One family's parade ritual of a heckling-hilarity kind

After a 12-hour bus ride and a night full of the usual teenage prank calls and ice cube fights in the hotel hallway, the York Comprehensive High School Band approached yesterday's parade with the seriousness only teenagers can muster.

Sleep-deprived and a little mortified, the 142 South Carolina teens played "Eye of the Tiger" with no trace of irony on their faces as they marched along the Ben Franklin Parkway in the city's 90th annual Thanksgiving Day Parade.

That was until the teens met the Gilman family of Plymouth Meeting, who have "interacted" with the parade participants for nearly three decades.

"Yeah, Kinzie! Your dad loves you!" Kevin Gilman, 28, shouted to a blond flute player, who blushed before breaking into a wide grin, braces and all.

"Spin, Tyler! Spin!" Kevin's father, Mark Gilman, 54, shouted to the boy playing the sousaphone, who obliged and spun a full 360 degrees, drawing cheers and applause.

The Gilman brood does its research, but it gleaned the band intel by sheer chance: A couple of band parents, snapping pictures of their daughter in the flute section, stood next to the Gilmans at the edge of 19th Street.

An Irish family with the gift of gab, the Gilmans quickly learned the name of the band director, the couple's daughter, Lexi King, her best friend Kinzie, and the student carrying the biggest instrument.

Some students looked up suspiciously when they heard their names shouted from the crowd, which was about three people deep along the parade route. Others laughed, looking to their band director.

"You guys are awesome!" said Lexi's father, Glen King, 51, of York, S.C. "You made our day."

Mark Gilman started taking his four children to the parade in the early 1980s. "I was bored with them," he said, laughing.

While some families enjoy annual routines for the parade - standing in the same spot, stopping at the same coffee shop for breakfast - the Gilmans enjoy a kind of ritual chaos.

After a late-night family gathering, where alcohol is in no short supply, the family patriarch and its matriarch, Mary Ann, rouse the crew, load them into cars, and rush to the city.

Each year, they stand in a different place. Sometimes they forget where they parked. One time they nearly missed the whole parade because of Mark Gilman's alleged "poor parking ability," said son Kevin.

But every year, the parade-watching clan grows. Yesterday, 15 people whooped, hollered, and heckled the beauty queens on floats, the clowns on scooters, and the teenagers in stiff band uniforms and feathered hats.

"Will you come take a picture with us?" Kevin Gilman shouted to Miss New Jersey Ashley Fairfield.

"I can't come down," she said, a look of regret on her face.

"We'll come up!" Kevin Gilman yelled back. "The whole restraining order is overrated."

Many in the crowd yell for people holding the big balloons to spin. Nothing seems to draw louder cheers from the sidewalk than a pirouetting Mr. Potato Head or Frosty the Snowman.

The Gilmans ask everyone, including parade organizers in golf carts, to spin. And most oblige.

"We got the cart guy going!" Mark Gilman shouted.

As the parade has changed over the years, the Gilmans have adapted. Their yelling was once enough to draw people down from the floats for a hug or a picture. Now, they do research and tell lies.

So Kevin Gilman, who sells radio ads for a living, brought a manila folder stacked with stapled Wikipedia entries on the parade celebrities.

He told the Clique Girlz, a tween singing group, that, like them, he got his start through the Backstreet Boys. He told Mark Indelicato, a Philadelphia-born actor with a role on the ABC show Ugly Betty, that his cousin lives in the New Jersey town where Indelicato went to school.

But it's the marching bands, and unsuspecting teenagers, that seem to be the family's favorite target.

They blow whistles to start the bands and break into peals of laughter when a confused trumpet player jumps to attention.

"Will you be my Facebook friend?" Kevin Gilman asked a blond flag girl from Fort Wayne, Ind. When she began marching away, he muttered forlornly, "No! Don't leave us."

One year, the family figured out the rival high schools of all the marching bands and taunted them throughout the parade.

"Our whole mission," said Brian Gilman, "is to yell at them and get them to smile."