With a quarter century of stand-up under her belt, Kate Clinton calls herself “the last lesbian comic standing.” But where Kate really stands is as at the forefront of the lesbian movement, where her sharp, politically charged humor has made her a celebrated voice of enlightenment and empowerment. Since quitting her day job as a high school English teacher in 1981, she has spread her comic gospel, helping us laugh our way “through peacetime, wartime and scoundrel time.”

In 2006, to mark her silver anniversary as a performer, Kate embarked on a 50-city “It’s Come to This!” tour, sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights. With a sassy new platinum blonde coif (so she can “look more like Brad Pitt” and, thus, get that much closer to Angelina Jolie), Kate takes the stage in Long Beach, riffing on everything from menstruation to gay cruises, the need to dress well for surveillance cameras to the passing of the Pope.

Her hilarious performance is interspersed with a variety of personal moments along the tour route, including backstage banter with her 18-year partner Urvashi Vaid, a public reading from her new book What the L?, a Curve magazine interview at the Dinah Shore Weekend in Palm Springs, and a brief tribute to “the mother of comedy” by today’s up-and-coming young lesbian comics. For a woman who has successfully changed people’s lives and minds through her smart style of lesbian humor, it’s a tribute well earned. — JOANNE PARSONT