Parallel crossings for pair of comedians

Two comedians, both finding their original career choices a little confining, are surrounded by construction walls lately.

At the Las Vegas Club, the walls are deliberately claustrophobic, a maze where visitors are told they are running from a mad dog. This is only the beginning of Amazing Johnathan's SCREAMont Experiment, a haunted house set to open in the Las Vegas Club on Oct. 6.

Anyone who knows the comic prankster or attended one of his epic Halloween parties understands this is in his DNA. Even as a teen working Michigan drive-ins, Johnathan (Szeles) would put on monster masks and sneak up on young couples in convertibles.

Meanwhile, over at Planet Hollywood Resort, John Padon watches a more respectable coat of burgundy paint go on the walls of his Sin City Comedy Theatre, styled after a vintage movie theater circa 1959. He hopes to have the venue open by mid-October.

Padon and Johnathan are both safely into their 50s and have hit parallel turning points in their lives.

Padon called himself a "burlesque comic" because Las Vegas topless shows kept him employed for 10 years. But in 2009, he and business partner Kevin Kearney made the leap to their first Sin City as tenants of the V Theater, adding burlesque striptease to the stand-up mix.

"All my friends who own comedy clubs are rich, and all my friends who are comedians are poor. I did the math and said, 'You know what? I'm going to the other side.' "

Johnathan did hit that higher level of fame, if not the big time, at least the top of the middle with Comedy Central specials. But he and Padon both found it's not as easy in Las Vegas now without going on the road. Both say they are too old for that. "I don't have any Facebook jokes," Padon says.

Johnathan hopes to spend two years in his new room at Bally's "and then retire from the Vegas scene. I feel 15 years here will have been enough," he says. "I will do an occasional road gig but will be semiretired."

Just as his timing was good in the 1980s, when stand-up exploded into a franchised industry, Johnathan tests his new business amid a boomlet of "celebrity haunts" such as Penn & Teller's maze at Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights this year. Filmmaker Eli Roth also is betting on the viability of his Goretorium as a year-round attraction.

"I've been lucky to ride the tide with both (comedy and scares)," Johnathan says. "I've also seen the demise of one of them, but I won't see the demise of scary. They're both physical emotions. Everyone likes to laugh and everyone likes to be scared."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.