Old Blogger vs New Blogger: What the Hey

When Google closed their purchase agreement with Blogger, we all had to
aquire yet another account [google] in order to continue using
Blogger. Fine [not really]. In the case of VagrantMemories that
included a template overhaul. Well alright, change is good, sometimes.
This morning some final changes were being made to this blog and
the frustration factor got the best of us. So we decided to
go "public" with our frustration and post our help request as
a blog entry. Perhaps the casual observer has a faster solution
than the several solutions we have already tried.
Below is a repost of our help request:

On Apr 11, 2:53 am, kendor wrote:
> I've messed around in the docs for a couple of hours, and
>am amazed I can't figure this out on my own...

and WBF 8) of VagrantMemories chimed in...

Me neither. I am going to try to not be overly snarky here, despite
my frustration;

I am using a 'new blogger' template, specifically blue denim. I have
made some mods and so far am mostly satisfied. However,
when I have tried the [several other] suggestions
regarding show inline comments each suggestion uses
'old blogger' coding syntax.
So when I try to enable inline commenting, 'new blogger' in all it's
widgety-goodness, does not display the 'old blogger' markup i.e.
[[ {itempage}
{blogitemcommentsenabled}
[ ... lots of comment code here ... ]
{/blogitemcommentsenabled}
{/itempage} ]]

The new markup allowed me to place a comment widget in the sidebar,
this is not what I want. I need to trim the fat in my sidebar already.
Choice B is to revert to the 'old blogger' markup. This has been
suggested to other users with template issues but frankly I fail
to see why those who dutifully signed up for a google account
[we didn't want] now should be ripping up all the work they did
to fit into 'new blogger'.
Thank you for your help,

WBF 8)
...who notices there is no preview button and thereby disavows all
TYPIOS and malformed coding in the attempt to be clear and show example(s).

Well then, if there is anyone out there who is running into
similar problems and has a hack for the {Variable Name...}
declarations located between {meta}{/meta} and {style}{/style}
we would like to hear from you, either here or in the
help forums linked off the title of this post.
And just to be very clear,
yes we have tried the javascript solution, yes we have tried the
two other solutions in another help thread.