At Wednesday night's party for Have I Got a Guy for You, a book edited by Alix Strauss, the sushi was fresh, the wine crisp, and the women armed with sharp-witted horror stories of the disasters that follow being setup by, you guessed it, their mothers.

In the chic Alice + Olivia store overlooking Bryant Park, several dozen women (and one lone dude) gathered to celebrate Strauss' ode to mom playing matchmaker. Two years in the making, Strauss told Radar the book was inspired by a date brokered by her mom and with a man who turned out to be married. To her great credit, Strauss' mom—a charming woman who first relayed to Radar her Taryn Rose shoes were giving her trouble—told us that any matchmaking she's attempted over the years has been the result of "pure happenstance," and that she carries her daughter's picture in her purse because she's "just so proud of her." Hard to be mad at that, but then again, we've never had to suffer through dinner with a man complaining that his wife thinks he's immature and that the bitch was unwilling to give him an annulment.

Many of the book's 26 contributors were in attendance, including HuffPo's Rachel Sklar, writer/comedian Sara Barron, and UCLA Extension professor Rochelle Jewel Shapiro, and if the three readings given were any indication, the book is laugh-out-loud funny.

Some of the more cringe-inducing dates include that of a woman forced to go on a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing expedition; one in which the writer was on a double date with a sister and brother and subsequently hit on by both (after also being offered a bump of cocaine in the bathroom by one); and, in Barron's case, the tale of her leather-trenched "actor" date standing to deliver a monologue from Brighton Beach Memoirs in the middle of an East Village Starbucks—to her horror, but to the absolute delight of several elderly patrons and one homeless man wearing a diaper for a hat.

Strauss said she hopes the book helps moms everywhere ask at least three essential questions before trying to set up their daughters: Is he a city guy? Is he married? Has he potentially killed anybody? She seems to have found the balance with her own mother, who tells us that she is now "just allowed to get a phone number, and Alix can call if she's so inclined."