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Judging from last night's strong opening night Nielsens, much of the viewing public wasn't as actively turned off by NBC's wildly intrusive Earl-awareness campaign as we were, but another report of one of their unconventional promotions we'd didn't know about has come in:

I was at Barney's Beanery on the Promenade in Santa Monica last weekend. It was opening day of football season and starting at about noon, four or five girls were walking around with black t-shirts with MONITORS in them with clips of My Name Is Earl playing.

Everyone outside (mostly old tourists) seemed to be more intrigued by the fact that these girls had monitors up their shirts and wondered why they would ever do a gig like that in such a public place on a day of rest and football, rather than what the heck the show My Name is Earl was actually about.

And none of the girls were good-looking.

As galling as we're sure this interruption was to football fans, we think we're finally starting to see some method in this guerilla-marketing madness. NBC obviously wanted all of the attention focussed on the television show flashing across their walking billboards' chests, not on their faces. Annoying, sure, but coolly logical.