Sony Vegas 11 Pro question(s).

I've recently got Sony Vegas 11.0 Pro, and I'm definitely new at the whole video editing stuff, but my question is:

How do you get rid of black sidebars? It's like widescreen but on the left and the right of the video, and if someone could explain why that happens as well, that'd be great.

Second question:
How do you cut pieces out of a video?

Third question:
Is there any way to time a video? So If you need something to happen at a certain time, you can make it happen?

If you can't answer all my questions, it's fine. Thank you in advance.
I'm also sorry if I was vague in some of my questions -- I don't know all the fancy terms for things, I just found this software pretty neat and decided to learn how to use it. Again, thank you.
:-)