@bgg,
You are right: the only mandatory one is show_menu2(). For the rest, the template is rather flexible. You can do with it whatever you want. As posted in this thread, the template has three menu's and two blocks, but you can change it as you like. Thus for example you can add a block, which e.g. shows the latest news items at the sidebar by using the Show News Items Anywhere code snippet.
regards,
Erik