Dina Martina has been performing in Seattle for 27 years, and somehow, against the odds, she gets better with time. “Compliments of the season to you and yours! He is risen. Christ is risen. I’m lovin’ it,” she says, pumping the air, a poinsettia attached to her Madonna-like head-mic.

“Oh, did you see that fly?” she said, as a fly that would not leave her alone swooped in front of her face. “That’s Derek. He’s always stealing spotlights.” And then she went off on what had to be an entirely ad-libbed jag about Derek the fly, fabled house fly at Re-Bar, concluding with a sad story about finding him dead on a window sill last year. “He was flat and lifeless, but everyone told me he’s back! He’s back!”

Watching Dina Martina riff on the holidays and reincarnation is like being served a delicious vat of clichés au gratin. You’d think the chubby-older-woman-with-a-hairy-back-and-no-talent-but-thinks-she’s-God’s-gift-to-singing shtick would get old, but it doesn’t, because Grady West, who inhabits her horrible fashion choices, is a world-class artist, a first-rate writer, and a comedy genius. (He has a Stranger Genius Award.) There’s something so endurably brilliant about Dina’s incurably bonkers self-empowerment, but also something grim and beastly about who she would be without it.

I saw The Dina Martina Christmas Show a few nights ago, with someone who hadn’t seen a Dina show in a decade, and she couldn’t believe how much funnier it was than she remembered.

Tickets and more info right here.