Not that it's put off those who didn't stay the course: it's good to see MPB back to his old ways after a day or two when we at CiF feared we'd lost him forever.
Never mind OBR and GDP, it was how the chancellor has chosen to mask MPB (male pattern baldness) that was subliminally in the spotlight, thanks to the camera angles in the Commons.
Of course, even at Breezes, there was some organised fun of the traditional all-inclusive kind: a circus school; surfing classes in the sea, which was far too fierce to swim in; a golf course; tennis courts; and the obligatory nightly disco, although the tracks were mostly MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira).
The great harvest of songcraft that was MPB -- Musica Popular Brasileira, or Brazilian popular music, the catchall term for the work of the country's most urbane singer-songwriters from the 1960's to the 80's -- has one major limitation.
Tropical Music, 50 Ferry Street, (973) 344-7990, lures visitors with its selection of Brazilian CDs, from the country-sounding sertanejo to MPB, or Brazilian popular music (all CDs $13.95).
Indeed when the great figures of MPB perform alone onstage with a guitar, there's rarely a problem in any country; their brilliance is manifest.
Down in the Village, Zinc Bar, at 82 West Third Street, focuses on other types of Brazilian music more linked to jazz, such as the bossa nova of Marianni Ebert, on Saturday nights, and Cidinho Teixeira, who specializes in the mainstream pop style known as MPB on Sundays.
In Saturday night's concert at Avery Fisher Hall, "The French Connection: Rising Stars of Creole Song" -- the closing concert of the Caribbean-music series in Lincoln Center Festival 2000 -- Brazilian bossa nova and MPB (or musica popular brasileira) were among the core elements, beside reggae, funk and rumba.
Finally, MPB's nemesis, Ali Altrui McNabab, stepped blinking into the limelight to call for respect for the disenfranchised and socially excluded - and in doing so sparked some of the most impassioned comments of the week.
