Very official. via Andrew WK

UPDATE: As we predicted, Andrew WK will not be traveling to Bahrain as any sort of cultural ambassador. It turns out that the rocker merely had an invitation to speak—but even that was revoked because it didn’t pass muster with the State Department.

A State Department spokesperson told us the following: “Andrew WK had been invited by the US Embassy in Bahrain to be part of a cultural speakers program, but upon further review, the program was canceled because it did not meet the standards of the State Department.”

We don’t yet know why the appearance was canceled—or who had the notion to invite him—but it’s clear that Andrew WK will not now be Bahrain’s “Cultural Ambassador of Partying,” as he wrote on his web site, and was never going to be exactly that in the first place. Nor will Andrew WK be sent to the Middle East ”in the tradition of the American Jazz Ambassadors” from the 1960s, as he also proclaimed on his site.

WK has issued a Twitter reaction, and seems pretty floored by the way things have unfolded.

I’m just blown away. After a year of planning, the US State Dept. just canceled my Middle East trip because I’m too party.

— ANDREW WK (@AndrewWK) November 26, 2012

His web site promises a comment on the situation soon.

Our original post below:

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Andrew WK is a lot of things: king of partying, party businessman, excellent partier and friend to children and animals. He’s also apparently really good at punking the internet, since a single unsourced blog post announcing his appointment to be a cultural ambassador to the Kingdom of Bahrain was reblogged today by everyone from Pitchfork to NME to the Huffington Post to Fox News to Vulture and everyone on your Facebook feed. But wait — why does every single news story about this link back to either Andrew WK’s own web site or the other news stories about it? (more…)

If for some reason you find yourself needing a passport renewal in, say, a week’s time, do not turn to costly expediters for help–you can save the money and get your passport yourself in an equally short time. This I discovered recently when I found out I had to go to Toronto in about 9 days, with only a just-expired passport to get me there. A Google search of “rush passports” turned up a place called Rush Passport, which quoted $250 to get a Passport done in four to five business days, and an agency called It’s Easy, which asks $129 for a renewal in 5 to 7 days.   (more…)