I'll just register things here as I go, to keep record of it somewhere. My goal is to try to make my own template incorporating what's available from WP and looking at how each element is coded under Smarty. I plan to achieve this simply by looking at code from original WP templates and Blogsome ones, then connecting the dots. After looking at the Blogsome wiki and smarty.php.net, I figured this would be the only smooth way to go for someone who only knows HTML and CSS. I wish I had more time, but it's not happening. :)
Bugs?
  1. Google ads causing error on page.
  2. Break lines not being inserted automatically. (Appears on post preview, not on page.)
  3. Paragraphs not being inserted automatically. (Appears on post preview, not on page.)
  4. Emoticons not showing. (Appears on post preview, not on page.)
This is the only good (clear, concise, simple) explanation I've seen about how WP php tags differ from WPMU smarty tags.