Mr. Weber's Spanish II Project

This article was last updated on: November 6th of 2021

A screenshot of the project, featuring the character "Bono El Mono", voiced by Mr. Weber.

"Attention, citizens of Willemstan. At 8:30PM of tonight, I will begin a livestream of Mr. Weber’s Spanish II Project, on the Silly Goose YouTube channel... Enjoy the best next 15 minutes of your existence!"

- Charlie Nolan to Willemstan in #notifications, 07/24/2019.

"Ian! This is great! Thanks for sharing! Hope you are well!"

- Mr. Weber after seeing his Spanish project again 22 years later, 06/21/2020.

Lore

During his time in Williamston High School, Patrick Weber, along with the then students Jim Smith, Danielle Hidalgo, Carla Schell, and Matt Waligorski, created the "Spanish II Project", a school project for Spanish 2 featuring a prop named "Bono el Mono". Filming of the project took place from June 4th of 1998 - June 9th of 1998. Given the time in which it was produced, this was likely their final project for the year. At some point, this project was written to a standard T120 VHS tape, and sat abandoned in Williamston High School until it was retrieved in 2018 by members of Willemstan, almost twenty-one years after it was created. You can view the entire project in its original form here you would like.

The project was initially shared with the Willemstan public on July 24th of 2019, a couple months after it was originally recovered. This was done through a livestream, which was quickly taken down on YouTube due to copyright issues. After many attempts, the project was finally released on Silly Goose YouTube Channel for good on July 25th of 2019. The tape we found the project on may not be the original, as someone used the tape in 2010 to record a Republican debate in Michigan. This created some random static and distorted music at the start of the tape. During 2021, the Weber Project was moved to another VHS tape so that Charlie Nolan could use the tape for WENIS.

The "Weber Project" (as it is often called by members of Willemstan) was set to private on Silly Goose during the March Incident. At some point, the video was made public again in 2022. On October 23rd of 2021, a higher quality recapture was made and uploaded to Silly Goose.

Despite the age and overall incoherence of the project, the Weber Project is one of the most well known pieces of media in Willemstan's history. Our fascination with the project was initially due to the fact that Patrick Weber later came back to the district as a teacher, and actually taught many members of Willemstan 8th grade US History.

Analysis

This project has provided some insight into what WHS was like in its early years. For one, a shot of the library shows what the library used to look like before it was extensively renovated. In fact, the tables and chairs look similar to what was seen in the library of WMS during the mid 2010s, so it is plausible that the old library furniture was moved to the middle school at some point. WHS had telephones available for the students to use outside the main office. Finally, the tables and chairs featured in the commons were the same ones seen in 2019, so Williamston High School probably used the same cafeteria tables and chairs for two decades.

Email to Mr. Weber

On June 21st of 2020, Ian Hampton emailed the Weber Project to Mr. Weber himself, not really expecting to get a reply. The "recovered recently from WHS" part of his email was a lie, as it would have been really weird to tell the truth about how we had known about the project for over a year at that point by taking it from the school. Not even five hours later, Mr. Weber responded.