Using bar1 or bar2 for Javascript?

In trying to make my page load faster, and especially to make the very beginning of the page to show up faster without a long lag-time, I'm trying to make the things that load first be very light-weight. I had a plugin in the left sidebar to show the current date, as any news site should have. Plugins seem to be rather heavy in the way they use the browser, so I am looking for another way. Ideally, I would like the date to show up below the top banner ad, which would be a nice location for bar1. I would like to be able to put Javascript in there, like this: At the moment, I've inserted it into the HTML Insert area for the header, and it's showing up at the very top of the container. Not where I want it, ultimately.

Any way I can do what I want? I saw a thread earlier about putting text in the /functions/bfa_ata_header_config.php file where the bar code is, but I don't know how to put Javascript there without ending up with an ugly parse error.