Bruce "Big Bucks" Wasserstein was awarded $18 million in restricted shares by Lazard Ltd. This represents an 80% increase from last year, when he got $10 million (plus a $4.2 million salary), thanks to a stock rise of 48% in 2006. The Wasserstein family currently owns $585 million in stock/stock rights; Wasserstein is the sixth-largest shareholder of public stock. Here's to bigger and better parties in '07.

LAZARD BIDS UP BRUCE [Bloomberg via NYPost]

John "$40 Million Man" Mack isn't the only one having a good day. Carl Icahn and Bruce Wasserstein are probably pretty pleased with life this morning, too: Time Warner shares were up over 1.3% yesterday, closing at $21.65, a high not seen since 2002.

Icahn, who owns 55 million Time Warner shares, is now up over $200 million since waging a contentious proxy fight against chief Dick Parsons earlier this year.

Wasserstein and Lazard, which took big hits for advising Icahn on his failed proxy fight in February, is set to rake in over $28 million in fees if the stock stays at this level and more if it goes higher.

Lazard gets paid about $6.5 million for every $1 that Time Warner shares rise above $18.

Happy Hanukkah, indeed.

CARL'S GOOD TIME [NY Post]

The “Wasserstein 2006 Reunion” was the kind of party you’d only want to attend if you were being paid to do so and lucky for me, I was. Cash bar, a bizarrely decorated alleyway type venue in midtown, and a Mariachi band: it had all the trappings of disaster. (Actually, that’s not fair; in the right setting, a Mariachi band can be a real crowd pleaser. Here, though, they just looked uncomfortable). A man who plunked down $26.5 million on an apartment, whose magazine (New York) is said to be losing money, who “should be embarrassed about his clumsy attempt to cash in on Carl Icahn’s failed take-over of Time Warner,” as reported by Vanity Fair, is in no position to be throwing a soiree, unless it’s the kind where guests are expected to bring canned goods and warm blankets from which the host can benefit. Unfortunately, I’d recently gone on strike regarding Graydon C.’s publication, after the assault on the senses that was Jane Sarkin’s “They’re Not Crazy, Everyone Else is Crazy, Sick, Even” Tom and “Kate” Cruise piece—truly, it’s a wonder I can still see, feel, smell, live—and having not read the elucidating sound bites beforehand, was unaware of what I was getting myself into.

Yes, I skipped out of work Thursday afternoon thinking happy thoughts like “open bar” and “nice décor” and “swing band,” only to be smacked in the face by heavy hand of reality upon my arrival at “Moda.” Oh how I thought about turning on my heels and saying “No, John, this is where I put my foot down. The balloon animals, the baby goats, the bookie named Snakes, all that I said yes to, but this is where I draw the line.” But I couldn’t, because I was being paid to go inside; and if I had to go inside, then damn it, I was going to take a friend in with me. But who? Such an event was only worthy of one kind of friend: the kind who still hadn’t been adequately punished for throwing up in his suitemate’s bed, say, two nights before graduation last May. Lucky for me, I had one such friend. So I made a call, waited outside kind of sketchily, and at 6:15, Pete and I braced ourselves for the worst, him more so, because he was doing this without compensation. But whatever the terms, we—me as the prostitute and he as the whore—were in this together for the long haul.