something related to the parade," she states.

To begin with, Macy's has a full-time theatrical production department, a design and construction studio in New Jersey with 15 full-time employees, as well as four warehouses to store 30 large floats and 25 Kermit-sized balloons, each one averaging 60 feet in length and 450 pounds in weight. In addition, 50 employees voluntarily serve on a parade committee all year long, and additional full-time employees are hired seasonally.

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