A&E

On March 12 you will get to witness a club favorite—the mash-up—come to life. Hip-hop and soul singer Cee-Lo Green and pop-art titans The Ting Tings will unite for the Red Bull Soundclash, a unique experience where two bands from different sides of the musical spectrum join forces.

Since coming up in the mid-’90s, Wanda Sykes has ranged far and wide. She’s been on TV and in movies, was an Emmy-nominated television writer, a talk-show host, a Crank Yankers puppet and, recently, played Miss Hannigan in a run of Annie. Really, doesn’t everyone want to terrorize Depression-era orphans just once in their career? Yet the constant has always been stand-up. In 2009, she scored an HBO special with I’ma Be Me. After Fox canceled The Wanda Sykes Show last year, the comedian went back on the road with an eye on putting together another hour. She appears March 11-12 at The Mirage’s Terry Fator Theater.

Karen Russell’s debut novel, Swamplandia! (Alfred A. Knopf, $25), is both magical and menacing. It’s the story of the Bigtree family, a group of eccentrics who run an alligator-themed amusement park in Florida. The park’s main attraction is the family matriarch—Hilola Bigtree—who wrestles alligators while her husband, Chief Bigtree, works both the spotlight and the microphone. In addition to the theme park, the Bigtrees have three teenage children: Kiwi, their only boy, is weary of home schooling and curious about life on the mainland; Osceola (“Ossie”) is obsessed with the spirit world; and 13-year-old Ava is an alligator wrestler in training, dreaming of the day she will replace her mother in the spotlight.