Well folks, it's that time of the year again when I retire to my secret, undisclosed holiday-time punpkin'-pie sunshine bunker* for the remainder of the year. Things should get back on a regular schedule on December 29th, followed closely by another brief hiatus to allow for my first hangover of 2009. Until then, let's reflect.

I started this blog this fall, after jumping ship from the City Paper's arts beat to cover a subject a little closer to my area of interest—women (am one). Since then, I've written on contraception access, coy Internet sex fiends, and that sexy dunce ice queen who would become the Vice President of our hearts. Let's see what subjects ya'll found most interesting this year: in a list!

1. SEX/OBAMA: Electoral Dysfunction: In Search of Election Night Sex
2. SARAH PALIN: The Sexist's Vice-Presidential Debate Drinking Game
3. SEX/FIRE: The Good Guys Trial
4. OBAMA: Is This Man Your Ticket to the Inauguration?
5. SEX: Nude Coworkers: Disturbing?
6. SEX/SARAH PALIN: Star in the Sarah Palin Adult Film
7. SARAH PALIN: Now: Live-Blogging the Vice-Presidential Debate
8. GAY ENDURANCE CONTESTS: High Heel Race Seeks Volunteers
9. BOOBS: Breast Cancer Awareness Cake: Fail
10. WOMEN'S HEALTH: Yes, We Have No Birth Control

Thanks very much for reading. And let me know what sexy fire boob contests you'd like to see covered in 2009!

* Phoenix.

Photo via trialsanderrors.

Richter told Graure that the time to decide was now—and that the decision was his alone. "In case this goes badly for you, I don't want you to complain that you were forced to testify, or that you wanted to testify and they wouldn't let you," said Richter. "If Ms. Dharia says, 'The defense rests,' and you decide you want to testify, signal me," he said.

After all witnesses for the defense and the prosecution testified, Ferguson and Dharia took a final five minute break with Graure, outside the courtroom. When they returned, Graure said that he would not testify.

"Is that your decision?" Richter said.

"That's my final answer," said Graure.

"Everyone started yelling and trying to get out," says Bond, a Marine Corps captain. When the flame ignited, he and his friends rushed to the exit. He looked over his shoulder and saw "an individual completely engulfed in flames." He thought he saw another member of the bachelor party "trying to roll some of the flame off of him." It wasn't working.

After exiting the club, says Bond, he and another member of the party made their way to the front of the club. They opened the front door to try to find anyone left behind. They went next door to get a fire extinguisher, then returned to Good Guys and extinguished the rest of the flame, which was still burning in the club's tables and chairs. A couple minutes later, he says, emergency personnel arrived.

Richter explained that the corrections officer informed him the infection "could be cellulitis. She also mentioned a few other terms that I didn't know," he said, before suggesting the trial be postponed at least one day: "There's no way he'll be here today. He could be here tomorrow. I don't know. It could be very serious."

Richter, Graure's attorneys, and the attorneys for the prosecution then discussed how to inform the jury of the development. Graure's counsel first asked Richter to inform the jury of the postponement outside of the courtroom. "I just think it looks better," said defense attorney Andrew Ferguson of the more discrete option. "Even though it's a facade, we continue to play this game of pretending that he's not locked up," Ferguson said of Graure, who appeared yesterday in court in street clothes.

Ferguson then agreed to have jurors file in to hear the news so that the exchange could be recorded by the court reporter. The 15-member jury, 11 male, four female, entered the courtroom briefly before being excused. "As you can see, Mr. Graure is not here," Richter told the jurors, declining to discuss the defendant's whereabouts, or reveal his status as inmate. "He is undergoing medical treatment for a condition which is legitimate, and might be serious."

Fennell also testified as to why there might have been a Secret Service agent outside the club when he arrived: Good Guys backs up against the Naval Observatory. "Where the Vice President resides," Fennell says. Secret Service officers routinely patrol the Glover Park neighborhood for that reason, Fennell says. In all, Secret Service, police, ambulance, and fire department officials responded to the blaze, while employees and bystanders stood around in shock, Fennell says.

"I can't recall any of the faces, but I do remember some of the females, consoling each other and crying," Fennell says.

The man, she says, was "nice"—if loud, obnoxious, and appearing drunk. After their exchange, Kremer says she didn't see the man for about 20 minutes—when she saw him return to the club carrying a "can of gasoline and a lighter."

"Vladimir [Djordjevic] had his arm around him to make sure he didn't get any further into the club," Kremer says. The man "was pouring gasoline anywhere he could possibly pour it." Kremer says she smelled the gasoline. She didn't see the fire ignite, but felt the heat on her back and ran toward the bar to tell the bartender what was happening. She says she has no doubt it was the same person who complimented her appearance earlier in the evening.

Later, Kremer made it down to the basement kitchen, where she saw Djordjevic again. "He was like, engulfed in flames," Kremer says. He was on fire, head to toe, and trying to put himself out with a hose attached to the sink, normally used to clean dishes. It wasn't working. When Kremer turned and ascended the stairs, she says, Djordjevic was still on fire.

When it was all over, Kremer's backside and shoulder were badly bruised. She didn't go to the hospital.

During the cross-examination, the defense questioned whether Kremer actually saw a lighter in the patron's hand. "You didn't actually see a lighter," the defense attorney argued. "I saw a lighter," replied Kremer. "You saw something shiny." "It appeared to be a lighter."

Later, another waitress who was on duty that night, Stephanie Palmer, took the stand. Palmer was working as a "Shooter Girl," a waitress who circles the club with a tray of shots, trying to sell them for $9.75 a pop. She didn't sell any that night before the fire. Shortly after she sat down with her tray, "Vladimir and this guy came in," she says. "They were wrestling. The guy had a canister and he was pouring it all over him, and all over the floor."

Palmer says she noted the stranger was wearing a red jacket and blue jeans. She and her coworkers looked on, confused at what was happening. Then, the gasoline ignited. "The flames hit the ceiling. It blocked off the doorway," she says. Everyone ran. There was pushing and shoving. "I felt like my hair was on fire."

At one point, Palmer lost her shoe and went back to retrieve it. The dancer on the stage nearest the fire, "Golden," jumped off stage. "She flew," Palmer says.

When Palmer finally got outside, she watched Djordjevic exit the building, she says. "He came up next to me and said, 'don't touch me, don't touch me,'" she says. Girls began crying and puking from the scent. Palmer stayed with Djordjevic until the ambulance arrives, she says.

During the examination, Ferguson and Dharia questioned Lazorchack about an ABC investigation into the club that occurred following last year's fire. "If you had served an intoxicated man, the club could have lost its liquor license . . . if Good Guys shut down, you would be out of a job, and you've been there for 15 years." After several more minutes of questioning, Ferguson stated, "You knew that the fire happened on your watch, and you'd prefer that police officers weren't hanging around the club—at least not while on duty, is that correct?" Lazorchack responded that that was correct. "Well, let's be real, like, there are other things that go on at Good Guys," he said. The prosecution objected to the question. The objection was sustained. After approaching the bench, the defense ended the cross-examination of Lazorchack.

When the prosecution again questioned Lazorchack, she spoke of the monkey-making potential of work inside a strip club. In a fifteen minute set, a dancer can make "zero to an endless amount of money," Lazorchack says. Once, she saw a dancer make $700 in 15 minutes—from one customer.

Vasile Graure wasn't such a big spender, but he was "making a show" of paying the dancers before being kicked out for taking a photo, Lazorchack testified. "There was money on the table, and money falling onto the stage from the table," says Lazorchack. "It wasn't in a stack. It was all over." Lazorchack says she assumed the bills were dollars.

Good Guys is a gentleman's club. That means it has "strippers—ladies that dance," the prosecution clarifies for the jury. On the evening of Nov. 4 3 of last year, Lazorchack noticed a man she had never seen before watching those ladies dance. He was "standing up, waving money at the dancers," she says—the strip club sign for "Hey, pay attention to me." He was a white male with dark, thinning hair, Lazorchack says. She identifies him as Vasile Graure, the defendant. He sits in the court room, wearing a light green shirt and spotted tie.

On the night of the fire, Lazorchack says, a dancer named Gabriella suspected that that man had taken a photo of her. That's against the rules of Good Guys. So his cell phone was confiscated and brought to Lazorchack to check out. Lazorchack cycled through the phone and found a photograph of a naked woman from "behind, from the neck to the back of the knees, but mostly in the butt area." She could tell the photo showed Gabriella. "You know Gabriella's butt," she says

Lazorchack informed the man that he wasn't allowed to take photos. "I'm sorry, but it's time to go," she said. The man said he would leave, took a sip of his drink, and headed for the exit, drink in hand. When Lazorchack followed him and asked him not to take his drink outside, he said, "Fuck you, you can shove it up your ass," Lazorchack says. He then threw down the glass near the door. It shattered.

Lazorchack spent the next several minutes doing chores—having a busboy clean up the mess and retrieving a t-shirt for a bachelor party that was going on that night. Within about 20 minutes, Lazorchack says, she heard a "rumbling noise. An unhappy noise." She had just made an announcement about the bachelor party. "It wasn't the happy noise I was looking for," she says. "It was loud. It was scared." When Lazorchack looked up, she saw the front of the bar consumed in flames. It was wall-to-wall fire, she says.

Lazorchack called 911. She saw everyone tumbling toward the exit. She could see people, but couldn't make them out through "the black and the flames and the smoke." But she could hear them. "You could hear them screaming," she says.

She told 911 the address of the club, then exited the building to the alley. She retrieved a flashlight from her car and went back to the club to try to help people. A man in a military uniform stopped her from going back into the club, she says. She heard screaming people, burning and crackling. That's when she saw Vladimir Djordjevic, a manager of the club.

She could see his face, she says, but every other part of him was consumed in flames, "like a frame . . . a frame of fire." He was exiting the building. He looked charred from "head to toe," says Lazorchack. The only clothing that was left was "in the bathing suit area." He kept his arms out from his sides so he wouldn't touch his own burned body. His skin was "charred, burned, glistening, black," she says. Clothing parts were "dripping" off his body.

Outside, it was chilly. "We were all cold," she says. "Half of us didn't have any clothes on."

When she approached Djordjevic, he told her to stay calm. He told her not to touch him. She asked him how it happened. Lazorchack says he replied, "I saw that man coming back with a can, and a tried to stop him."

Once Djordjevic was transferred to a stretcher and put in an ambulance, Lazorchack assessed the damage to the club. "Everybody was standing around, crying and shaking," she says. "I had a lot of naked employees that needed clothing." Other employees had "cuts and bruises from falling down stairs and over tables." Inside, the club was "burnt down." Everything was black. TV's were melted. The ATM was melted, too. "There was a gas can on the floor," Lazorchack says.

One year later, many of the dancers who were working at the time of the fire have now left. "Gabriella is gone," Lazorchack says. "Golden is gone. Royale is gone. Star is gone."

I'll have more on the trial when it resumes later this afternoon.

One year later, the 38-year-old Romanian citizen, a Phoenix resident, is being tried in D.C. Superior Court. Opening statements in the case began on Monday; I'll be at the trial all day today, posting updates of the proceedings as they happen.