Getting Variables to work with AS3

programming flash
1

Please oh PLEASE!!! You kind souls, help this wretched person.
Cannot get my variables to work. My relevant sections of code:
AS3:


var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest ("http://www.xxxxx.com/pages/XXXX/XXXXindex.php");
request.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
var flashvars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
flashvars.idtag = this.loaderInfo.parameters.id;            
flashvars.hoster = "";
flashvars.guest = "";
request.data = flashvars;
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader (request);
loader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.VARIABLES;
loader.load(request);
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);
function onComplete (event:Event):void
{
    var flashvars:URLVariables = new URLVariables( event.target.data );
    hoster.String = flashvars.hoster;
    guest.String = flashvars.guest;
}
           
   
var hoster;
var guest;
 
PHP index.php:

<?php
$hoster = $_COOKIE['hoster'];
$guest = $_POST[guest];
?>
 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
    <head>
        <title>record</title>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
        <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            var swfVersionStr = "10.1.52";
            var xiSwfUrlStr = "";
            var flashvars = "hoster:<?php echo (urlencode($hoster)) ?>&guest:<?php echo (urlencode($guest))?>";
            var params = {};
            params.quality = "high";
            params.bgcolor = "#d0e2ff";
            params.play = "true";
            params.loop = "true";
            params.wmode = "window";
            params.scale = "showall";
            params.menu = "true";
            params.devicefont = "false";
            params.salign = "";
            params.allowscriptaccess = "sameDomain";
            var attributes = {};
            attributes.id = "record";
            attributes.name = "record";
            attributes.align = "middle";
            swfobject.createCSS("html", "height:100%; background-color: #d0e2ff;");
            swfobject.createCSS("body", "margin:0; padding:0; overflow:hidden; height:100%;");
             swfobject.embedSWF("record.swf?hoster:<?php echo  (urlencode($hoster)) ?>&guest:<?php echo  (urlencode($guest))?>", "flashContent","750", "650", swfVersionStr,  xiSwfUrlStr, flashvars, params, attributes);

Page loads, but no action. Please tell me what I am missing or doing wrong.