[darkie]

try 0xffffffff for white text, and 0xffff0000 for red text.
the first ff is for alpha and the next are for rgb.

as for the black joypad button. you could try the next.

 def onaction(self, action):
   print('recieved action with number:' + str(action))

when you use the black button python will now print the action number to "scripts output". now, when you have that number you could use that to create your "label".

to cyberplague: a list of all python libraries avaiable is somewhere at http://www.python.org
the only library that is not supported by xbmc is the tk inter lib, which is used for drawing on screen.
if you need some other libraries, use google or something to find them. there are a lot of extra libraries available on the net.