Anything but. . .: Let us assume that the people who aren’t watching That Big Event tonight are probably not all that interested in TV in the first place. Let us then assume it is incumbent upon this column to find something else to recommend to those folk. If Texas songwriter Robert Earl Keen (speaking of folk) were playing Thursday at Park West, I could happily tout that. Keen live is a 10-gallon treat, by turns party boy and Plains poet, backed by one of the tightest, most exuberant bands you will ever hear. But he is instead playing Friday night at Park West. So I turn, as I so often do, to literature and learn that Arundhati Roy, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel “The God of Small Things,” is appearing to read and sign at Border’s, 830 N. Michigan Ave., at 7 p.m., precisely the time the TV festivities start. This is a worthwhile alternative to The Show of Small Things, as her tale of a decaying family in India is lyrical, disorienting and deeply affecting, even through its more precious moments. Remember, there is not anything wrong with eschewing a frantically hyped event for the smaller pleasures of an author reading. Besides, VCRs were invented for a reason.