​If you've always wanted to be part of the two week riot of performance that constitutes the Boulder Fringe Festival, you need to get your application in before 11:59 p.m. on Monday, January 30. The festival -- organized in the anarchic spirit of Fringe Festivals all over the world -- isn't juried. Which means audiences are as likely to find themselves watching the luminous and highly professional Gemma Wilcox as a couple of dazed teenagers stumbling round the stage, not exactly sure how they got there.

Director David Ortolano, who teaches at Naropa, says the Festival helps artists define their work and find their audiences in a cheap, creative, and supportive environment, without having to deal with juries or other middlemen. He describes a magician who came one year and found his show universally panned: "But he was still excited to be here and learn that lesson. He signed up the next year and did much better."

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via moviehousehusband.tumblr.com

​As the end of the month approaches -- and the rent is due -- other expenses fall by the wayside. We start making bizarre food concoctions out of whatever is left in the fridge and skimp on luxuries, like shampoo. But even though the landlord is looking for us, it's no reason to skimp on fun. Here's a list of ten things to do for under $10 this weekend, so you can go out guilt free. Go to westword.com/calendar for a full listing of events.

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Nice birdy! From IMAX "Flying Monsters 3-D"

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Look! Up in the air! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a pterosaur! A what? When we think of prehistoric flying things, it's usually the more well-known feathered dinosaurs, such as archeopteryx, that we conjure in our minds. But the pterosaur, which reached unbelievable sizes and was related more closely to lizards, enjoyed remarkable success at life up in the air, where it monitored the heavens and chased ancient insects for eons.

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"Jonathan and Govinda," Faith Stone, acrylic on canvas, submission to Heart Art Denver

​ Giving to charity when you're an artist may seem like a catch-22. After all, many emerging artists could use some charity of their own. But Heart Art Denver has made it possible to give back to the community by donating a piece or art to their 18th annual AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Design) Colorado Heart Art Charity Event. Submissions are accepted until February 3, and coordinator Felix Sanchez explains the details.

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​Vine Street Pub, along with a group of fifth-graders from Bromwell Elementary School, will host a fundraiser on Sunday night for the Raymond Wentz Foundation, which helps raise money for parents whose children have cancer and are dealing with the medical costs associated with chemotherapy.

To get people involved, four Bromwell students -- Ava, Sammie, Justin and Abbie (one of whom is my daughter) -- formed an organization called 4 Hearts 4 Help and then enlisted the skills of seniors living at the Highlands West and Highlands South Independent Living Facility in Wheat Ridge.

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​Wax your mustaches and practice your crazy eyes: Salvador Dali is coming to Colorado, for a month-long stay at the Center for the Arts/ Evergreen.

Okay, so it's unlikely that Dali himself will show up. And the items on display are actually poster reproductions on loan from the Dali museum in Florida (the second largest Dali museum in the world). Still, the greatest surrealism comes from the realities that don't make sense.

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An even bigger challenge.

Almost as if the producers new what a mistake they made with last week's episode, this week they turned up the excitement with big guests and an even bigger challenge. The designers have been tasked with creating a garment inspired by a flavor of gelato to show to fashion legend Diane Von Furstenburg and supermodel Miranda Kerr. The kicker, though, is that they only get six hours to finish everything.

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Photo by Britt Chester

There's little snow along the Front Range, but there's a blizzard of activity at the Colorado Convention Center, which is currently hosting 20,000 industry buyers from around the world at the SnowSports Industries of America Trade Show.

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​On January 5, 3,000 excited students at the Junior Theater Festival were eagerly awaiting the arrival of a few actors and executive producers from the new NBC drama Smash. They weren't waiting to bombard the stars with autograph requests or to blind them with flashing cameras; nor were they waiting to ask them how to break into show biz. Rather, the budding thespians were on pins and needles waiting for the celebrities' announcement, which would reveal which of the 65 schools present at the festival in Atlanta would win one of the fifteen coveted spots in NBC's new philanthropic initiative "Smash: Make a Musical," which will work with the chosen schools to make and perform musicals, in hopes of building bases for long-term, self-sustaining theater programs.

And when the winners were finally announced, they included Place Bridge Academy, located at 7125 Cherry Creek North Drive in Denver.

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"Big Baby," Larry Bob Phillips, ink on panel

​Just like the mass panic that's sure to ensue when the end of the world comes this December, Plus Gallery's new show "Apocalypse? How!" has a lot going on. To start, the show features four different artists, symbolic of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Donald Fodness, Larry Bob Phillips, Drew Englander, and Paul Nudd. The show also features the written work of writer Nancy Hightower, who's provided a narrative to accompany the art. Most interestingly, though, is the grotesque theme that ties all the work together.

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