Serving up cultural advice on a silver tray

Why bother Asking Jeeves when you have a discerning Head Butler at your fingertips? The website www.headbutler.com sifts through cultural clutter to find books, movies, music and other items to satisfy visitors’ discriminating palates.

“A butler exists to serve and know what you want before you want it,” says New York-based head butler Jesse Kornbluth, 59, who launched the site in May. He describes headbutler.com as the antithesis of Zagat guides: “It’s not what 15,000 people agree on.”

It’s mostly about trusting Kornbluth’s tastes, which you will or won’t depending on what you think of his background as a journalist, author (including “Pre-Pop Warhol”) and CNBC commentator (on Tina Brown’s “Topic A”). Though a self-proclaimed “technological idiot,” Kornbluth cofounded Bookreporter .com -- now the largest noncommercial book website -- and served as editorial director of America Online for five years.

On headbutler.com, Kornbluth and a few guest butlers provide “terribly personal little essays” that examine what they deem the creme de la creme in arts and culture. For example, when describing Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” Kornbluth’s enthusiasm is palpable: “A mystical space shot hurled aloft on butterfly wings ... and anchored by a voice that starts in Ireland, transits to Mississippi and ultimately resides in that place called Genius.”

But headbutler.com’s recommendations aren’t mired in your parents’ record collection. Other music releases to make the Head Butler’s list include Green Day’s “American Idiot,” Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama’s “There Will Be a Light” and “The Very Best of ... Cesaria Evora.”

In the film section, “Napoleon Dynamite” gets a nod of approval: “But let’s not get all deep and say this film is about the nerd in all of us. It’s not. Indeed, it’s a meaningless comedy -- it’s just funny,” Kornbluth writes.

Some may perceive the choices on headbutler.com as pretentious and elitist, but Kornbluth says he’s all too happy to go against the grain of “dumbing down” culture for the masses -- and he suggests that visitors may learn a thing or two from the Head Butler.

Besides, good help is just so hard to find.