>Use plain old HTML + CSS and your site feels like this.
That's just the point. Few people do this, yet the effect is vastly more usable, readable, and clean than "modern design", which ironically is much more difficult to pull off.
But how will I alert all eighteen analytic companies that someone from Malaysia who is between 18-24 and likes over ripe mangos has looked at my site so that they can be better served by one of my twenty ad providers?
I think beacons are potentially the only thing you want to leave on a static web site, out of all possible javascript assets. And it'd be best to load them asynchronously (which pretty much all the tags already do, by creating a request <script> tag dynamically).
Certain tags also provide noscript 1x1 gif, so even your analytics is gracefully degraded!
Potentially web fonts are another candidate for a necessary javascript inclusion (css fonts are load blocking unfortunately), but that's by itself is pretty excessive.
That's just the point. Few people do this, yet the effect is vastly more usable, readable, and clean than "modern design", which ironically is much more difficult to pull off.