1 – enable gzip for your non-php requests (base page, jquery, swfobject.js). It will cut them down significantly and shave at least 1/2 a second off of your start render time (and save you some bandwidth charges if you pay by the byte). Since you're running on an Apache host it should be as simple as enabling mod_deflate.

2 – Collapse all of those js files that come before start render into a single one (or at least just one more in addition to jquery). You can even do it without modifying the js files themselves if you install mod_concat – you just need to change how you reference them. This will shave at LEAST another 1/2 second off. (for bonus you can also combine the css files using the same technique).

From there you could get into image spriting some of the png's if you wanted but the gzip and combining will get you the bulk of the improvements for VERY little work and won't change anything about the blog presentation or architecture.