Cancel that Trip to the DR

Frankly, when we learned that Nelson de la Rosa, the world's smallest man/ Pedro Martinez mascot, had died, we did not automatically think, "I would like to look at his lifeless body." Then again, we have still not been to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Museum of Science, so we're clearly out of touch with the mainstream when it comes to looking at dead people in museums. Other people, though, are interested in checking out De la Rosa's little corpse, and for them, we have bad news: No dice.

The Director of the Dominican Man Museum (yes, that's really what it's called, although it doesn't sound so strange in Spanish) announced that his institution didn't have the conditions to display and preserve a dead body properly, and suggested that richer countries with better museums might take on the task, or De la Rosa's family could build its own museum. Unfortunately, New York's El Diario/La Prensa tells us (in Spanish) that De la Rosa's family "prefers a Christian burial." So if you were thinking of building your winter vacation around a pilgrimage to see Pedro's mascot's earthly remains, think again.

(By the way, this is not the first important De la Rosa news you would have missed if you limited yourself to English language periodicals. While both the Globe and El Diario told us that De la Rosa was survived by a nine-year-old son, only El Diario explained, parenthetically, that the son is "normal size.")

Photo: If you're jonesing to see a mummified person on your vacation, may we suggest going to Moscow? Lenin is still on display, at least for the time being.