A great zucchini but not the Great Zucchini. No public domain images of him. (Image by Lmbuga.)

An excerpt from “The Peekaboo Paradox,” Gene Weingarten’s excellent 2006 Washington Post chronicle of the complicated life of Eric Knaus, better known as D.C.’s most popular children’s party entertainer, the Great Zucchini:

“From the moment I met him, there were things that puzzled me about the Great Zucchini. Unless I drove him, for example, he relied on cabs to get to all of his gigs. He’d recently totaled his car, he explained, and hadn’t gotten around to buying a new one. Besides, he said, he found cabs less restrictive.

Also, the Great Zucchini didn’t seem to live anywhere. He had an address in Bethesda, but he would always want to meet at one Starbucks or another. Every time I proposed coming to his house some morning, he was staying elsewhere overnight. He seemed to crash everywhere but home.

His act was never fancy, but in recent months it had lost whatever frills it once had. On his Web site, the Great Zucchini is pictured at the White House Easter Egg Roll, where he once performed in a fancy black vest with cartoon smiley faces on it. He used to wear that vest to all his performances but lost it some time ago and has no plans to replace it.

He is more than a little disorganized. He lost a glowing-thumb trick, then found it, but it was broken, and he never got a new one. At one point, he lost his cell phone. When we were together, he often commandeered mine. Many of his magic props seem to be weathered to the point of decrepitude. His dirty diaper is years old. His magic bag with a false panel — a ‘change bag,’ in magicians’ terms — is soiled and ripped. The once-orange sponge balls he palms for an illusion are brown with use. And there’s that persistent, just-rolled-out-of-bed stubble. He didn’t always have that.

Some parents I talked to were worried that the Great Zucchini might be rotting on the vine. Their guess was substance abuse, or something even darker.

This was understandable, but wrong. His demons turned out to be of a different species, more benign, perhaps, but also more interesting.

Have you ever tried to peel a zucchini? It’s not like a potato. The skin is pretty thick. You don’t get it all with the first swipe.

Eric and I were in Arlington, at a fifth birthday party for a boy named Charlie. It was the first time the mother, Sarah Moore, had hired the Great Zucchini, and she had no complaints. He was everything she’d been told he’d be, she said, as she surveyed her post-party, preprandial dining room, aswarm with giddy kids.

‘He’s a big draw. You know, we wouldn’t have gotten half this turnout with a moon bounce,’ Sarah said, completely seriously.

On our way to the party, Eric and I had been talking football, and I had said I thought the New York Giants would win their next game. He agreed but said they wouldn’t beat the spread. I’d found that a little odd, and on our way back from the party I took a stab.

‘You’re a gambler,’ I said.

‘I need a cigarette,’ he said.

We stopped for cigarettes. He took a long drag, and smiled. It was as though he’d been waiting for this release for weeks.

‘Look, I’m not Mister Rogers, okay?'”